Maya Paint Effects into Max Workflow?

[Claudio Branch]

Anyone out there using Maya's paint effects regularly to replace standard techniques of texture mapping grassy terrains and using 2D/3D trees? I would really like to see some samples of work!

 

I am a Max user, but after seeing a brief demo of Maya's paint effects, I thought I might be able to incorporate it into my workflow. I regularly have to deal with the above issues - alot of trees and grass.

 

I would appreciate any feedback about how well it's works within Maya alone and any problems that occur when importing content into Max.

[John Dollus]

Sorry so late...

Paint Effects works mainly as a post process for Maya so there isn't anything to work with Max per se. You would have to export your camera and scene geometry out of Max and into Maya via FBX export. Once in Maya, you would use the geometry to either paint on for the base strokes or set to be matte objects to mask parts and affect shadows etc.

When rendering, you would need to render out of Maya and then composite the image into the Max rendering. I would recommend rendering a paint effects pass at a higher resolution than your final image to smooth things out a bit.

Converting to geometry is okay but with Hair/Fur/displacement and Xfrog/Onyx you can get most of the same looks with Max by now, though.

[Claudio Branch]

No aplology needed...I was convinced that this was a dead forum though!

 

I don't know about the grass, but I did see that the tree "strokes" (?) could be converted into geometry and surely those could be imported/exported via FBX?

 

Perhaps it's not the best use of either app?

[stylEmon]

try it and let us know