Exporting XSI to ActorX.

[Wooticus]

Hello everyone,

I am trying to export a model from XSI to ActorX, but I get this error:

"Warning: No valid skin triangles digested (is the 'all textured geometry' box checked?) - there may be invalid mesh linkups or texture mapping."

I'm assuming there's something I need to do with the mesh before it is export ready, but I found no tutorials on UDK about preparing XSI meshes for ActorX. Is there any tutorials someone can link me to? Or maybe a few steps on how to prepare a model in XSI for ActorX conversion?

I appreciate your help,
Wooticus

[fritzmonkey]

Did you rig it?

[RT-Visualization]

Hello everyone,

I am trying to export a model from XSI to ActorX, but I get this error:

"Warning: No valid skin triangles digested (is the 'all textured geometry' box checked?) - there may be invalid mesh linkups or texture mapping."

I'm assuming there's something I need to do with the mesh before it is export ready, but I found no tutorials on UDK about preparing XSI meshes for ActorX. Is there any tutorials someone can link me to? Or maybe a few steps on how to prepare a model in XSI for ActorX conversion?

I appreciate your help,
Wooticus

Finally someone else who use XSI :)
If I remember correctly you have to disable or "All textured" or "Convert to triangles" into the ActorX exporter, so you don't need to convert into triangles or something else...

One thing I notice though is that the geometry inside the editor is really small, so I have to scale everthing up by 20 or something like that...
Anyway, I succesfully exported lots of meshs, not in .ase but in .dae, since, if you select all the meshes and hit export, you have a single file that contains all the meshes, but if you import that file into the editor you have lots of meshes that you can import...is like if you export a group from XSI and load it into Unreal.
I found a couple of days ago a videotutorial about exporting, but it explain the export only in .psk, and unfortunately ( I use Softimage 2010, but the exporter is still ActorX, last issue ) I have a creash within Unreal if I try to import the geometry.

So, right now with XSI you can export in both .ase and .dae, import without any problems, the only thing is that you don't have the texture imported with the model, so you need to create a new material with the proper texture.

About animated mesh I have no idea at all, since now I didn't try that.
About your export problem, if is not clear, I'll upload a picture of my settings while exporting.

See ya :)

[RT-Visualization]

There you go, found it

http://www.raparicio.com/html/tutorials/xsi-unreal/export-xsi-to-unreal-weapon-exprt/export-xsi-to-unreal-weapon-exprt.htm

[Wooticus]

This is why you don't start these things at midnight...

It turns out I was trying to export a static mesh on the ActorX tab instead of the StaticMesh tab. So that problem is solved...

This video tutorial is great, and I'll be using it a lot for animated objects. Thanks for finding it for me!

[BigDaz]

And thanks from me too, another XSI User. :)

[SteelerWolf]

I've just come back to Mod Tool after a long spell using Maya, I did this tutorial if it's any use to anyone although i don't know if everything in it still works with the latest version of Mod Tool but it should do.

http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/technology/watch/v70672209GqQzcNK

[polix]

Hello everyone I am very new to UDK and I am trying to get my house model exported out and into UDK in peices
not as 1 single object, so that I can paint the diff textures on to it.
When I use ActorX I get my house but it is a standalone single object.

Also is there a different way to export characters into UDK? I been trying to import my Collada exports but to no avai.
Anyone have some ideas for me?

thank you all.

Polix

[NeptuneImaging]

You could create clusters for your object and you have at least 3 materials on it... like one for the roof, another for the walls, and the third for the misc items. And I am considering using COLLADA for my models

[RT-Visualization]

You could create clusters for your object and you have at least 3 materials on it... like one for the roof, another for the walls, and the third for the misc items. And I am considering using COLLADA for my models

my 2 cents

I actually found that the best solution to import your meshes into UDK is to use .ase...the main problem with collada is that,if you try to import a mesh,it will not consider transformation like scale,so you end up having a well done geometry in XSI,but something too small in UDK...this is annoying especially if you need to modify your meshes ans reimport them...it works pretty well with clusters on both .ase and .dae....I hope that later on an updated version of ActorX will be released,since it will be really handy to be able to export more than one mesh at the time...

[NeptuneImaging]

I'm sorry, i didn't clarify... when creating cluster materials...it opens up more material channels :). And I am still trying to figure out why my animations are not playing at all in UE3. I did a test animation for my model and it played well in XSI, but not in UE3 :(

[RT-Visualization]

I'm sorry, i didn't clarify... when creating cluster materials...it opens up more material channels :). And I am still trying to figure out why my animations are not playing at all in UE3. I did a test animation for my model and it played well in XSI, but not in UE3 :(

Yeah, I figured that out a couple of days ago when I tried to import a mesh with different textures :)
About the animation sorry but I can't help you, I haven't tried yet, but I suggest you to search not on the UDK section but on the entire forum to find some discussion about rigged character&animation in XSI to Unreal...good luck!

[polix]

So in an example with 3 planes that I call 1 floor, 1 wall and 1 roof and assign
mats to them. And export them using ActorX will i get what I need and be
able to assign diff mats to my floor, wall and roof?

[NeptuneImaging]

For a better example...let's say i have a character model that is skinned and ready to be exported to unreal. this character is made up of 3 pieces. Since it will exported as one piece, i need to find a way to apply the materials I made for the upper body, eyes, and lower body. So, I select all of the polygons of the eyes, make a clusters out of them. Same with the body pieces.

When you import it as a skeletal mesh and view it in the skeletal mesh viewer, you will see that you have 3 material slots for the body alone. That should clear things up :) Try it and let me know what happens.

Kashif

[polix]

Can you tell me how you exported it ?? As when i try to do the simple
3 planes I talked about b4 and try what you said about checking skeletal
mesh and after I select all 3 items and press import UDK crashes.

[polix]

To help clear up my problem is I have a fantasy tavern I am trying to import
Nothing real difficult But I want to be able to textue the different peices as
exporting and importing already textured doesnt work. I am trying to fig out
how to export this 1 asset and have access to it's many peices in UDK so i
can texure it.

Polix

[NeptuneImaging]

You have to create the material clusters first... it would also help if each piece is unwrapped first and packed to maximum texture space.

so for each plane, give it a planar map... they can overlap... which is okay... but the important thing is, the whole object can now be composed of 3 materials.

I find this useful on stuff like hero characters and vehicle models. here are some screenshots that will show my point. Notice how, i created my clusters first on the separate meshes before i merged them...

On static meshes, i would not even trying to do it...because the UV's need their own space for lightmapping

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2704/4207409490_c25937aa9a_b.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2659/4206650457_66e557e9e3_b.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4041/4206650329_032aa49efc_b.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4024/4207409600_36e67ed167_b.jpg

[wuren]

Cool!It is very usefull for me!

[polix]

Got that to work but it isn't practical for a house with say 50-100 peices.
Have any idea on how I can import it as 1 object that allows me to assign
a mat to each and every peice ?

[NeptuneImaging]

Well, yes, you would have top merge the pieces into one mesh and have each piece in its own texture space (and create clusters). But you are right...something like that is not practical. I would save this technique for stuff like hero characters, like in gears of war. Marcus Fenix is two pieces.

[polix]

So how do you get buildings you built in XSI into UDK and put the mats in the right position and orientation? Some of our buildings are large but most are small. It is very
hard to beleive that EPIC has fubar'd this critital part. There has to be a smooth way
to do this in the artist pipeline.

[NeptuneImaging]

I will find this out on my next project...I am working on an arena and it will make great use of tilelable textures. I will have to show you guys how I do it

[NeptuneImaging]

Part of the issue you will have to get around is building the buildings with the BSP brushes

[polix]

woot thank you, looking forward to seeing how to get it done.

[RT-Visualization]

If it can help I did this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMTXO2QCi90

Working for Architectural Visualization in UDK is a bit tricky, because the engine give it best with "dirt" settings, and to achieve a good visual result it will take a bit, right now I'm just testing which can be a good workflow for import the meshes and work with UDK...

I figured out that right now the best way to have nicer results, especially if you import large buildings with lots of details inside, is to create the interiors walls ( and if you can outside as well ) using BSP geometry, mainly because BSP geometry looks much nicer that imported geometry, especially the behaviour of the materials is better with them...

If you're using Lightmass and ambient occlusion you'll gonna have huge problems due to the geometry structure, UV and materials that react ( don't know why ) in a different way of different meshes, so unless your geometry is almost perfect, you're going to have problems...it works fine with more complicated objects ( tested on tables, chairs, couch sets, and is fine... )

Anyway if I make some good progress with my experiments I'll upload some tutorials about that :)

[NeptuneImaging]

That is a nice video...i would love to find out how to properly get animated models... XSI is my main package to work with...

[RT-Visualization]

That is a nice video...i would love to find out how to properly get animated models... XSI is my main package to work with...

Thanks, just for a trial I downloaded the U3male.,ax that you can find in the documentation and I would like to do some experiment with that...
What I mean is that you can export all your properties between 3d max and XSI using Crosswalk, so basically if is working properly in 3ds is gonna work inside XSI.
I still have a couple of trial days for 3ds so I'm going to try if is working and, if it will work, you can be sure that I'll share something :cool:

And, to see which one works best, I will use .ASE and .DAE, let's hope that both of them works properly!

[NeptuneImaging]

Let me know if that works... i am redoing my character model so that I can use my own rig...

[polix]

RT that was very close to what I want to do, Now if you did an export after you did
the Freeze Transform would the WHOLE floor with assets come in as it is in XSI?
And would it be ready to apply the mat's to the different peices of the clustered assets?

[RT-Visualization]

RT that was very close to what I want to do, Now if you did an export after you did
the Freeze Transform would the WHOLE floor with assets come in as it is in XSI?
And would it be ready to apply the mat's to the different peices of the clustered assets?

To be sure that your geometry is correctly sized just unhide all your meshes in your scene ( of course, after you are sure that you're scene is properly scaled ), select all of them and choose Transform>Freeze all transform, this will reset the transforms for all the objects in your scene, so you do that once, you don't need to think about that anymore.

About the materials, I'm not sure I get the question, but if you setup the clusters for your meshes you're ok ( doesn't matter if you hit the freeze transform button previously or after you did the clusters ).
The main problem with materials is that you have different materials on your mesh, but this doesn't mean that the settings that you had in XSI are the same when you import the geometry into UDK, because is the material that gives all the information to your mesh.
This mean that, once you import the mesh into UDK, you have the ability to assign to each piece a different material, but you have to setup manually their properties ( texture coordinates aka tilling, normal maps, and so on... )

So right now when you export a mesh from XSI you'll have only a mesh, but not the material, so for each material that you want to create you need to import all the textures you need...this is really time consuming, I really hope that the guys from Epic will do an update version of ActorX with this features!

@NeptuneImaging: working right now, but I think that next year I'll check the results!

Happy new year :)

Edit: I just tried to import a biped dude from 3ds, it will recognize all the animations, but the main problem is that XSI doesn't recognize biped bones but only nulls, so if I run the animation the only thing you see are some nulls moving...that's it...

[polix]

Wow we are beginning to think that UDK wont do what we want to do with out a GREAT
deal of pain and time being introduced into the pipeline.
I can not see why anyone would want you to Build and asset like a building in XSI/Maya
and then export it out. Only to import it into UDK as many hundreds/thousands of parts
THEN to have your team RE-Apply the mats and re-orentate them if needed.
What a major MAJOR pain this would be.
Are we missing something here? Is this the proper pipeline to get BUILDING assets into
UDK?

[RT-Visualization]

Wow we are beginning to think that UDK wont do what we want to do with out a GREAT
deal of pain and time being introduced into the pipeline.
I can not see why anyone would want you to Build and asset like a building in XSI/Maya
and then export it out. Only to import it into UDK as many hundreds/thousands of parts
THEN to have your team RE-Apply the mats and re-orentate them if needed.
What a major MAJOR pain this would be.
Are we missing something here? Is this the proper pipeline to get BUILDING assets into
UDK?

This is the 4th engine that I'm using, and for each one ( almost ) the process is always the same, that is export your meshes, import into your engine, create your material within the engine and then apply to it...
And is not for buildings only, is for everything you import into UDK, but, as I said, even with other engines the process is the same...
I don't know how good is the export with 3ds, but I suppose that the process is the same, basically because you need to setup all your materials inside the engine, because no existing plugin will export the settings that you're using inside XSI, because they only exist within XSI! the shaders that you've created inside XSI is not considered at all, because XSI and UDK "speaks different languages"...

I tried to work with the Cryengine as well, the good parts is that the plugin for XSI allows you to convert your materials into a Cryengine shader...but it will only recognize the diffuse map, all the other settings ( specular, normals, tilling ) are not considered at all, so once you export your mesh into the Cryengine you're in the same situation as you export a mesh and import it into UDK or whatever is your engine...

I guess we'll need a real-time engine inside XSI :cool:

[polix]

We evaluated engines like Unity, T3D, Unigine, V3D all of these allow you to at least import your Buildings, Weapons, Ships and Armor all as 1 object and allow you to either
map the mats/textures on to them or import them at the time of import.
Now without any argue UDK is one of the most wyckyd engines we have laid our hands
on. (Did not get to play with the Cry or Dun engine much).
But being able to get our assets in at lease SEMI-painlessly would make it all better.
But we can only hope hehehe.

[RT-Visualization]

We evaluated engines like Unity, T3D, Unigine, V3D all of these allow you to at least import your Buildings, Weapons, Ships and Armor all as 1 object and allow you to either
map the mats/textures on to them or import them at the time of import.
Now without any argue UDK is one of the most wyckyd engines we have laid our hands
on. (Did not get to play with the Cry or Dun engine much).
But being able to get our assets in at lease SEMI-painlessly would make it all better.
But we can only hope hehehe.

If you mean the export issue, yeah, that is really annoying...but you can actually avoid the problem of the import by using collada...but if you have 300 objects in your scene and you export all of them at once, you're content browser will be full of objects with no recognizable names ( check the tutorial ).
Anyway yeah, UDK is not so "friendly" in terms of importing ( either meshes of textures ), but since now is available for free I hope that they'll make things easier for us, since I saw at least 20 thread about errors on import the geometry...

But is true that most of the studios that use UDK have they're own pipeline, that includes lots of useful plugin to export meshes from 3d apps ( I recall a specific plugin that was developed in 3d max when they made Gears of War ) that allows you to do lots of nice things ( export diffuse, normal, specular map at once )...

Well, I think that is better to make some request directly to the guys at Epic and hope for the best :)

[NeptuneImaging]

A nice update for ActorX for XSI would be cool too (I don't own Soft 2010)... I have also never used collada for importing my character models... i want to test it but it would not be fun if things were crazy like that...

[jetstone]

nice thread you guys got going. I really enjoyed all the links to tutorials you guys have done.

I know this does not directly address the issue with materials but I though I would throw it out there.
To skip the manual process of reconnecting Unreal materials to your imported mesh from XSI in the UnrealEd you can do the following:
1. Create all of your Unreal materials in the UnrealEd before any import of your meshes created in XSI
a. When creating you Unreal materials you want to make sure that your Unreal material names matches the names of the material names applied to the mesh you have created with XSI.
2. Import your static or enveloped meshes into Unreal editor.
a. By doing this after you a have created the respective Unreal materials to match the ones created in XSI you are letting the Unreal editor to all the work of material assignment.
Notes:
I suggest creating a standard naming convention for your materials in XSI giving them a prefix or suffix so that you can have a direct correlation to UnrealEd and stay organized and don’t have bunch of materials named “material1...etc”
If you have a programmer available you can work on some lower level solutions with the Unreal source to improve the whole material creation process.

Also I would recommend looking at Crosswalk 4.0 and up because the FBX plugin now uses the latest FBX library (2010.0)
Using the FBX format is the method moving forward for Autodesk products to Unreal.

UDK FBX news
udk.com/news-beta-mar2010

UDK FBX user guide
udn.epicgames.com/Three/FBXImporting.html

Autodesk news
area.autodesk.com/fbx2011