Lightwave to Maya importing

Most of our character models have been created in Lightwave, so anyone wanting to work with the originals will need to be able to import them into Maya.

This is a (somewhat disorganized) collection of information about how to do that.

Making Sure Maya does not merge different submeshes together

THe parts you want to use a separate material in doom need to be a separate object in maya, and they also have to be pointing to a different image.

THat doesn't mean you have to export them all separately, you can have the head and body in the same maya scene, but still be two separate objects, and export them all at once.

I suppose what you would do if you're modleing in maya, is select the head polys, delete everytjhing else, save that head as an .mb, undo the delete, and delete the head polys you've selcted, and then import the head file you just saved, so now you have the same scene but the head an body are two different objects.

There's probably an easier way to do that, but I don't use maya for modeling, and that'll work fine. I import my models from lightwave, and I keep the parts I want to be separte on different layers, so they come into maya as separate objects.