Maya and Blender

[Mystified Explorer]

I'm doing a 2 year 3D animation course (which is good fun ) and we're learning to use Maya. Since I'm learning to model in maya it get's annoying constantly switching back to blender to model my ages, so i was wondering if theres a way to import textured maya scenes into blender?

Thanks!

[greendragoon]

I'm with you in that I learned Maya long before I started learning Blender. Plus, there are a number of things that I find much easier to do in Maya, (i.e. uv texture mapping.) The way I do it is to select the models I want and export them as .obj files. Blender can pull these back in. To do this, you need to enable the objExport plugin which comes with Maya, but is not activated by default. One word of caution though is that I've found that while the materials created in Maya will survive the journey to blender, if you then try to export them with pyprp, you'll run into problems. I usually have to delete and recreate the materials. Luckily the uv maps are part of the model, not the material. I have not yet tried this system with animations.

If anyone knows a better method, I would like to hear it as well.

[andylegate]

Guys, try giving this a try: Nif format

I've found that there are tools that will allow both 3DSMax and Maya to export to .nif formate (NetImmerse / Gamebyo).

It will export not only the mesh, but the materials, textures and even UV Mapping!

You can then turn around and IMPORT a .nif into your Blender scene, and it will import with everything intact!!!! The only thing you may have to mess with is scaling, and of course placing your imported object where you need it.

I've messed with this a bit myself, and it seems to work just fine.

Here's the link to to the Elder Scrolls web site, as those games use .nif format. This link will provide links to Nif Importer / Exporters for both Maya and 3DSMax, and also the Nif Importer script for Blender:

Nif Importer / Exporter

[greendragoon]

Thanks Andy, I'll have to give that a try.

[Mystified Explorer]

Nice! Thanks heaps for that!!!