Documentation Question: Maya Support

[shivanangel]

In your documentation under Content Creation->3D Models->3D Models Introduction you have a table for content creation tools including the recommended export format.

For Maya you list OSG and Collada. Is Worldviz going to put up a Maya OSG exporter for future version of Vizard to support this? Similar to your current 3ds Max exporter?

Also, you mention that you support FBX, but don't recommend using it in any of your content creation tools. Is there a reason for this? Is collada 'more supported' than FBX?

Only wondering because I am a huge fan of Maya and only moved to Max for Vizard compatibility reasons. I would love to be able to move assets from Maya directly to Vizard.

[Jeff]

No, we don't have plans to maintain an OSG exporter for Maya. There was an exporter that was available for older versions of Maya so OSG should be removed from the Maya section or a note should be added about that.

I'll check with our developers for further information about fbx.

[Veleno]

Also, you mention that you support FBX, but don't recommend using it in any of your content creation tools. Is there a reason for this? Is collada 'more supported' than FBX?

OpenSceneGraph is Vizard's native format, so using it is always going to be advantageous over a general format like FBX or Collada. We develop the Max plugin for OSG, so we can fix bugs and add support for new features as necessary. I'd actually recommend FBX over Collada. When I've compared models in both formats, Collada often has a much messier scene hierarchy.

Using FBX is possible, but it's along the same lines as working on a project in Microsoft Word, but saving the document as a .txt or .rtf. It'll store most of the important stuff, but won't be able to handle program-specific features.