Again, I ask of you...

Does anyone know if, how, or why only Poser and Blender files seem to work?

I've been searching for a solution for months now, and I've been trying Blender in the meantime.

To be honest, I just can't make it work, so I'll ask again:

Does anyone know of a software, or way, to import .max files, (or anything else from 3D Studio Max) into SL?

Will pay 1000$L for a working solution!

SL expects BVH files, which are (as I understand it) the common method of storing motion-captured animations.

Poser and Blender can export BVH. Max does not, so far as I know.

First of all, Poser and Blender files cannot be imported into SL. Poser is primarily used only to generate BVH files, which is motion capture data used for animation. Some people aslo use it as a previewer to see what clothing and skins will look like on a default avatar before uploading them to SL.

The only things SL can import directly are images, sounds, and animations, all in a very limited palette of file formats. That's it. Geometry is not on the list at all.

That having been said, residents have created certain work-arounds, although none of them are very efficient. Jeffrey Gomez's OBJ importer is the best known and probably your best bet. You can find it on the scripting forum. If you've got a Max model you want to bring into SL, first export it as an OBJ and then us Jeffrey's system to recreate in SL.

Be warned though. As ingenius as Jeffrey's creation is, it's not going to work the way you probably think it will. As you probably know, everything inworld is made of prims. With the exception of avatars and land, which are pre-existing, SL has no ability to use mesh models whatsoever. That means the OBJ won't actually be imported, but will be rebuilt, using a cube in place of every polygon. The result won't be an exact copy of your model, but a roughly translated approximation of it. It'll be very prim-heavy, and it may or may not be pretty. Chances are you'll have to do a lot of tweaking by hand afterwards to fill gaps, close seams, and replace areas that shouldn't be made of cubes with more efficient and suitable shapes.

Just so you know, LL has said that in the distant future they do want to allow full mesh importation, but that won't happen for a long, long, long time. The internet has to get several thousand times faster than it currently is and data management has to get much more efficient first. History has not yet reached a point where a dynamic streaming 3D virtual environment made of full mesh models is technologically feasible. It'll happen, but not any time soon.


EDIT: By the way, I assumed you were asking about modeling since you posted in the building forum. If you were in fact asking about using Max as an animation tool for SL, it's certainly doable. I'm not sure if Max can export BVH though. If it can, then all you need to do is take a good look at the sample BVH file included with the downloadable avatar mannequin files and create a well proportioned skeleton in Max with the exact same heirarchy as what's described in the BVH. Then do your animation, export as BVH, and you're good to go.

If it can't, then you'll need a plug-in like PolyTrans to do the interpretation for you. Create your skeleton as described above, and then let PolyTrans handle the export to BVH.

Actually, it's a sad statement of fact that my OBJ importer, nearly a year old, is still the only available option. Because... well. It's a kludge.


The intent having been to pave the way to newer, more interesting innovations. Not to have the issue sit on its hands and watch.

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As for BVH, the answer is simply: BVH is the redheaded stepchild of animation standards.

Elegant as it is, most model tools use their own format. This is typically because an animation file is useless without the mesh it's built for; something proprietary formats are better able to take into account.


Second Life is different because the model and naming conventions are standardized and not modifiable internally. So the net result is to use one of the few standards, settling on BVH, which not a lot of programs really... support. :|

Really? That's too bad. I'd thought I read some threads recently in which a couple people were working on something. Maybe I misread. Anyway, I'm still in awe of your genius that you got the thing to work at all.


Hehe, good description of BVH. My experience with it is that most 3D packages can import it, but not many can export it. This is not suprising, really, since it's a format generally used by motion capture suits. It figures that 3D platforms would be able to read the data spit out from mocap, but not many would really have reason to generate that data themselves. As you say, they're much better tasked at using their own language than someone else's.

Programs like Poser can do it, because (I assume) they're not really meant to be stand-alone 3D solutions. I hate Poser for the way it's set up, but I gotta admit it's pretty good at what it does, which is it allows pretty much anyone to "create", animate, and export character models. As much as I hate to admit it, I have found it to be a time-saver in certain areas of some of my own pojects. I do try to avoid it like the plague though most of the time. It's just one of those icky programs I try not to think about too much.

Programs that are meant to be platforms like Maya, Max, Soft Image, Lightwave, etc. ironically tend not to have the same export options as their simpler cousins. I think the idea is their designers expect that data from other programs will be brought into the platforms, not the other way around, so they don't usually tend to forsee situations in which a lot of export options would be necessary. They leave that kind of thinking to 3rd party specialists like Okino (makers of polytrans).

For what it's worth, Maya can be scripted to do it, as Alexia Mechanique demonstrated so generously in this thread, but then Maya can be scripted to do just about anything. As we talked about it before, I've even had it do my taxes.

Anyway, it's late and I'm rambling, so I'll shut up now.

Thanks for the help guys.

But, due to your explanation, and the number of polygons I can estimate it'd use to cover for the MeshSmooth modifier...

Basically, I'm thinking in the thousands, maybe higher depending on efficiency.

So, yea, Ill just wait on the internet speed-up in a couple of years.

On that note: Is it possible to make an avatar overlay that, like, replaces the human shell with a diff one? Or am I just thinking outside of current possibility?

Nothing is outside possibility. You just need to retrain your brain to think in primitives instead of meshes. Lots of people create non-humanoid avatars all the time. You'll find everything from centaurs to lions & tigers to huge mechanoid robots to human/animal hybrids (affectionatly known as "furries" to giant spiders to killer tomatoes, and so one, and so on, and so on. Anything you can think of, you can do. It's just a question of learning the available tools, and developing the right problem-solving skills.

That problem-solving, by the way, will make you better modeler outside SL as well as in. As I usually mention whenever questions like this come up, outside SL I'm primarily a Maya user, and since SL came along, my poly counts per model have gone down significantly while the quality has gone up, and my texturing skills have increased beyond measure. SL forces you to work with less, which forces your brain to do more, and once you start down that path, you'll reap the benefits in all your 3D endeavors. Trust me. This has been the case for every 3D modeler I know.

The OP seemed to be talking about animation files, no?

Not completely.

Thing is, I made 2 nice AVs, one quadroped, another with 4 segmented legs, and I pretty much had animations for them both done.

But this is a help request type thread, not a show-off.

That possibility was why, nine minutes after I posted my initial comments, I added the edit at the bottom. If you don't feel like scrolling up, here it is again.



Unless I'm missing something, I think that covered your question. Did it not?