Reversed normals on export

[Professor420]

As I said, its nothing to do with the geometry of the model. I will try exporting and importing as an .obj though if it comes up again.
I do most of my RTW modelling in max, if I build a mesh from scratch I use Maya (I enjoy its modelling tools much more, I'd say I like it overall more than max except for its abhorrent lighting).

[Vercingetorix]

This is something I have come across several times. The root the problem has to do with the translation from right-handed to left-handed coordinate systems. I've noticed this happening more often when I mirror a piece of geometry, but I've also had it happen when I haven't done any mirroring. The solution is typically just to apply the normal modifier and click 'flip normals'. It's not the best way, but I've yet to figure out how these misbehaving normals can be corrected otherwise. So it is a bug in the exporter, it's never been a high priority to fix because it is somewhat rare and the solution isn't obvious (I have tinkered with it in the past but to no avail.)

[Bwian]

Thanks for clearing that one up Vercingetorix :D It's never happened to me...but then I am converting to 3DS using Deep Exploration, and I think that pretty much destroys any fancy formatting. 3DS may be primitive..but it has it's uses.

On a completely different tack... Prof...how easy was Maya to pick up? I looked at it briefly when I was making stuff for UT2004 ( ships with a limited version of Maya ) but never really got into it. ActorX for Max worked fine, so I never troubled to learn another tool.