Maya Animation Pipeline/workflow for Games?

Belzzebozz

Hi,

 Can someone help me with the (whole) Game Animation workflow for Games in Maya?

 I am using Maya LT 2018. I hope that there is not a huge difference between Maya and the LT Version when it comes to this pipeline.

I know how does it work in Blender. All your work is done in one File. Apparently it is not the best workflow, quite destructive and not a good solution if you are in a team.

 Very rough process In Blender:
- you set up/create your Rig
- Bind your Model to it.
- Do your Animation in "Pose mode" and save them in your "Action Editor"

 But how does it work in Maya?

I have stumbled upon "referencing" and the concept of separating the process into single files. Does it mean that I have to store my Rig (without the mesh? And how do I do the binding in this case?), my model and all the animations in separate files?

What are the benefits for this? Besides if you are working in a Team.

And is there something similar to a "pose library" in Maya? A section where I can store different poses and automatically attached them to the whole model or to different parts. Like rest-pose, idle-pose, hand open, fist etc.

It would be great if someone could help me with this process or knows some good tutorials which describes this pipeline.

Thanks

Mark Dygert

Yep, you can go either way and separate out all of the pieces, or combine them into a single file. The main advantage of using references is how easy it is to keep things up to date and make broad changes to the rig/skin/mesh. You change one or two files and it updates inside of all of the animation files everywhere.

It really depends on what you need to do, there isn't one specific way of working, just a few tools that offer you the flexibility to do whatever you need.

1)  Mesh -> Skeleton (bind) -> Rig -> Animation
This will allow you to bind multiple meshes to the same rig and swap them out as needed by replacing the references. Nesting references 3-4 deep is fairly common but you can run into some performance issues in certain cases, but if you need that flexibility its great to have it. 
OR
2) Mesh/Skeleton/Rig -> Animation 
Rig mesh and skin are all in the same file and you reference that single file into a bunch of animation scenes. This can be a decent way to work if you don't need to swap out the model, or don't mind doing mesh surgery where your rig lives. A lot of people are comfortable with this and choose to work this way.
OR
3) Rig/Mesh/Skin/Animation
Everything in the same file. This usually happens when you don't need to swap meshes and it's not a pain to keep it all in the same scene. Typically the animations are saved/loaded in and out of this file, using ATOM, FBX or some other format. But it really depends on how much animation you are doing, if it's just a box wigging around almost no one is going to raise an eyebrow. 

This goes over some of the finer points in greater detail: http://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/mayaReference/

For a pose library I like to use Red9, it has some extra functionality like mirroring and symmetry. 
https://apps.autodesk.com/MAYA/en/Detail/Index?id=584529986169254772&appLang=en&os=Win64

RN

Belzzebozz said:

I know how does it work in Blender. All your work is done in one File.

Blender does have referencing. It's done by linking libraries into your work scene, with a "library" being another .blend file(s).
Read tip #11: http://www.creativebloq.com/13-blender-tips-pros-7113110

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/data_system/linked_libraries.html

Belzzebozz

@Mark Dygert: Thanks! That helped me a lot. And the Link is great. Exactly what I was looking for.. This sheds more light to it. Unfortunately Red9 doesnt seems to work with MayaLT. The LT Version just supports Mel Scripts and no external Plug-ins.

@RN: Thanks. No I know more. Great tips for Blender

Belzzebozz

sorry.. double post

janoshx

I would like to know that if I make animation in Maya that is based only on deformers, for example bend, how i can bake the bend animation to keyframes. I have tried just to export and bake the animation fbx export plugin but it doesn't work. If i animate rotations and transforms of the object those will export nicely but now deformer based animation.

I would be superhappy to know if there is a "simplish" workaround without involving rig and skinning.

lcymet

Check out the bake deformation tool in Maya LT 2018 : http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYALT/2018/ENU/?guid=GUID-8B68FF4A-E9BC-44E9-B0D9-53CFE0C008FC

This will approximate deformers on a skin cluster that you can export to game via fbx.  The trick is though that you need bones to match to drive the changes - so this may not help if you just have deformers on your rig.  

You could bake the animation to all the vertices - by enabling "Control Points" in the bake simulation tool: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya-lt/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/MayaLT/files/Edit--Keys--Bake-Simulation-htm.html

Hope that helps!