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Good news. The Maya2Google Mel script I mentioned earlier (Link) has been updated to support Maya 5. Big thanks to Theodore over at Eyebeam for the fast turnaround. He warned of some shortcomings using version 5.0 – no progress bar and an inability to turn off the compass – but Maya 5.01 at least has a progress bar (I didn’t check the compass). It works beautifully.

In any event, just to test the tool, I used some geometry I captured from Second Life: what I’ve been calling my “protoSat”. This object is basically a multi-use virtual structure (still under construction) – something for in-world lectures, streaming movies, and real-world commerce… among other things. Here’s a screencap of that object hovering just above the clouds inside Second Life:

Using Eyebeam’s OGLE tool (Link), I ripped the 3D data from the videostream and imported that into Maya 5.01. There wasn’t much clean-up. Here’s a screenshot of the entire thing (and my avatar – the tiny dot flying on top) after all the polygons have been “combined”:

And here is the unaltered object as shown inside Google Earth (I’m using the free version btw; after saving I simply launched GE using the resulting geometry file):

I’ve already started texturing the Second Life build. When that’s completed – along with some other things related to this virtual bit of architecture – I’ll revisit the Google Earth model and give it some textures. After that I’ll just need to figure out the easiest way to share this kind of thing with other people.

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