Maya: Exporting specific frames only?

asjo07

Hi Guys!

I hope this is not a stupid question, but I can't seem to figure out how to export only a specific couple of frames...

for clarification what I have is frames 1 to 100, but I only want to export frames 10-40...

In case it matters; I'm exporting to FBX using the 2009FBX plug-in from Maya 2011!

any help would be much appreciated!

-Alex

Modesty Blaze

Don't know what the fbx-plugin is but you should be able to choose which frames you want to export from the render settings menue.

window/rendering editors/render settings. Choose an image type and your frame range then batch render

asjo07

Yea but I'm not trying to render the frames...

I want to export them, to use for a game!...

Modesty Blaze

Ah, sorry. Well,-Im using a different exporter myself and I'm not sure it works the same but what you could do is to just delete the unneccessary frames, move all keys so that frame 10 is now on frame 1 and export as a new file. Unless you already have all channels keyed at frame 10 and at frame 40 your animation will look weird when you delete the keys. If you want to avoid this without having to correct the curves in the graph editor; bake all your keys before you delete frame 1-9 & 40 and above: edit/keys/bake simulation optionbox (hirearchy:below , channels: All keyable.

asjo07

If Im understanding you correctly, then your saying to delete everything else and move the animation to frame 1 and forward... Which I guess could work.. but that would be kinda of a drag though.. The thing is that I have filled frames 1-800 with different animations, and I will probably have to do running changes on the animations.. so that procedure is going to be really annoying down the stretch I guess...

I was hoping there was some way to select the specific frames to export... much like you suggest with the rendering options... so I can easily export out, say the attack1 animation, and test it in my game, do changes and export it again without having to bake (or delete) everything each time...

Modesty Blaze

Maybe you have some nice workflow to tip me about here, but if you f.ex would want to make one of the animations longer in the scene you have now, you still have to move all your keys for all the following animations, correct?

If you need to do running changes in the animation I guess my approach could be kind of time consuming, but maybe you could benefit from splitting up your animations in different scenes. Then you would only have to do it once. It might also make your animations easier to manage, assuming the skinning is all done.

asjo07

You are right! The only reason this becomes an issue is because of the workflow..!

The thing is I'm building a character for an Role-Playing game, and my designers requested that we should be able to equip the character with new stuff (i.e. armor, weapons, etc.).. So in order to save time down the line I'm just going to attach and skin all armor pieces to the same rig so I won't have to make the animations more than once..

This also means that if I separate the file into smaller files only containing a single animation each, I would have to attach and skin the same piece of equipment once for each animation.. not a nice thing IMO!.


So just doing all animations in one file works fine for me... buut... my programmer really wants all the animations separately as that will ease his process.. so now I'm desperately trying to figure out the best way to accommodated for both our needs..

Being able to export specific frames from a file would be the ideal case... but maybe theres another solution?.. I even tried looking into MEL scripting it.. but it didn't seem to be the way either...

Your method of deleting everything else could work... and I might submit to that in the end, but I'm just baffled that there is no simple way of exporting specific frames..

asjo07

I finally found a solution...!

I sat together with my programmer determined to solve this and we found a way!..

If anyone is interested; the way we did it, was by letting the game engine (in our case Unity) automatically split the animations through a script.. So all I have to do is create an Animation Chart, which is basically just a .txt file specifying the animations and their specifice frame numbers!

So now everybody is happy.!..

Thanks for your input Modesty Blaze!..

jipe

Is there a technical requirement for not referencing the character rig file into your animation file? That would solve the problem of rigging the same character multiple times... and if any armor/weapons get changed, you only have to change it in the referenced rig file. Then you'd be able to animate each action in a separate animation file which is perfect for your programmer.

asjo07

hmm.. I'm not sure I've ever heard about referencing the character rig?

Could you elaborate a bit on how this works?..

asjo07

So I looked into referencing the character rig.. and that is exactly what I need.. !

Seems to be a very efficient tool for you collective pipeline.. However, it also seems to be something one should use with a little bit caution!

anyway if somebody wants to know more about it I suggest reading this short walk-through/tutorial...

http://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/mayaReference/

Thanks to jipe for bringing the subject up!...

jipe

Sorry, didn't check this until just now. Glad you figured it out! Referencing is super powerful and has a lot of benefits, one of which is that your animation files will be much smaller and faster to open/save. Just have to be careful when making edits to the rig file, because it's easy to change things that could completely break your animations.

asjo07

It really seems to be a very nice tool to optimize the pipeline..! Just reading about it made me change my entire workflow!

The only downside to it is the whole namespace for the referenced notes... For Maya alone its not so much a problem, but when working with a game engine it may start to create problems...

We are working with Unity3D which is mostly very nice as it can connect the animations to the master file automatically if the naming convention is right, buut.. if the notes doesn't share names, it will get all confused and do nothing.. So thats a bit of a pickle when Maya insists on having that blasted namespace infront of any note...
However it is possible to just add the namespace to the master file once it is imported to unity and then the problem is solved.. So I guess the best thing to do is to create a script that does this automatically on import and your good to go...