Hi,
I couldn’t post this in the 3dsMax section (I’m not a moderator), so I’m posting the feedback here.
I’m being trying to get some Collada files out of Max 7, so far with no luck. The C++ exporter seems to crash the instant I attempt to export anything, crashing Max and no leaving no message as to why (I looked in the network/Max.log, nothing useful there). Without the source to the exporter it is a little hard to debug.
I also noticed that although there are a stack of files in the zip, only two files are installed by the batch file. rtmax.dll, mtlbake.dlu and dxMaterial.dlt all appear to be ignored during the install. Copying these files into my max directory replacing the exsiting ones causes error messages about plugins failing to initialise during the max startup and prevented the Collada exporter from working.
Attempting to export using the latest maxscript plugins produces the following maxscript error message:
– Runtime error: Cannot access keys for this controller: Controller: ScaleXYZ
and the export terminates (though not as dramatically as with the C++ version).
I know it is possible to export Collada files from Max since I have been sent Max exported Collada files by other people. I’m just not sure how to manage it myself. Do you have any tips as to what I should do?
The reason that I am trying to export shapes is to export the apparent identity matrices in the inverse bind matrix section of the file. This causes MAX exported Collada files to import and render incorrectly in our engine. Is skinning currently considered broken?
Regards
Rob
Hi Rob,
Sorry for all the inconveniences you are encountering. The wrong zipfile has been uploaded.
Download the following link to get the lastest exporter and importer. The package contains everything dlls, scripts and plug-ins and properly installs.
Click here to download.
Thanks for your understanding,
Jean-Luc.
Hi Jean-Luc,
Thanks. That exporter does a lot better. It outputs strange bind matrices however, with unexpected scale factors. Exporting a skinned animated shape and then importing into our engine produces a very broken result. Importing a Max exported shape into Maya produces a similarly broken result. I am unable to import the Max exported shape into Max because Collada doesn’t appear as an import file type.
Is skinning known to be broken with the current exporter?
Regards
Rob
Hi Rob,
Sorry for the silence, I kind of dove into the Siggraph craziness and lost track of time 
We definitely have some troubles with the skinning. Most of the tests are successful but there are a couple it is hard to solve. Somebody is looking into it and we hope to solve it pretty soon. Here is another drop which fixes the initial pose problem. This is a temporary solution. The skin in the modifier stack of the mesh is disabled. After the exporter has exported the COLLADA file, you must reenable the skin.
Click here to download.
Note that the scripts and the source code of the exporter are included. The importer is still a Max script. This has not changed.
I will be on vacations for 4 weeks. Bernard is the one who will be looking into the problem. His e-mail address is bernard.lefebvre@autodesk.com. I will also look time to time on the forum.
Thanks,
Jean-Luc.