Axis Conversion

The FBX importer does not have an Axis Conversion option in the UI. Only exporters have this option exposed in the UI. This is because the 3ds Max FBX Plug-in calculates and applies the Axis Conversion automatically upon import.

What Does the Automatic Axis Conversion Do?

The importer looks at the up-axis used in the host application. In 3ds Max, this is always Z-up. It then compares this to the up-axis set in the incoming file. If both up-axes match, the importer applies no conversion. If they do not match, the importer applies a conversion to the imported data to match the host application’s up-axis automatically.

When the up-axes do not match, it creates in a longer import process, because the 3ds Max FBX Plug-in must rotate each root object 90 degrees to match the host application up-axis. This is especially true of Maya or MotionBuilder to 3ds Max workflows.

Note The importer applies Axis Conversions only to root elements of the incoming scene. If you have animation on a root object that must be converted on import, these animation curves are resampled to apply the proper axis conversion. To avoid resampling of these animation curves, make sure to add a root node (dummy object) as a parent of the animated object in the source scene (source application) before you export to FBX.