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Probably, everyone who switched from 3d Studio Max to Maya have some difficulties about Maya’s material editor. It is a bit more complicated than 3d max’s and there are tons of great materials on internet for 3d studio max Vray. In this article, I will show, how to use (convert) 3d Studio Max Vray materials in Maya Vray.
Let’s start!
Note: 3d Studio Max +Vray and Maya+Vray must be installed on your computer. (You can find their demos on their companies’ website.)
First of all, find your material which you want to convert.
Open 3d Studio Max (I will use 2011), Assign Vray as render engine.
Press “M” to open [Material Editor]. In 2011 material editor has changed, new one looks diffrent from old style. So if you want to come back to old style, select [Compact View]
Now, select [Get Material] and this will open [Material/Map Browser]
Select the arrow on top and select [Open Material Library] from the menu
Select your material that you want to convert to Maya Vray. Your material will be added on top of Menu;
Double click your material from this menu and your material will be shown on Material editor.
Now create an object (for example; a sphere) and assign your material to this object.
Now, right click on an empty area of scene, and select [.vrscene exporter]
A window will pop. Fill in the blanks like my example.
Export: C:\
.vrscene: testscene
V-ray path: C:\
and click [Export] button.
Your material has been exported as .vrscene to your root of C: drive. You can check it.
Now, open your Maya and assign V-ray as render engine.
Select from the menu: Create > V-Ray > Import V-Ray material from file
Now, select your .vrscene from your C: drive.
Your material will be shown on “Import Vray Material from file” winow,
Select your material and click [Import]
That’s all!
You imported your 3d Studio Max Vray material to Maya Vray with its all settings!
Check it from Hypershade..
That’s all folks,
Keep in Fxfx,
Caner
Oh magosh! You are perfect Caner thx so so so sooooooooooooooooooo muxhhh
great tutorial mate thank you so muchh
Its great man…i am really happy to gt this….
Thanks for the heads up on converting. You really helped me out getting my Vray from Max to Maya.
Question…
I have a Material Library in MAX, but when I have them imported in MAYA the show up named BRDFxx in my hypershade.
What’s the best way to find my material name once it’s been imported to Maya?
Hi mates, glad to hear from you..
Answer for Anonymous January 12th, 2011 at 08:09;
I know that problem. Unfortunately while Max Vray is saving .vrscene file, it saves materials names “brdfxxx” as default.
But don’t worry, there is a little trick about that,
When you finished your job on Max, in material editor, select menu; “Utilities > Condense Material Editor Slots”… This will put your materials side by side in material editor. When you export your scene as vrscene and import to Maya now, you will see; materials will be in same order in Hypershade with Material editor. So you can match and rename materials easily.
By the way, i will work on it (exporting with name) with scripting, so keep your eyes on Fxfx.org
Thank you!
Caner
SUPER !!!
thank you for the quick response.
Hey caner, dank u friend, you are really diffrent and you point amazing things! all eyes on you.
Cool news. I look forward to seeing you MEL script for the name transfer. That will be a great help!
soooo useful!!!
How does it handle some of the material properties? I’ve noticed glossiness in max vray is really different to maya vray glossiness with the same value.
I wouldnt have thought this would account for all of these differences, rather it keeps diffuse colour or map connections?
this process wont work 100% try some shaders from vray materials.de and u will see
u cant do everything in just 2 clicks 😉
hey thanks!! question,
when I hit the export button the window closes, but, nothing is exported….. any ideas?
never mind…. i wasn’t typing correctly
thanks anyway
this is vrey good.
but i want to export the vray light from the max scene, and import into the vray for maya.
how???
who can help me?
Hello adodo,
Unfortunately, for now, there is no known format which can export Vray Lights. Even Autodesk universal FBX format can’t ident how to export Vray Lights. Because Vray has its own algorthm for its tools.
But I have some tricks to solve that problem,
Soon, I will make a tutorial about this 🙂
Keep your eyes on FxfxORG,
Caner
Hi!
I really need to get this working in a project I’m working on. However, the exportscript doesn’t seem to work for some reason.
It just returns: “– Error occurred in anonymous codeblock; filename: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\3dsMax\2011 – 32bit\enu\UI\usermacros\VRay-vrsceneExport.mcr; position: 332; line: 4
— Type error: CreateDialog requires RolloutClass, got: undefined”
Any ideas?
Hi Deep,
Probably you have a version mismatch problem (it seems like it can’t run Vray’s exportscript), please check your Vray version if it is matched with max 2011. And you can try re-install both of them. If you have a chance you can try another version of Vray too.
Stay in Fxfx,
Caner
hi
when i export vrayscene my textures are not linked to their paths i have to relink them manually this is not a problem but shading network doesn’t seem exported correctly for example in the image you have 2 texture are connected to one shader but my shaders in maya never have more than one texture connected but in max everyone has at list 2 textures some textures seems are missing i really got tired of testing and googleing my scene has almost 40 materials should i export materials one by one? i have at list 50 scenes like this which i want to export them for maya i uses 3ds max 2012 and maya 2012 and vray 2 for both could it possible the problem is related to version?
(((((((about putting materials on meshes i have a better solution. especially when materials are assigned to faces it is very hard to reassign them you should convert materials to vray material with vray scene converter in 3ds max then export scene as fbx and when you import fbx file and vraycene file , material number orders are match just brdfs starts from 0 and phongs stars from 1 i have written a very simple script which replace the materials i,ll share it if your are interested just email me yusefghatavi@gmail.com
Hi josef,
Yes I had same problem while i have been coding a plug-in which convert 3d studio max vray materials to maya vray material. 3d studio max vray exporter can’t export correctly shading networks. I am looking for a new solution for that, maybe new version of Vray will do. When i solve it, I will announce it from here.
Stay in Fxfx,
Caner
Benefitial tutorial ….!!!
great man Keep it up
Thank for putting this kind of software
Hi, after reading this tutorial I have spent a couple of day studying v-ray for maya. I thought it would have been great to be able to re-use max shaders in maya.
But I found out that the method you expose here is very buggy – 3ds exporter is very weak and often maya cannot import anything from Import v-ray material from file.
I am on win 7 64bit, maya and max 2012 sap, v-ray 2 on both of them. Is only my experience fully un-happy? Is there anyone who is having success with this method ?
Thank you for your time and effort anyway
im with the same problem Eliax, but the problem is, mine is empty
idk why
help plz! Maya 2012 vray 2.0 Max 2012 Vray 2.0 Windows 7 64 bits
Hello eliax and Danilo,
I wrote this tutorial with version 2011. I have to check it in 2012. After check, I will wrote down the results.
Stay on fxfx,
Caner
Man, is there a way to import the objects with the vray materias inside maya? Whenever I do that the object gets with maya material (phong, lambert, blin) and I have to apply all the vray material I´ve imported through the way you´ve taugh in this tutorial, that´s too annoying. Do you know how I can do that? Thanks in advance
thx u somch Caner
Yep, same problem here.
Tried several times and only one of them really worked, but always following all the instructions from the tutorial. The fact that once worked and the rest didn’t is driving me mad !
waiting for your response.
Thanks Mate !!
PS: Working with maya 2012.
I’m having a the same problem as some others, specifically the .vrscene file is empty.. but it did work once!! Any help would be a godsend.
Thanks.
Can we go from maya to 3dsmax by vrscene ?
This technique would be SUPER helpful, unfortunately i get an error everytime.
Im a Maya user so 3ds max is very unfamiliar territory, I really hope I can get some help.
When I export, I get:
— Unkown property: “type” in undefined
It also brings up a MaxScript window, highlighting:
if ((modifierVRDisp.type==0) or (modifierVRDisp.type==1)) then (
a .vrscene file is created but when i use the import tool in maya, the material list comes up empty.
When assigning the render, there were 2 options, RT and ADV, I tried both. I also tried running 3ds as admin, still no luck.
Im using 3ds 2012 x64 and Vray Adv 2.30.01 Max2012 x64, and Windows 7
I’ll be forever in your debt to whoever can help me.
Hello Dispatch88,
I tried Max 2012 x64 and Maya 2013 x64 on Windows 7. And it still works normally.
The errors you got may cause of your Max and Vray version. Try to downgrade your version, maybe Vray 2.00.03 etc.
Your material will be shown on “Import Vray Material from file” winow,
Select your material and click [Import]
My Material slot in Maya is empty and I cannot select my material!! Why?? Please, heelp!!!
Hello Lola1,
Make sure about you have an object (sphere) in Max scene and applied texture to this object.
Dude! You are awesomly great, God Bless you dude
Thanks for the tutorial! Did not succeed though(
Is it vital to set the v-ray exactly lije this:”V-ray path: C:\”
By default v-ray path (either for MAx or for Maya) is quite different (C:’program files etc)
Hello Vadim,
It is not important what default paths are. Export to c:\file.vrscene and import from same place.
Hi there!
I figured out one thing that might be useful..
In my case import in Maya is successful if scene in Max is off (closed or whatever). Otherwise Maya doesn`t seem to to be seeing the material when trying to import. Oddly enough, yeah.
Initially the import into Maya did not work for me too(empty material import list) but then I did two things
1) I showed the Max vrscene exporter where my max vray executable was.
2) I Restarted max, exported again, imported into maya and the materials came in.
All I had to do next was direct the material to the right texture paths
//*** correcting my previous post ***\\
This is a better solution.
If you see an empty list whne importing in Maya, it’s because 3DS Max keeps ownership of the file and maya cannot read it. To solve the problem, browse to the location where you exported your vrscene file, create a copy of the file: copy/paste. Then import the copy in Maya. Maya will now realize that it’s free to take file and won’t have to fear asking Max to lend her the file…
You can also check out this script here that can help quite a bit
http://www.nzaneproductions.com/2011/07/30/howto-export-vray-for-3ds-max-scene-to-vray-for-maya-scene/
Thank you for all this information, but I am having a problem. When I import the .vrscene file into Maya as mentioned above, it imports it as a regular Vray material without the material parameters.
Does any one know how to fix this issue?
I am using Maya 2011 64bit with Vray 2.0.4
Super tutorial, too badI have bugs : I’m using Maya 2014 and 3Dsmax 2014, when I export the vrscene in Maya, itsays “Maya fatal error”… I think I’ll have to learn to render directly in 3ds then…
Sorry friends i have been useing same mathod maya 2014. but i cannot find import file path in maya. please help me.
when i tried to export max materials into maya, i gets materials in maya but materials are came with name of brdf and it’s cannot show materials reflection,glosiness and texture also look like balck empty materials
when i import the file in Maya i get “fatal error . attempting to save in c”/users …..etc “
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Hello, I want to find out how you can use the same .vrscene back in Max.
I downloaded a vray material online and it came in .vrscene and I dont use maya so how do i use this in max because i cant seem to use it.
Hello,
i am using vray 3.0 and maya and max 2015 with latest patches. when i follow your tutorial i get vrscene file but when i import it into maya nothing shows up in the material selector. any clues ?
You can use MaxToC4D to transfer 3DsMax models and scenes to C4D, it will even keep vray lights, vray camera, vray sun and sky, vray settings, etc 🙂 Convertors for Maya comming soon too