HI, I am a newbie in both Max and bryce and I am exporting a model of hi polygon count (almost 28,346) . Now in the model I have 6 dragons where I have grouped in the following manner 1st group - All the dragons eyes 2nd group- All the dragons teeth 3rd group - all the dragons heads together. Thus in this way there are other groups as well. I have then made all these group in 1 group and tried to export to 3ds format. It said its out of the scope of 3ds format to export so many polygons and 3ds would many objects if i want to export in that format. I have then tried wavefront(OBJ) . It exports successfully , but as it comes out in Bryce 5 , i ungroup the to catch hold of individual groups to colour them in bryce . But what i found is that the individual groups i have made in Max are gone & all the objects become seperate and impossible to control in Bryce. Can someone help me by saying , what group to export from max 7 so that i can retain invidual groups in Bryce and handle them more easily. Please help me , need this urgently

OK,.........I use an older version of Max(4.2), have you tried exporting as a .dxf file ? It's going to be huge, but if you choose "export as objects", it might work. Just a thought.

amlan70, what do you mean "But what i found is that the individual groups i have made in Max are gone & all the objects become seperate and impossible to control in Bryce." First, 3DMax is only good for 65KB (total) in the 3DS format. Anything beyond that, will not transform (its Autodesks original and almost defunct format). Im working from the 3DMax 5.01 rebuilt. If you use a modifier like Multires or Polygon cruncher, the model is often deformed beyond acceptable recognition if its a very high poly count. So the best deal often is to convert to WaveFront obj. If you re-import this obj back into 3DMax and look at the material module you will see a multi/sub-object material for every group as broken down by 3DMax. You can then make individual adjustments but not after some material investigating. If your objects are coming in scattered (all over the place) into Bryce, then you must Reset Xform in the utilities module for them to come in proper into Bryce.

Hi Quest, Thanks so much for your reply quest . Whats happening is that when i have imported the OBJ in Bryce the groups dont scatter all over the place but they remain together . Only the oter group that which holds the inner groups remain. when when i remove the oter group i find theres no existance of inner groups. all have become individual objects. Thus then i have to r.click choose the individual objects and then apply material ( at Bryce). have heard there is a function in Bryce 5 where u can have a list of all the objects in the scene ,(just like Max) and then select the necessary ones and regroup them. Can u tell me how to do that ??? Also how to reset Xform in Bryce , as you have mentioned. waiting for all the replies...........

Hi Sackrat, was trying with DXF but it shows a helll big time........ Thanks

amlan, I'm confused as to what you're saying. Maybe it's just me, so be gentle, please explain as best you can and if you have images to simplify the matter, please do so.

Have you tried to re-import the exported "obj" file back into 3DMax and checked the material module?

You obviously cannot group all the parts together. You can group eyes of one dragon together, then another and another. You'll get six groups of eyes. Ditto for other parts of your dragon(s) - six sets of teeth, six heads and so on. You should group parts of an individual dragon together, as long as the parts remain separate meshes.

GROUP, not join, and it seems you joined them.

So when you grouped one dragon, repeat process for each of the others and the group as a whole. And then export them. It should work fine.

3DS format does have a 64K limitation, but it is only for individual meshes, not for a model as a whole. Other limitations is that 3DS works with triangles - not quadrangles (or n-gons), it doesn't export normals (you don't need them), you have to name textures in 8.3 format (wooden12.jpg).

BTW, 28,346 is not a high poly model. Just the opposite. It's quite low for something as complex as a dragon. You can raise the number of polygons as long as individual meshes are below 64K.

If you want to import hi-poly individual dragons and have them retain the positions they had in Max, but it doesn't work with the group as a whole, you have to enclose the whole group into a big box. And then export one dragon and the box. Import into Bryce, delete the box, leave dragon. Repeat the process six times and now you have six dragons in their original positions. Should you want to scale them up or down, group them together and then do the scaling.

As to the selecting of a particular mesh in Bryce, there's a list of icons for Bryce primitives in the lower right corner. If there are animation controls there, just click on that gridded sphere. You'll see a small triangle pointing down. Click on it and and choose Select meshes. Go to the mesh you want to select (good idea is to have meshes distinctly named). To select more then one mesh, hold CTRL+SHIFT and then click on the name of the mesh. If you want to deselect one, just CTRL+SHIFT+left click on it again.

HTH.

Message edited on: 12/23/2005 02:34

Message edited on: 12/23/2005 02:38

Erlik is wise, but I'd add another note that often is forgotten when using 3ds, don't forget to reset the xForms before exporting, other wise your models explode. In honesty I would group as Erlik suggested, but you should then be able to group the six dragons and import as one 3ds file. Now the bit that I would take care on is the ungrouping in bryce, I'd take out the top level group, then grab each dragon in turn and assign a bryce colour group, that way you can grab a complete dragon by using the colour groups for positional nudging.