Opaque Data From Max and Maya

This post is kind of a brain dump from notes I made to myself, so apologies in advance if it's not very readable! In both Max and Maya you can set opaque data, which will be exported in fbx and then brought through the content pipeline. We do this in the NormalMappingEffectSample: the name of the file for the normal map is set by the artist in his creation tool. We've gotten a lot of questions on the forums about how the artist set the opaque data on the model, so I figured I'd write a blog post about it. Bear in mind that different tools have different levels of support for opaque data. I've had the most luck with exporting strings. Without further ado, here's how to create Opaque data in max and maya:

 

Max:

to create a custom attribute:

  • select your object
  • select the menu entry Animation, then Parameter Editor...
  • select the type of parameter (or attribute) you want to add and click "Add"

to see and modify the attribute:

  • Select the "Modify" tab in the right panel
  • your base object should be selected in the modifier list
  • your attribute is listed under the "Custom Attributes" tab.

 

Maya:

I scribbled this down months ago and I don't really remember what it means. Our license server is on the fritz, so I can't open Maya and decode it, but hopefully someone can make sense of this. If you do manage to decode it, post a comment so everyone can benefit smile_regular

  • click an object
  • go to the attribute editor
  • click attributes
  • add an attribute