Modo to XSI

[jamination]

We have some people using Modo and we would like to know the best way to bring it
into XSI while maintaining the UVs. I thought I heard there was a .XSI plugin for Modo, perhaps someone with experience with both programs could nudge us in the right direction.

Phil

[nemac4]

For Objects,..Export a .lwo from modo and use Point Oven to import it into XSI.

[jamination]

thanks nemac4, I tried a simple sphere and that worked great. However, there is great cartoon kid head tutorial for Modo, and I tried to import the .lwo I exported, and XSI came up with an error, there is something in there XSI just doesn't like.

Phil

[pooby]

It doesnt like 1 or 2 pt polys, but that might not be the case with that.

[Strange Sharp]

Someone posted about a dotXSI exporter on the Luxology forums a while back. Here's the link:

http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/topic.aspx?id=26188

I haven't tried it myself, since exporting and importing LWO files works fine for my simple models so far.

HTH

[Ethangar]

I've never had any trouble with it and have brought in some pretty high poly models through point oven. I agree that one and two pointers will kill it.

[shokan]

I am curious as to what a one or two point polygon is. I would have thought 3 pts are the minimum needed to form a polygon. I will be working with modo and XSI together and will need to know this, and also know how to avoid this if you could explain a little.

Thanks.

[phil lawson]

Well, currently 1 or 2 point polys in modo are usually the left over result from a task. They don't really serve any purpose as they cannot be rendered and usually cause issues when exporting.

You want to grab Seneca Menard from id software, script - mesh clean up:-

http://www.vertexmonkey.com/scripts_modeling_cleanup.php

Running this will clear up all issues like this and ready the mesh for exporting.

Cheers.

[shokan]

Went there and I get a '404-doesn't exist' for that utility at VertexMonkey. I'll go to the modo forum. Thanks.

[Felipe]

I use Chip Collier plug-in and it works great. You can find it here:

http://www.wasbecause.com/?page=Projects

I should mention that I'm still using Modo 203. For 302 it seems still in alpha stage.

Cheers,
Felipe

[phil lawson]

Went there and I get a '404-doesn't exist' for that utility at VertexMonkey. I'll go to the modo forum. Thanks.

Woops, sorry about that - You can get it directly from Senecas site - and this time I checked it does work hehe. :)

http://www.indigosm.com/modoscripts.htm

[shokan]

Wow, lots of good stuff there. Thanks, wouldn't have found that otherwise.

[shokan]

Could you explain the difference between exporting using dotXSI4modo exporter versus just exporting using .obj? If I have a detailed sculpted and painted model in modo, will I be able to use this plugin to export all the textures (displacement, paint etc) to XSI? And, if so, why is it better than just exporting to .obj?

Thanks.

[jamination]

In my very limited experience I found the importing of obj intox xsi (exported from modo), crashes quite consistently, where the dotxsi import/export has never crashed for me.

[shokan]

That's what I wanted to know. Thanks.

Does it do a good job with duplicating modo detail sculpting and painting?

[jamination]

I have not done displacement, but the materials do get imported during the dotxsi import process, I am really not sure about all the attributes, as I prefer not to do complex texturing in modo as I am not really that confident with the Modo material system, I have painted on maps (and you can continue to paint and save out the mapafter you imported in xsi so long as you don't change the geometry of course). Again, this is with limited experience I am sure someone more modo experience can give you a more informed response.

Phil