Exporting textured objects from 3ds max

[FlashFuchsia]

Hello,
I'm sorry if this has been answered a bazillion times before, but I'm working on my first mesh object (a simple unrigged accessory). I made it in 3ds max 2012, fully mapped it, and made a texture for it. I attached the texture to a material  and it shows up perfectly fine in the viewport, but when I export to .dae and import it into secondlife, there's no texture.

I'm not used to working with materials in 3ds max, since when I would  create stuff for other games, I would use Milkshape to preview and attach texures, but Milkshape doesn't export to .dae. When I export it to .3ds and load it into Milkshape just to preview it, it comes up with an extremely distorted texture, like it's not reading the .png file correctly.

Here's pretty much my process in case I did something wrong or missed a step:
1. I loaded the royalty-free creative commons object into 3ds max
2. Used a symmetry modifyer on default setting just to make it easier to map.
3. Attached a checker material to see mapping
4. None/ugly mapping, so I pelt mapped it (since it's a really weird shape)
5. Exported map to whatever weird default format they use
6. Opened in photoshop, made texture, saved as png
7. Back to 3ds max
8. Next material -> Diffuse -> bitmap -> [texturename].png
9. Just picture in material editor, not applied on preview sphere, can't apply to mesh
10. 2-hour fruitless google search. Get same non-working process over and over.
11. Panic
12. Try again with 3rd material
13. Works, but now the other 2 materials plus the 4th material are checks of grey and my texture. Me: "wtf okay whatever"
14. Attach to model. Very purdy
15. File -> export -> askfhlakgh.dae. Don't mess with exporter settings because I don't know what they do
16. Fails to export texture
17. Tries again, works
17b. Saves as .3ds, opens in milkshape. No texture on material
18. Opens up beta grid, no texture on object, "textures" is checked
19. Another 2 hour fruitless google search, get mostly blender tutorials. Don't have blender.
20. Back to 3ds max, realize object is editable poly. Change to mesh.
21. Use "remove UVW" utility to remove all the materials from object
22. Try again with 6th material
23. Works, very purdy etc. No errors in exporting
24. In Milkshape, texture is really distorted and is covered in RGB nosie (my texture has monochromatic noise, though)
25. Back to beta grid. Still no texture.
26. Panic
27. Ask for help on SL forums

Sorry if my post makes no sense. I really have no idea what I'm doing outside of mapping the object.

[Rahkis Andel]

Don't feel bad. I am having the same problem, except replace 3dsMax with Blender.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Before we explore all other options, what kind of exporter are you using and what version of it?

[FlashFuchsia]

I'm using FBX exporter version 2012.0

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

That one does have some trouble with certain things regarding SL. You could try the 2013.3 (64 bit) or 2013.3 (32 bit) version for 3ds max 2012 for starters. Do not use any spaces or odd characters in object, texture or material names.

If that doesn't help, plenty of helpful people here, I'm sure we can figure it out.

[FlashFuchsia]

Thank you so much! I'll try it out and get back in a minute.

[FlashFuchsia]

It's still showing up as pure white. I think it has something to do with the way 3ds max names materials, since it started out as "skin", then as "map #2" and then as "17 - default". I don't know if just changing the name in the material name dropdown box actually renames it or not.

 

EDIT: Okay so I think I figured out what the problem is.
WHen I export it to .3ds to test in Milkshape, it says it auto-renames the texture to something under 8 characters (since milkshape can only hands 8-character material/texture names).
I manually renamed the texture to something under 8 characters, deleted the object's current material, and created a new one. I loaded the image, and it shows up as pure white on the object, so maybe it's the fact that it's a png file and it's just being invisible.

EDIT EDIT:
I also changed the texture format from a 16-bit png file to an 8-bit jpeg and it loads perfectly in milkshape, but still not in SL

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

lol points 11. and 26 made me laugh : )

exceptional explicit problem description ^^

Apart from that try the exporter Kwak suggested. 

if you can't get it to work, and since your problem appears to be the texture export, you can try exporting it without textures and just save the images separately. The include texture in the uploader window was kind of broken for so long, that i don't even bother trying to upload them along with the model anymore.

(In case that is not valid anymore and that include texture finally works flawlessly, someone poke me that info pls )


PS: when you deleted the material and renamed it, you need to assign the textures again. otherwise it won't know where which texture is. 
Also what helps is to have all maps in the same folder where the export /model is. Some programs can't recieve texture-links, and just replace it with a white texture / default image.


The fact that it's white shouldn't be related to it being a PNG, unless its a fully transparent image and can't be rendered in the 3D viewport in the working mode. 

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

Addition:

ok after re-reading, i assume what you do is building in milkshape, then transfering it to 3DS to make the export from Max into DAE.

And when i understand it right, your model doesn't show textures when you try to open the same model back in milkshape  (the you formerly exported) ?

But it shows all mapped textures when you open the same file in 3DS - just gives an error when you try to do the DAE export?

Just trying to wrap my head around at which point exactly the issue happens. So gonna wait for your response.

[FlashFuchsia]

I did everything in 3ds max. I simple use milkshape as a second preview to double check it's working since I don't understand the material editor in 3ds max at all. I think it's the .dae exporter though because I exported as a 3ds and brought it into milkshape, and everything is fine. The material name is "17default" which is what I renamed it to, and the texture is there.

How do you attach the texture to the mesh in SL? I think I'm just gonna do that since apparently SL doesn't like 3ds max very much.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

yeah sounds pretty much like you are either mising some settings in the exporter, or something back and forth from milkshake to 3DS goes wrong.

The textures insides SL are 'supposed' te be applicable in 2 ways.

One: the regular way.. you upload your model, and then you upload your textures.
you select a face on the model and apply your texture to it. Just as you would with every prim.
(depending on how many materials you created > 8 is the maximum on 'one combined' object, a mesh can have up to 8 texture faces , and thus 8 areas where a texture can be applied to)

Second way: (apparently was broken a long time) is to choose to upload the textures along with your model in the model-upload window of SL (last tab > there you can choose to 'include textures')

[FlashFuchsia]

How do you select a face on the object if you can't rez it in aditi? I drag it from my inventory to the floor and it doesn't show up even though the region allows object rezzing.

[Rahkis Andel]

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Codewarrior Congrejo wrote:

 

Second way: (apparently was broken a long time) is to choose to upload the textures along with your model in the model-upload window of SL (last tab > there you can choose to 'include textures')

 

 

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Well, that answers my problem at least.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

How do you select a face on the object if you can't rez it in aditi? I drag it from my inventory to the floor and it doesn't show up even though the region allows object rezzing.

Now that can have various reasons:
- your normals are flipped and the object's outsides appears to be invisible to the renderer.
- try to cam around and see if at least anything is visible
- The object was too heavy and the server did not load it. (in that case you'd normally get a message after a while telling you that the rez failed... or will rez after a while
- The object got some sizing issue, and somewhere along the line of exporting it back & forth of milkshape and 3DS it got either hilariously small or extremely huge . and its either to tiny to see easily or it's so huge that you are standing somewhere insides and can't see the rest.
- The simulator could be having an issue and rezzing is failing at the moment
- your graphic settings in the viewer need to be adjusted

...but all i can do is guessing from here, so i have to ask a question first again:


Did it look normal in the upload preview window?

Did it maybe have an extreme high Landimpact ?

( that could be a hint to being of very big scale) also check the  scale values in the uploader

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

@ Rahkis, glad i could answer that along the way lol. 
And your answer -  answers my question if it's finally fixed as well - as i assume it's not : )

[FlashFuchsia]

Well I never imported imported it back and forth from MIlkshape.

It looks perfectly fine in the preview and I checked the size with an avatar model from the SL forums and sized it to that back while I was UV mapping.

The upload fee is only 13L and it says there's a 2.285 land impact, but I don't know if that's a lot or not. The object is only 1706 polys.

[FlashFuchsia]

Someone told me it's really hard to rez in aditi because they're always full, but this particular sim (Ahern) looked pretty empty.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

yeah that sounds reasonable.

What you could try is to go to mesh sandbox 3, or 6 or 23.
I normally build there and don't have much issues to rez. Could as i said be the simulator making trouble.

Give it a shot and try it in another region.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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FlashFuchsia wrote:

It looks perfectly fine in the preview and I checked the size with an avatar model from the SL forums and sized it to that back while I was UV mapping.

 

The upload fee is only 13L and it says there's a 2.285 land impact, but I don't know if that's a lot or not. The object is only 1706 polys.

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A landimpact of 2285 is not a lot, it is humongous. A full region in SL accepts 15000, so an empty region would at best fit 6 of your objects. The upload fee is connected to the file size, 1706 polys won't result in a big file, hence the low cost.

The high Landimpact can be caused by various things. If it is the download weight determining the number, I can think of two that could apply to your model. Either you loaded your model into all 4 slots (high-very low) or the scale is not right. If it is the physics weight, don't worry, hysics don't work on a worn object.

You say you scaled the object to the proper size in 3ds max, but did you apply the transform? It's under "Utilities" (the hammer) on the far right in max. When you scale an object, the "size" will stay the same, but the "scale" will change. If you select your object and right click the scale button, it should read 100% for all axes. If not you have to reset the scale. With your object selected, click "Reset XForm" then "Reset Selected".

You can work with editable poly just fine btw, I always use it.

[FlashFuchsia]

Hahahah It's not 2,285 it's 2 POINT 285...

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Oh I guess I need glasses

Maybe it is too small? Then at least I didn't write that post for nothing...

[FlashFuchsia]

Haha well I didn't know about having to use a utility too, so I'll try that, too

[Rahkis Andel]

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Codewarrior Congrejo wrote:

@ Rahkis, glad i could answer that along the way lol. 

And your answer -  answers my question if it's finally fixed as well - as i assume it's not : )

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After some testing, I found out that this feature is working now, if indeed it was ever broken.

More details here.