I'm currently trying to make a simple file exporter in maya. I've run across the problem of exporting textures that match up with the meshes. Right now I'm ripping vertices/normals/uvs from the mesh via MFnMesh fnMesh(dagPath). Does anybody know how I could find out what texture (only a file name) is mapped to that mesh? I plan to only have 1 texture for a mesh, but possibly 12 meshes with 12 textures. Most of the examples online show how to rip textures and give a list, but that is of no use because I need them linked to a specific mesh. Thanks! [Edited by - IgnisDeus on August 26, 2005 9:31:14 PM]

I haven't done an exporter yet... but to import a texture you have to create several Dependency Graph nodes. Quite different from the nice and easy to use DAG Node Variety

The easiest way I've found to find out how to do all this stuff is to do it the normal way in Maya and then use the Hypergraph to graph the connections. You will see that it works like this:

The outColor attribute plug of a file node is connected to the color attribute of a material node (phong, blinn, etc.). This is basically the image flowing from the texture to the material. You can also have a 2dTexturePlacement node attached to the file node, but this requires several different connections and I have just left it off so far.

Next, the material node is connected to a render set... that is a node created by FnSet with restriction set to kRenderableOnly. This set contains a list of all the shape nodes that are affected by that material =)

Hope that helps... and I hope I got all that right off the top of my head ^_^; You should be able to get most of the correct plug names just by mousing over the connections in the Hypergraph or using the connection editor by double clicking a connection.

I'm having difficulty simply going from one dependency node to it's parent/child. This is all that is preventing me from finishing this task! Grr....thank you for replying btw, I figured nobody would :(. Thank you :) Right now I can get the shader name, or the filename path, but not both at the same time. If I do this:
MItDependencyNodes it(MFn::kLambert);
I get all the shader nodes and can get the names. If I do this:
MItDependencyNodes it(MFn::kFileTexture);
I get the child of the shader nodes, the actual file which has the plug for the actual file path, which is what I need.

I want to just go from the shader node, get the name, then go to the child node and pull the filename, but I can't go to the child node that easily. Grr!

here's the key:

getConnectedShaders

i can't remember what you call that on, i think it might be a MFnMesh.
so that will give you the maya shader, which you can then look at and find the texture filename.
i think getConnectedShaders returns an array of that has one entry for each triangle, and tells you what shader each triangle uses, so you can split your mesh up by texture/shader.

try this google cache of the maya knowledgebase, the link doesn't work anymore.
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:SVhREOxArlsJ:www.alias.com/eng/support/maya/knowledgebase/api/2979.jhtml+MFnMesh::getConnectedShaders&hl=en


http://www.alias.com/eng/support/maya/knowledgebase/api/2979.jhtml

here's the key:

getConnectedShaders

i can't remember what you call that on, i think it might be a MFnMesh.
so that will give you the maya shader, which you can then look at and find the texture filename.
i think getConnectedShaders returns an array of that has one entry for each triangle, and tells you what shader each triangle uses, so you can split your mesh up by texture/shader.

try this google cache of the maya knowledgebase, the link doesn't work anymore.
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:SVhREOxArlsJ:www.alias.com/eng/support/maya/knowledgebase/api/2979.jhtml+MFnMesh::getConnectedShaders&hl=en


http://www.alias.com/eng/support/maya/knowledgebase/api/2979.jhtml

Yeah I got that far, the problem is the connected shaders is exactly that: a shader. To actually get the filename like "c:/brick.bmp" I need the filetexture node, which I believe is the parent of the shader. I'm having difficulty simply moving up the chain. This is what I got that gives me the full shader name:

unsigned instanceNumber = dagPath.instanceNumber();MObjectArray Shaders;// this is used to hold indices to the materials returned in the object arrayMIntArray    FaceIndices;// get the shaders used by the instance number fnMesh.getConnectedShaders(instanceNumber, Shaders, FaceIndices);char Temp2[200]="";strcpy(Temp2, "This mesh has material: ");strcat(Temp2, GetShaderName(Shaders[0]).asChar());MGlobal::displayInfo( Temp2 );

There is no way to get the parent of the Shaders[0] object, I've tried everything. Everytime I do something that I think will work, it comes up blank on the filename.

I finally did it! Took 8 hours of sleep and a shower but I got it! Lol. This function will rip all the full material names, and also their full file names. Then in the actual mesh ripping code I pull the material names, and can match it up with the filename and export. Thank you Shon and everybody else for the help. Finished product: