I created a simple interior scene in SU Pro (trial version) and grouped various elements together. I downloaded and installed the obj exporter and placed it into the SU plug ins folder and re-started SU and exported the scene as an obj. It opens in Maya as one mesh, w/ all the elements “fused” together. I’ve run into this issues before w/ objs, but is there a work around to this? I’d like to use Maya as the render since I’m already familar w/ it, along with lighting and texturing. I notice that the trial version does not contain a Plug Ins menu, so perhaps its not identifying the downloaded plugin?
Thanks for any advice
If a plugins menu is not shown, no plugins are installed.
However every recent SketchUp version comes with a) preinstalled extensions and b) a full SketchUp Pro installation (that will later be deactivated, but the files stay around).
The .obj file format is a very simple and widespread format. Not all softwares that support .obj also support the advanced features that it has (curves, bezier surfaces, groups). An essential feature is missing from .obj “groups”: The file format neither knows repetitions (instances) nor transformations (that specify the position and local coordinate system of an instance). Even if the exporter made use of “groups”, you wouldn’t get a component hierarchy, at best just separated meshes.
Take a look at SketchUp’s .fbx and .dae (Collada) exporter or one of the commercial .skp importers for Maya.
Also, the “Plugins” menu item has been renamed to “Extensions”.
Thanks guys,
I see that the obj exporter is in my SketchUp Plugins, but it’s still not importing the scene as separate elements, and just fused together. It did the same thing before I installed the plug in. I’ve encountered this same problem when dealing w/ objs in Maya. I tried saving the SU as an fbx, but it also imported into Maya “fused” together, and would also not render very well- it showed artifacts of triangulation. I’ve watched tutorials on this but haven’t seen anything that covers importing an entire scene, just how to import one SU model. I’ll look into the commercial importers for Maya.
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