3Ds Max Plugin- Hose Primitive Animations & Experimental Render

Started by Fabbrica, August 16, 2017, 08:42:09 AM

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Fabbrica

Hi All,
I use 3Ds Max/ Keyshot to create construction renderings and use the hose primitive to create crane cables. The hose primitive is great for still images but, when animated, Keyshot does not recognize the changing geometry.

The only two ways I am able get the animation to work is to:
1. Use the "experimental render" export from the Keyshot 6 plugin so every frame is a separate file. Unfortunately this feature seems to have been removed from the Keyshot 7 plugin.

2. Export  the Alembic file from 3Ds Max and import it with Keyshot. This captures the animation, but as expected I loose my materials and the live linking feature.

I have tried exporting the scene as a FBX but that did not support the hose animation either.

I will  continue to use the "experimental render" and KS6 plugin but has anyone found a way to get the Hose primitive to render in Keyshot normally?

Are there other 3ds Max objects I could use to simulate crane cables moving that are supported in Keyshot? I attempted to use the cylinder and  a stretch modifier but its more trouble to animate it than it is worth.

I attached a animated example of the hose for testing.

Any help would be greatly appreciated  :)

Update: After some testing I found that with the Keyshot 6 plugin installed on 3Ds Max 2017 the "Render/Update" function will open KS7 automatically. I can also still use the experimental animation export to create a .bip for every frame and then open frame 0 in KS7. I quickly rendered and encoded the results to the video below.



Fabbrica

The 3ds Max Plugin for Keyshot 7 version 1.9 has fixed the issues I was having. A animated character that was created with the physique modifier now properly transfers to Keyshot which had not worked in the past.

Now the hose primitive animations will transfer to Keyshot, they just need a modifier applied to the top of the modifier  list. I tested this with a smooth modifier (100% auto), a normal modifier, and a xform modifier which all worked. Overall the specific modifier doesn't seem to matter as long as there is something applied to the "raw" hose.   

mattjgerard

This makes sense, as in the past I've had to export models from MAX with tons of wires and cables which none of them would come over to KS unless I used the Make Polys modifier. That forced MAX to create actual geometry for the objects, and they came across just fine.