Babylon exporter (multi-file)

I’m having issues when trying to setup a multi-file export in the babylon exporter.
Is there a specific way this has to be done?
Entering the path, seems to be a bit strange, and I can’t get it to work.

This would come in handy in our current project.
Any help is appreciated.

Thanks
Pieter

maybe @PatrickRyan will be able to help, after Thanksgiving :slight_smile:

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@Pieter_van_Stee, can you describe what you mean by a multi-file export as I can think of several meanings for it and want to be sure I am responding to your need. If you can give a brief description of your workflow so we can understand context, that would also be helpful.

Hi Patrick,

It would be very interesting to setup an export config in 3ds Max to export

  • layer a > file_a.glb
  • layers b/c/d > file_bcd.glb

This to automate our workflow further, and being able to split up our file into smaller parts to make it easier to load and manage, and quicker to export.

For example we’ve setup specific cameras (animated) in our 3dsMax and want to update it regularly, so being able to export this layer/objects seperately would greatly speed up things.
Definitely when we’re able to do this repeatedly.

I hope that’s enough context for you.
So on the babylon exporter there is a multi-file export option… however setting it up is… not really working for me at the moment :frowning:

Any help here is appreciated.
Thanks

cc @PatrickRyan

Any news on this issue?
At the moment I managed to export to different files using the multi file exporter.

However, that’s only when only export selected is turned on, and nothing is selecten.
So that nothing will be exported… or an empty file.

In this way I can manage to create a few different files in a .glb format.
But when I turn off only export selected and export again (just with a few simple boxes in the scene) 3ds Max crashes on this action.
I also can’t see more about what would have happened.

Has anyone managed to get this working?
Thanks!

@Pieter_van_Stee, I have been thinking about how to accomplish a multi-file export to glTF automatically, but I can’t come up with one while using a plug-in for export. If glTF export were part of Max and Maya, we could use MaxScript/MelScript/Python to do something like an export by layer into multiple files. But as it stands, you can see in the script window that anything done by the Babylon exporter plug-in is invisible to the software. So there’s no way to script multiple exports.

Using Export only selected has been my go-to method for isolating meshes into separate files, and I’ve never had a problem with it. I agree it would be nice to have a way to export a scene into multiple files in one operation, but I am not confident we would find consensus on the way to tag meshes for export to each file. Layers could be one method, but someone else may want naming conventions or some other way of organizing. The larger problem is that we don’t have funding for any new features for the exporters. And there is little appetite to secure funding because Autodesk has said for a while that they are working on glTF exporters for their software and we have no idea when those may drop. With that reality we can’t prioritize investment into a plugin that we ultimately want Autodesk to replace.

That said, if you are running into an issue that is causing a crash, we need to look into that. I was not able to repro your issue from your description. I was using Max 2023 and the exporter v20221031.2 and was able to export a selection only and then turn off selection only and was able to get a successful export.

Do you have a consistent repro? Can you share a file that can repro the issue and share with us the versions you are using?

Hi Patrick,

Indeed, by now I also switched to maxscript for this, and everything works fine now.
I used the documentation on Github to get started…

For the bjs exporter I was using Max2023 in combination with the exporter v20221031.2
By now for me the scripted version is more interesting because I can work out a workflow so this can be used on multiple projects and files.

Thanks for your reply!
Pieter

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