Create custom archives from selected objects

Create custom archive primitives from selected polygon objects in your scene. Maya saves the exported geometry and materials to an archive directory in a location you specify.

For information about how Maya creates custom archive primitives, see Custom archive primitives.

You can also save geometry contained in one or more scenes files to archive primitives. See Create custom archives from scene files.

Important: The polygon objects you export should not have the Maya default Lambert shader assigned to them. If they do, you will not be able to edit the shader for your archive objects after you import them into a scene.

To create custom archives from selected polygon objects

  1. Before exporting selected geometry as an archive, save your Maya scene.
  2. In the scene view, select the polygon objects you want to save as archive primitives.

    If you have low and medium resolution versions of your base object, select them as well. These versions should have the same object name and a name suffix identifying them as a low or medium resolution versions. See Level of Detail.

  3. In the Export Selection as Archive(s) window that appears, do the following:
    • From the Destination Folder list, select the directory in which you want to save the archive files.

      All of the files generated for your new archive are saved to the specified directory.

    • Type an Archive Name.

      All of the files generated for the selected archive, including XARC and Alembic (.abc) files, are saved with Archive Name as file base-name.
  4. To save low and medium resolution versions of the geometry, select one of the following Level of Detail options:
    • Automatic (PolyReduce %)
    • Manual (LOD Suffix)
  5. If the selected geometry is animated, turn on Include Animation, then specify Start Frame and End Frame values.
  6. Click Export.
    Note: (Mac OS only) On some Mac OS systems, Maya may become unresponsive during the export process. If this happens, set this environment variable: XGEN_EXPORT_ARCHIVE_STANDALONE = 0.

    7. You can now select these custom archives when you add archive primitives to your XGen Description. See Instance primitive and archive geometry.

Parent topic: Create Hair, Fur, or Instanced Geometry