4
$\begingroup$

I have motion tracked my camera in Blender and have been trying to import it into 3d max. When I export it as an .fbx, the camera, when I import it into Max, is facing the opposite direction to what it was in the Blender scene, and the animation that was on the camera, is on the geometry. I tried to change the forward axis of the camera in the export settings but this didn't effect the direction of the camera at all when I brought it into Max.

I tried an .obj, but only the geometry imported and it was all squashed together, and the camera didn't import at all.

So then I tried to export as a .dae, but although the camera is facing the right way, the tracking is completely off and very rough and jumpy, whereas it was perfect in Blender. Can anybody help me out here?

|improve this question|||||
$\endgroup$
4
$\begingroup$

I've been doing this a lot recently at my work. I find the following solution works best:

  1. Create a cube and align it to the camera exactly, one face should point exactly where the camera faces and you should note which face this is

  2. Parent the camera to the cube, so that the cube follows the motion of the camera, then bake the animation of the cube and clear the parent, you should be left with a cube that follows the track of your camera

  3. Note the framerate of your blender file, by default it is 24fps

  4. Export the cube as a DAE file

  5. Open max and ensure your project framerate is the same as in blender, if it isn't the animation will look weird.

  6. Import the DAE file into max and align a max camera to the cube in the same way the cube was aligned to the camera in blender.

  7. Link the camera to the cube then bake the animation of the camera and clear the parent. script for this found here: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/bake-animation

  8. Check that your max camera has the same FoV / Focal length as your original blender camera.

|improve this answer|||||
$\endgroup$
4
$\begingroup$

As of Blender 2.8x you can export your camera as well as the entire scene using alembic or usd (Autodesk is working on adding USD support).

enter image description here Baked camera parented to an empty which is keyframed

enter image description here Alembic file imported into 3ds Max

Filmbox fbx is another option and probably the best option for Blender 2.7x since the file format is developed by Autodesk. However it's tricky in some cases because it depends on your 3ds Max version and the version of the fbx plugin installed. Alternatively you can export the camera as .chan file (Nuke Animation Add-on) and import the file using nukeX Importer or nuke2max plugin.

|improve this answer|||||
$\endgroup$
0
$\begingroup$

I found that using version 6.1 ASCII of the fbx plugin didn't result in the camera facing backwards.

Camera facing backwards when exported as FBX and imported to Fusion 7

|improve this answer|||||
$\endgroup$

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.