Revit to 3ds Max- breaking up selections

[philvanderloo]

My normal workflow, using 3ds Max 2014, will be to create the bulk of my models in Revit Architecture and import to 3ds Max for material application and rendering.

I'm just learning 3ds Max and having issues when trying to apply materials to parts of my Revit model.

At first I would try selecting individual objects like the roof, the fascia on one gable, specific walls, but the selections would pick up multiple objects.

I tried converting objects to editable poly's and was able to select individual items but when I applied materials it would apply to several items that weren't selected. Any tips, videos, tutorials on the workflow for bringing objects in from Revit and enabling specific selections to apply materials. I did experiment with multi-subobject materials and it didn't seem to help.

Thank You

[Corey Beaulieu]

The hard part of importing Revit is that it requires a lot of material setup before you export to FBX. In the import dialogue of MAX it will merge objects by material assuming you are going to just use the Render Engine and it imports materials, cameras, and lighting from Revit.

 

If you want to start mor or less from root geometry, I would export your Revit file into a DWG and import that. When it arrives into MAX, you get nice layers for the most part, but you get a lot of junk you don't want, so the first few things I do is:

 

> select all splines and delete.

> find layers of objects that won't be rendered ( plumbing or electrical etc...) and delete.

> I then start to attach all like objects. Glass and Mullions in particular. Max doesn't like a lot of objects so these are usually best as one large object.

 

After that it's up to you. A lot of times I'll make one object out of each layer, moving them from layer to layer based on what materials I will use and some times I will just merge the heavy stuff together. You should collapse all objects down to a Mesh or Poly. If later you discover that a pieces needs detaching, Sub-Object modes will allow you to get the pieces you want and detach them. It's more talk than effort. It usually takes me about an hour or 2 on large models to clean it up and ready it for rendering. Max will freeze a lot because the Revit files are huge, but as you get it gets better and you'll be happy you did it.

 

P.S Fair Oaks, CA? I live in Boston now, but grew up in Sacramento.

[philvanderloo]

Thanks Corey, I grew up here too. Bella Vista class of 77 I was wondering where you went. Just kidding. I would be curious to see your routine when prepping .dwgs to import however I have to say this- I was an autocad and autocad architect user up until 2002 or so and one of the many reasons I switched to Revit was because I kept hearing how the development teams were working to make revit more integratable with 3ds max.

Whether or not this is the way it played out I don't know but I would think that Revit to 3ds Max imports would be a common practice and there would be ways similar to your .dwg manipulations to make Revit friendlier?? Any takers on that?

Thank You again for your response. If you have any written dialog for your transform process I would like to see it.

Phil

[Corey Beaulieu]

I it all depends on the scale at which you are working. I work at a studio that does images and animated movies for large scale projects so there are often many buildings being imported and a lot to keep track of. This has typically been the downfall of any intended use of the .FBX methods. On a single building, smaller scale, I always understood it to be developed in such a way that you would do all your modelling and prep work in Revit and then live link it to Max where the objects are collapsed by material. This way you can alter/refine the material in Max and have a much more high-power render engine in either Mental Ray or iRay (though Vray is more of the industry standard). This live link is done so that as you model more objects in Revit and save the new updates, Max can just collapse them into the existing object by material and apply the UVW mapping and material and you can render away.

 

We use a custom script here and then do whatever scrappy thing we can to get by considering the size of our projects, but I really have found the DWG to be much more cooperative. I too would be interested to hear what others have to say.

 

If you find yourself disappointed with the built in methods for importing Revit you could always try this: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/revit-importer

 

I never used it, but it looks similar to what I'm imagining you are looking for.

 

-Rio Americano '00

[aaronrumple]

We export to DWG for most of the work. With DWG, we can typically assign 70-80% of the materials by layer and then it is just a matter of detail. We will use FBX for complex geometry that doesn't make the round trip well via DWG. Eliptical shapes with holes are often an issue for Revit->DWG-3ds.

 

Another thing we do on complex projects is set up different views in Revit for quick export. For instance, we'll have the furniture exported to one dwg and the shell of the building exported to another. We can then xref these together for the final image.

 

Most of our geometry editing is done in Revit so that design changes are save for the next step in design development.

[Jose Negrete]

try import/link fbx/rvt by:

 

• Do Not Combine Links each Revit entity as a single 3ds Max object. This is comparable to importing an FBX file. WarningDo Not Combine is a simple option, but if the Revit drawing is large, 3ds Max performance can suffer.
  

If you try linking and intend to reload the link make sure to enable the materials options in max link preset before you link the file.

 

http://goo.gl/POYKxE

[philvanderloo]

Jose,

When I link using Do not Combine entities, I still can't select individual objects.

When I select the roof I get the roof AND Fascia and I do not know how to break up the selection.

When I try to select window trim to apply a material, I get the entire window assembly and, again, I'm unable to break up the selection.

Autodesk support tells me this is a program gliche. I'm calling bs on that one.

I can't believe that the integration between Revit and 3ds Max at version 2014 could be that bad.

I'm on Windows 7 64

Thanks

[Kawzy]

We've been working with file linking with Revit and Max since the beginning, and it's been a lot of head scratching and hair pulling. It sounds to me that the problem might lie with what materials are applied to each object/family (forgive my lack of Revit lingo, I'm a Max user and will probably screw up terminology, and also forgive me if you are aware of anything I mention below).

The number one thing to get the cleanest imports is to ensure EVERY object has a proMaterial assigned to it in Revit. ProMaterials are the only things that separate properly by material. Using anything else will result in scattered results and materials sometimes being duplicated. Create a material in revit for your glass, or a material for each glass type if you have multiples, and make sure it's diligently applied to only what it corresponds with. It can look like anything, it doesn't matter, but make sure you name it accordingly, because the objects in max will be named the same thing as the Revit material. If you don't break an assembly up into separate promaterials, (promaterial glass on glass, promaterial aluminum on frames) during the conversion Max will combine that assembly. It sees the separate objects of the family as a group. If it can't find something it recognizes to break it apart, it won't. It will be a headache to remedy if it isn't the way you already model in Revit. When we made the decision to move the direction of file linking a few years ago, it was a major process. Some of our Revit team still relapse from time to time, but things go much smoother when a workflow is established. Chances are, adding in file linking through Revit will require a change if you want it to work cleanly.

Also, when file linking, you'll possibly find that materials are out of scale when you apply UVW mapping values. Step one when linking a file should be to select all of the linked geometry on the Max end and apply a Reset XForm. This will stay in place if you update the link, and it will allow you to apply correct mapping without having to eyeball it in the viewport.

Hope that helps...

[philvanderloo]

Josh,

This is extremely helpful. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain.

I'm sure there will be a lot of trial and error moving forward with this but it definitely gets me going in the right direction.

Thank You

[Kawzy]

No problem, it's what this great forum is for. You'll no doubt run into questions and people on here are often willing to share knowledge.

Back in the first stages, there was a lot of correspondence going on with Autodesk around here also, most of which was them not taking the time to even understand the situation. We got a lot of "glitch" comments also. Really it came down to a few of us just diving head first and dedicating a few days to do testing. As crazy as it is to say, it's gotten better. It has it's downfalls, for sure, but it can be a time saver when there are a lot of projects going on at the same time.

[Kawzy]

It should also be said that the process we use, and the only one that has worked consistently well for us, is to "combine by Revit Material" on the Max end when linking. The downside to this is that you'll have to be even more careful as to what objects in Revit have what material applied to them, because objects with the same material will all be one object (i.e. all window mullions, canopies, light fixture etc. that have "proMaterial Aluminum" applied to them will all be selected at the same time). It seems like this is something you may not want at first, because things are all bunched together, but it ends up making things move incredibly fast. You cut way down on selecting and mapping times. As long as I'm working with a Revit guy in our office that models properly and assigns the right material to things, we can import a model and have it "render ready" with limited effort. It allows much more time to create lighting scenarios and model in the details that really make a rendering stand out. This often results in higher quality with much less time. Going the .dwg route and editing what objects are on what layer is a valid route, but if the model changes, you have to spend those hours of conversion all over again. When done right, by linking, all you have to do is click Reload and it updates in Max. You just have to edit your preset, as Jose mentioned. In the Manage Links dialogue, click Presets, highlight "Combine By Revit Material", Modify, and check both boxes under the Materials section. In this window you can also set whether or not you want Max to import Cameras, Lights and Daylight systems, all of which I don't personally have checked. If you have them checked, it will sometimes duplicate lights and systems when reloading and you'll suddenly have a blown out scene.

The last thing to consider in this window is how many times you want Max to segment a curved surface on import. Models get MUCH more heavy with higher settings, obviously. It will segment I-beams, countertops, all sorts of things that you don't even care about and your navigation will be sluggish. When exporting an .FBX you can mitigate this a little by also setting the view detail to low.

I could go on all day.

[Jose Negrete]

Like Josh said, it helps to have materials assigned in the revit model. Once imported in max we'll use eye dropper tool to grab materials from a window, or door, or whatever. Then modify the materials in the multi-material.