Forum - Craft Animations - 3d animation tools

Good evening,

Long time automotive user, here. Im currently rigging using CD in Maya (dont have a 3ds max CD license at work) and then exporting as an FBX into 3ds max for a datasmith transfer to Unreal 5.

Everything looks good in Maya, and Max as well. In max, I remove the parent/child relationships from the Maya import and put them in the root, and then re link constain everything to the dummy.
When I transfer my datasmith file to UE, the wheels and tires flop all over as others have noted. Any guidance to make this work would be GREATLY appreciated here.

Thank you,

Hi, you do not need to export to 3ds max to be able to import in to Unreal Engine. You can export as fbx with normal parenting then import that fbx in to unreal.

However, it is good to make sure that all the dummy meshes have the same material assigned as this makes it easier to hide once imported into UE.

Good morning,

Thank you. Im aware we could go FBX right into Unreal, but some of our datasets are really large. The FBX sometimes either takes quite awhile, or sometimes it crashes. Also, our FBX's sometimes are 700-1gb of data, while the Datasmith version of that same data is 4mb and takes about 10 seconds to import.

Doing some testing yesterday, I noticed that in Max, if you unlink everything from Maya, then freeze and reset transforms, then center all pivots again on the wheel/tire, and relink to the dummy, I got a good result. Im not sure if this will work in all cases, but something to go on. Any other guidance would be appreciated as well.

Also, if you purchase a license of CDS, does that include both Maya and Max plugins or just one or the other?
Thanks so much!

Patrik Martin wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 14, 2023 9:35 am

Hi, you do not need to export to 3ds max to be able to import in to Unreal Engine. You can export as fbx with normal parenting then import that fbx in to unreal.

However, it is good to make sure that all the dummy meshes have the same material assigned as this makes it easier to hide once imported into UE.

sculptera wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 14, 2023 3:48 pm

Doing some testing yesterday, I noticed that in Max, if you unlink everything from Maya, then freeze and reset transforms, then center all pivots again on the wheel/tire

I would say this is the process for solving this between 3ds max and Unreal. Not sure why, but it seems like Unreal and/or Datasmith has a hard time handling uneven and not aligned objects.

sculptera wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 14, 2023 3:48 pm

Also, if you purchase a license of CDS, does that include both Maya and Max plugins or just one or the other?

We do not separate 3ds max and Maya so you can use 3ds max and Maya with the same license.