Sketchup -> 3ds Max: Building created in Match Photo loses materials, UVs and textures when imported into Max

[sboomhower]

Hello!

3ds Max vet here, with some limited experience in Sketchup.

I’ve found Match Photo to be an amazing tool for modeling buildings from photos, and to texture them quickly via Project Photo once modeled. However I’ve run into a snag: When I import the Sketchup model into 3ds Max (after saving to Sketchup v8, which is the most recent version the Max importer recognizes), the mesh imports OK, but it’s missing textures and UV coordinates. It does have a single material assigned to it, but it’s a base color only, and the fact that it’s only a single material seems wrong too - seeing as, in the case of my current project, I used multiple photos with Project Photo, it seems like I’d have a model with multiple materials import into Max.

I was pretty sure I had sent textured models from Sketchup to Max before and had all the textures, materials and UVS survive intact. To test this, I found a nice architectural model with lots of textures on 3D Warehouse (one that did not use Match Photo or Project Photo, at least as far as I could tell) downloaded it, exported it to a Version 8 Sketchup file. It opened up fine in 3ds Max with all textures and their placement intact.

And I’ve had luck in the past sending Google Earth terrain grabbed in Sketchup back to Max.

So it kinda seems like the fact that the model was created using Match Photo or Project Photo causes its materials and UVs to save incorrectly.

Sketchup gurus: Is there some final step after using Project Photo that might “lock in” the texturing in such a way that it survives the trip to Max?

Note that while I’ve done a tiny bit of modeling in Sketchup and a crash course on Match Photo, I’ve done very little with texturing in Sketchup. So feel free to suggest any steps that might seem obvious to you.

Thanks very much for any help!

-Spencer

[sboomhower]

Did some more testing, with a new model from scratch, and found that materials created with Match Photo and saved to Sketchup v8 do in fact import into Max just fine. So the problem isn’t with the pipeline and is very likely with my model.

One obvious thing is the fact that the model looks inverted when I bring it into Max and I have to flip its faces for it to look correct. (The test model, that I probably built in a more conventional way, didn’t need its faces o be flipped.) And the model appears to have a dark material on the outside and a light material on the inside; I’ve tried getting it to flip in Sketchup by selecting all faces and doing a Reverse Faces to it, but that doesn’t seem to help.

Seems like I heard about a “check model” utility in Sketchup, but maybe I’m imagining that. I’ll look around for some kind of fix but in the meantime suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!