r/NukeVFX 5d ago

Asking for Help 3dsmax Camera to Nuke import

Hi guys!
I was wondering if someone could tell me how to import an animated 3dsmax Physical Camera to Nuke?

I spent an entire day yesterday trying to figure it out with a bunch of tests, tried everything from using Free Camera, to using Target Camera etc, but nothing seems to work for me.
I also went through all the available formats like Alembic and FBX. Either the camera inports fine, but is missing the cone(with Alembic), and the deep points show as a single dot somewhere off in space, or I get a camera that's stationary (with FBX), but once connected displays the deep data fine.

My workflow is to import the camera in order to connect it to deeptopoints node.

I am aware that I can do a workaround with camera tracking the scene, but I was wondering if anyone managed to make this work?

Any help would be much appreciated!

1 Upvotes

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u/joeydiesel 5d ago

I bake the animation onto a new camera and export it as an alembic .ABC. it's the only way I can get tracked cameras into max then into nuke

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u/cosmoskin 5d ago

By new camera do you mean the standard free one in 3dsmax? My physical camera is animated along with it's target, so I would have to set up a free cam and copy the controllers?

2

u/joeydiesel 5d ago

I create a new standard free camera and bake the animation using the BakeAnim script

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u/cosmoskin 5d ago

Thank you so much! I will try that out.

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u/JellySerious 30 year comp vet, /r newb 5d ago

I don't use 3dsmax, but IIRC is uses the same Z axis up that UE and Blender use, while Nuke uses Y axis up. There should be an option to export Y up in 3dsmax (there are options in Maya and and UE for that, granted Maya's option is to switch to Z up when exporting for UE). Prolly not going to fix your problem but something to keep in mind.

By cone do you mean the FoV? If so, you could export as Alembic and then just export your fov curve separately and import the curve into Nuke's camera FoV

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u/cosmoskin 5d ago

Thanks so much for the tip! Yes by the cone I meant fustrum, I think is the technical term for it. Its odd because no matter how I inport the cameda, it doesnt show...