FBX or DWG export for max import?

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Dave Stewart did some research on what the best batch sizes are for attaching via script if anyone cares to adapt it to their code: It sped my time up by a *LOT* will post the results once i re-stabilize.

 

Teaser: 2.6million faces in 2601 teapots -> 108seconds to collapse down.

 

I came across this thread awhile ago that I think linked back to Dave's research. If you haven't read it yet, it may be helpful also.

 

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=98&t=635477&highlight=attach+loop

[Dave Buchhofer]

Yea i saw that earlier.. Here's his script translated into attaching the current selection Its only a partial solution so far, it simplifies the number of objects vastly however.. (2500object selection collapses down to 64objects in something like 18 seconds.)

 

Works fairly quick, depending on polycount of the objects you're attaching.

 

adapting that to help with the revit fbx monstrosity shouldn't be hard.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Thanks, now I have a Dave Buchhofer directory in my script library.

[Dave Buchhofer]

Last giveaway for a while http://buchhofer.com/upload/files/Scripts/QuickCollapse.ms works on Selected Objects, Collapses completely to 1 object, and set up in a struct for easy adding to other scripts. have fun eh?

[Shaun Hamm]

based on what i've seen in this thread, i'm using the following workflow for fbx:

 

1. import fbx
   
2. run autoedges script to remove triangulation
   
3. run layers by materials script to sort objects into layers.
   
4. freeze all layers and turn on one layer at a time to collapse using quick collapse script (fyi, be sure set each layer active that your unfreezing due to the script putting the collapsed object on your active layer)
   

i think assigning the quickcollapse script to a hotkey will definately speed up the process. It will still be tedius going through one layer at a time.

 

does this sound about right?

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

That is essentially what I do, except I haven't tested Dave's script with it. I was using a blur script before, that attaches everything that is currently selected. It worked fairly decent, but doesn't take into account RAM usage, so I always needed to keep a really close eye on that.

[Shaun Hamm]

That is essentially what I do, except I haven't tested Dave's script with it. I was using a blur script before, that attaches everything that is currently selected. It worked fairly decent, but doesn't take into account RAM usage, so I always needed to keep a really close eye on that.

 

i've always had ram issues merging the "metal - aluminum" layer which ends up being all the window mullions on a particular project i'm working on. 2332 objects merged to 1 in about a minute without crashing.

 

We did just get machines with 16 gigs of ram now though so i'm not sure if that's what's helping or the script.

Edited March 17, 2009 by shaunph78
the word layers to objects

[Dave Buchhofer]

Well, so far my collapse by material looks like its chugging away nicely at a 10million poly scene.. thats more or less solid in the wireframe mode heh. looks to be holding steady at 2.1g of ram use too. It was 1.7 just to open the file.

 

On the plus side, script works to collapse.. on the minus side, just going en-masse by material on a large scene isn't going to cut it.

 

Although its jumped up to 6g swap file use once the collapse finished, i guess since it killed a lot of the instancing. Hmmmm. oh the testing.

 

I've got a tweak for the material -> layers script too that speeds it up when there are huge amounts of geometry.. i'll throw that up later~

 

Also.. the layer thing in the QuickCollapse shouldn't be a problem.. i just didn't think of that!

[bderrick]

based on what i've seen in this thread, i'm using the following workflow for fbx:

 

1. import fbx
   
2. run autoedges script to remove triangulation
   
3. run layers by materials script to sort objects into layers.
   
4. freeze all layers and turn on one layer at a time to collapse using quick collapse script (fyi, be sure set each layer active that your unfreezing due to the script putting the collapsed object on your active layer)
   

i think assigning the quickcollapse script to a hotkey will definately speed up the process. It will still be tedius going through one layer at a time.

 

does this sound about right?

 

Sorry about the late reply to this thread. I was wondering where you got the 'layers by materials' script. Any chance you could post it here?

[Dave Buchhofer]

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/32059-fbx-dwg-export-max-import-5.html#post243877

[bderrick]

Thanks for the quick reply. I thought that was the script before however whenever i run it max says there's a problem with the addnode line:

 

for o in obj where o.material.name == m.name do (layer.addnode o)

 

and there is no change to the layers. Any ideas?

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Thanks for the quick reply. I thought that was the script before however whenever i run it max says there's a problem with the addnode line:

 

for o in obj where o.material.name == m.name do (layer.addnode o)

 

and there is no change to the layers. Any ideas?

 

Try putting everything on layer 0, delete all of the other layers, and then run it. I think that error pops up when it is trying to create a layer the same ass one that already exists.

[bderrick]

Perfect thanks that worked. One last question: why is it better to use an fbx file rather than a dwg file from Revit? DWG files are so much smaller than fbx files.

[Dave Buchhofer]

Depends on how your file is organized.. if you are working with a file that has materials already reasonably applied in revit then you go FBX, if you are working with a file with no materials, but a sensibile layer scheme, then you go DWG.

[Scott Dombrowski]

I don't know if the end result is exactly the same, as I haven't had much time to play with it, but Autodesk has a script for "removing visible edges from imported FBX models." It's described in the help file for the FBX 2010.0 plugin under "Revit Architecture to 3ds Max workflow". I gave it a go and it removed all the extra visible edges quite quickly. Using the autoEdge script from Jon Seagull took about 50 minutes to complete on a model with 6000+ objects at a rate of about 2 objects per second. This one was done in 40 seconds. Copy and paste it into a new MaxScript, select all of your objects, and then do a CTRL-E to run it.

 

(

-- do this in a local scope so I don't pollute the global scope.

function setVisibilityEdges obj =

(

	local edgeSelSet = #()

	-- Go through all faces

	local numFaces = obj.numfaces

	for faceIndex = 1 to numFaces do

	(	

		-- And for every one of the 3 edges

		for edgeIndex = 1 to 3 do 

		(

			--collect the edge

			append edgeSelSet ( ((faceIndex-1)*3) + edgeIndex )

		)

	)

	-- Select all visible edges

	meshop.autoedge obj edgeSelSet 5 type:#setclear 

)

--==============================================

-- Start of the runtime script

--==============================================

local timestart = timestamp()

-- turn off undo during this operation.

with undo off

(

	local editMeshArray = #()

	for obj in Selection do

	(

		if (classof obj == Editable_Mesh) do

		(

			-- collect all the edit meshes first, because the

			-- user could have selected some helper objects too, which we

			-- don't want to process.

			append editMeshArray obj

		)

	)

	-- we don't need to hold the selection anymore, clear it out.

	clearselection()

			-- Array of object handles that have already had their edges hidden

	local allReadyProcessed = #()

	-- iterate through all selected edit meshes...

	for editMeshobj in editMeshArray do

	(

		local found = (FindItem allReadyProcessed editMeshobj.handle) > 0

		if (not found) then

		(

			setVisibilityEdges editMeshobj

			append allReadyProcessed editMeshobj.handle				-- Mark all the instances as processed too!

			InstanceMgr.GetInstances editMeshobj &repeatArray

			if (repeatArray.count > 0) then

			(

				-- mark them as processed by adding their handle to the array

				for repeat in repeatArray do

				(

					append allReadyProcessed repeat.handle

				)

			)

		)

	)

)

redrawviews()

local timeend = timestamp()

format "Total time: % (seconds)\n" ((timeend - timestart)/1000.0))