Pierre-Felix Breton » fbx

Translating Project Location from Revit to 3ds Max via FBX

Pierre-Felix Breton — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:29:03 +0000

If you noticed that the location of your Daylight System object created by FBX Import in 3ds Max does not match the project coordinates of Revit, this is a simple thing to fix.

In Revit, go in the 3D view you will export to FBX
Edit the Graphic Display Options
Specify a Location and Time that matches your project settings, for a single day:
Export to FBX
Import in 3ds Max

Your Daylight System should now match the Revit model in Location and Time.

Removing Unwanted Edges from Imported FBX Files

Pierre-Felix Breton — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:40:02 +0000

If you import an FBX model from Revit in 3ds Max you will most likely see more polygonal edges than expected. Those are not extra polygons, it is simply that generally, 3ds Max hides adjacent edges by default. In the case of FBX import, meshes are created with all edges being visible – and the viewport does not look as clean as it should:

To get rid of those edges, you can hide them from the editable mesh panel:

Or better, use a Maxscript tool that will let you hide them all at once.

Click here to download the MaxScript

Usage: Select all your EditableMesh objects and execute the script. The script will only affect selected EditableMesh objects so the selection can contain lights, lines, cameras: they won’t be affected by the script.

The result:

Special Thanks to Chris P. Johnson who helped improving the speed and stability of the script on large models containing several instances.

Reducing the file size of FBX files exported by Revit

Pierre-Felix Breton — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:02:49 +0000

People complain about the fact that FBX files exported by Revit are too large.

The size of the FBX files exported by Revit is influenced by the following aspects:

Model size:

Obviously, the more details in your 3D view, the larger it will be. There is not much you can do about it besides controlling the way your families are drawn (fine, medium, coarse display settings).

Texture Maps used by the Render Appearances:

All textures used by the Revit materials are embedded in the exported FBX for portability reasons. On one hand, this is useful because you don’t have to bother about file paths issues (”texture not found” errors) but it has a cost in terms of file size. If you don’t render in Revit, you might want to think about editing your materials in a way that textures are not used at all. This way, the exported FBX file will not contain additionnal image files.

Environment Maps:

Revit defaults to a rendering setting that uses a texture map for clouds. This texture map on itself weights about 20Mb and cannot be compressed more. Since it is also zipped up with the exported FBX models, you take a 20Mb hit right away. To resolve this issue, switch the render settings of Revit to use a clear sky (no clouds). Doing so will remove the large clouds image file and reduce the size of the exported FBX file.