Fixing Noesis Exports in Maya

While it is certainly possible to just import an FFXI zone model directly into Unreal Engine 4 (or Unity, if that's the game engine you prefer), sometimes it helps to fix the zone up first by editing it in a 3D modeling program such as Maya or 3Ds Max (both published by Autodesk). There don't appear to be any major issues when importing FFXI zone models into 3Ds Max, so I won't bother covering that. However, there are some relatively minor issues that occur when importing FFXI zone models into Maya, and this tutorial will go over how to fix them.

The first issue is that Maya doesn't like for there to be any whitespace in the names of object meshes, materials, or texture nodes. If Maya encounters any whitespace characters in names of these object nodes, it will replace each instance with some variation of "FBXASC0##" (the ## will be either 32, 48, or 49). This is of course assuming you exported your FFXI zone model as an FBX file using Noesis. If you exported using the OBJ file format, you'll probably get something different.

For this tutorial, I loaded the zone Ru'Aun Gardens, which should be located at ROM2/12/107.DAT in the FFXI root directory, and I used the following advanced options in Noesis:

Advanced Load Options:

-ff11blendhack 0.99 -ff11renderunref -ff11keepnames -ff11optimizegeo

Advanced Export Options:

-rotate 180 0 -90 -fbxsmoothgroups -fbxtexrelonly -fbxtexext .tga

I exported the model as an FBX, and used TGA as the file format for my textures. I then opened up a new scene in Maya, and imported the FBX file I had just created. This was the result:

Pretty ugly, right? Nobody wants to deal with object names like that. It's impossible to read! Thankfully, this problem is incredibly easy to fix. Simply go to the "Modify" dropdown menu on the main toolbar, and then select the "Search and Replace Names..." option about halfway down.

In the options box that pops up, simply type "FBXASC032" the field labeled "Search for:", and type an underscore in the field labeled "Replace with:". (An underscore is that short little line character: "_". We use an underscore instead of a space because Maya doesn't like whitespace.) Then just hit the "Apply" button multiple times until every instance of "FBXASC032" has been replaced with an underscore.

Then do the same thing again, except this time search for instances of "FBXASC048" and replace them all with an underscore followed by the number zero (i.e. "_0"). And finally, repeat the process a third time for instances of "FBXASC049" and replace them all with an underscore followed by the number one (i.e. "_1").

Search for:	Replace with:
FBXASC032	_
FBXASC048	_0
FBXASC049	_1

Note that you will have to click the "Apply" button many, many times when replacing instances of FBXASC032, but instances of FBXASC048 and FBXASC049 should only require a single click each. When you're done, the names of your mesh geometry should look something like this:

There we go, that's much better!

Double-check the Hypershade window (Windows → Rendering Editors → Hypershade) to ensure that the naming problems have also been fixed on all of your materials, textures, utilities, and shading groups. We don't want there to be any naming issues anywhere.

This should fix all the naming problems that occur when importing FFXI zone meshes into Maya.

This tutorial is a work in progress. If I encounter any other issues with importing FFXI zone geometry into Maya, I will add them into this tutorial.