Just wanted to make sure, is FBX export still the only way to get 3ds Max content into Unity?
And, if so, is that likely to change anytime soon?
You could in theory use OBJ or 3DS, but with FBX you at least have the option of animations.
Edit: and I have nothing to offer on whether it will change or not, obviously we want to make our tool as flexible and capable as possible, but I’m not aware of any firm plans in this area.
You can also use Collada. Though currently Collada importing in Unity goes through the same FBX SDK, but in some cases Collada exporters might do a better job than FBX exporters.
This is no super-biggie, mind you.
Meshes exported in FBX from Max 9 look just fine in Unity - I just need to reconnect the materials/textures, which is as easy as pie in Unity.
I just wondered if you were planning on making Max support as streamlined as the Maya support. Max is, at least for a great many of us, better suited to polygonal modeling.
The way Maya/Cinema4D/Blender importing works is that we launch the app in the background, tell it to export into fbx/collada and then read the exported file (that’s why the very first import is somewhat slower). It’s not easy to launch 3dsmax on the Mac, you know… Of course when Unity editor will run on Windows, supporting native 3dsmax importing would be the obvious “must do” thing.
So, that’s how you work that magic!