how to convert architectural mats to standard mats?

[oluv]

i want to export my max file to 3ds format, which uses dozens of architectural materials, but after exporting all texture-paths are lost. is there a way how i can convert all my architectural materials to standard materials?

i looked into scriptspot, but they didn't have any script that could convert architectural materials.

 

any help is greatly appreciated!

 

thanks, o.

[imgumbydammit]

i want to export my max file to 3ds format, which uses dozens of architectural materials, but after exporting all texture-paths are lost. is there a way how i can convert all my architectural materials to standard materials?

i looked into scriptspot, but they didn't have any script that could convert architectural materials.

 

any help is greatly appreciated!

 

thanks, o.

 

From...http://www.okino.com/conv/exp_3ds.htm

 

maybe this will expose one of yur problems ??

the .3ds format is no longer an ideal file format as it once was. The .3ds format has several serious shortcomings, many of which probably stem from the fact that 3D Studio R1 grew out of Tom Hudson's mid-80's "CAD-3D" on the Atari platform:

 

All meshes must be triangles.

All texture filenames are limited to 8.3 DOS character lengths.

The number of vertices and polygons per mesh is limited to 65536.

Accurate vertex normals cannot be stored in the .3ds file. Instead "smoothing groups" are used so that the receiving program can recreate a (hopefully good) representation of the vertex normals. This is still a hold-over legacy for many animation programs today which started in the 1980's (3DS MAX, Lightwave and trueSpace still use smoothing groups, and Maya up to v2.51).

Object, light and camera names are limited to 10 characters. Material names are limited to 16 characters.

Directional light sources are not supported.

 

Peace

[oluv]

thanks for your reply. i know the shortcomings of 3ds-format. but to tell the truth my main problem is the conversion from architectural materials to standard materials as i need all texture-paths for the final output to vrml/x3d and i don't want to write down dozens of paths and file-names manually.

i thought saving as 3ds-fromat would solve this problem automatically, but it doesn't.

 

is there some solution for this?

[AJLynn]

You can do this by exporting the MAX file to FBX format - I don't remember if MAX7 supports this natively or if I have the 3rd party plugin installed, but the plugin is a free download from alias.com download section. Your architecturals will end up as Blinns if you reimport the FBX file (not sure if that's good enough for you...) and your vertex normals will be good.

[abicalho]

Oluv,

 

There's no automatic way to convert ArchMat to StdMat. There's the opposite, though.

 

You'll have to write a script to do the conversion, and even in that case the conversion is lossy, since both materials do not map 1 to 1.