Community
Maya LT Forum
Welcome to Autodesk’s Maya LT Forums. Share your knowledge, ask questions, and explore popular Maya LT topics.
cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Import animation back into Maya LT

6 REPLIES 6
SOLVED
Reply
Message 1 of 7
GadgetGirl
956 Views, 6 Replies

Import animation back into Maya LT

The quick version of my question is whether it's possible or not to import an animation from one Maya LT project into another. Everything I've found online tells me to use the Trax editor, which doesn't seem to be part of Maya LT.

 

The long version is I'm trying to fix a mistake I made without loosing all my animations. What happened, as best I can figure out is this:

 

I created a figure in Autodesk's character generator, downloaded it, and opened it in Maya LT. I played around with some of the polygons, and I think this is where I made some sort of horrible mistake with vertices. 

 

In any case, when the figure looked how I wanted, I saved it, then started working on some animations. I did notice an issue at this point but I thought it was user error. I tried to create a layer for my geometry, so I could make it a template layer and not click it by accident. This didn't seem to work. I found a work around and selected what I wanted to template in the Outliner and then used Display/Object Display/Template.

 

This worked, but as I was working I found that I couldn't seem to get my geometry to show back up. Probably another clue that I had an issue but I ignored it.

 

I did make many incremental saves along the way, thinking this would save me from myself, but it didn't. Once I finished my animation, I decided to tackle the problem of getting my object to show back up as more than a wireframe. I did many things including Show All many times. Nothing worked, and I finally ended up with a view where I couldn't even see the wireframe, just a sort of square robot head.

 

At this point I decided something had gone badly wrong with the file, and I started going back through my incremental saves to see if I could find a 'good one'. No such luck none of them would show me anything more than the wirfrime, and most of them opened to my square robot.Screen Shot 2014-08-14 at 9.29.18 PM.png

 

At this point it occured to me that maybe I could export out my work and then import it back in, and 'clean' the file this way, or at least bring back the default view. That's when I got this error:

 

The plug-in has detected mesh nodes with unsupported operators that affect the vertex and/or face count. To correct this, delete the Non-deformer history before exporting. The following nodes will not be processed:

 

ElfQueen:H_DDS_LowRes

 

 

This is why I figure I messed up early on when I was altering the model. Anyway I did what it said, got rid of the non-deformer history. I did finally get it to export out in a way I could see the figure again, but the animation wasn't there, which is what I really care about. 

 

I did finally figure out how to select just the animation without the figure. I was hoping to go back to the original character generator model and import in the animation so I could keep that, but everything I've found about importing in animation to a figure references Trax, which Maya LT doesn't have.

 

So any help on how to attach my animation to the character would be much appreciated, as well as any advice on how to figure out how to catch errors earlier would also be nice. 

 

6 REPLIES 6
Message 2 of 7
GadgetGirl
in reply to: GadgetGirl

So after a good night's sleep, I partially answered my own question. I figured out how to use the human IK pannel to transfer the skeleton over. However, I still have a question. Now when I try to bring up tools like the Graph and Dope editor, all I get is an empty grey window. How do I get my animation linked back into those windows so I can go back to fine tunning my animation?

Message 3 of 7
paulkind
in reply to: GadgetGirl

Hello gadget ,

Can you possibly attach the file from both before you resorted to hik(box headed robot ), as well as after. It is always helpful as there are usually about a million things that can be causing a problem. Having the files helps a lot. I'm at the dentist right now but will look into it as soon as I'm home again.
Areas of Expertise - MayaLT : Mudbox : 3DS Max : Inventor : Game Dev
Follow me on Twitter : @paulkind3d

Please remember to give kudos freely and mark acceptable answers as solved!

PLEASE do not send me private messages unless asked to do so. If you have a question, start a thread, and ask me on the public forums where answering your question may help others.

Did you know there was a YouTube learning channel for Autodesk Games? New videos are posted regularly with all sorts of content relative to Stingray, Maya/MayaLT, 3DS Max, and other game related tools. Get your game on @ https://www.youtube.com/user/autodeskgameshowtos
Message 4 of 7
GadgetGirl
in reply to: paulkind

That makes sense. I'm definately learning how many switches toggles and buttons there are. Here is the Character without the graph and here is my poor Robot Head

Message 5 of 7
paulkind
in reply to: GadgetGirl

Hello OK, I did notice one thing.  Your shading mode is set to "bounding box" in the perspective view.  When this is set you will not be able to see your model as it will only be viewed as a box around the character/object.  Im thinking this was your problem originally.

 

Yea im pretty sure this is your problem as the robot head displays a character as soon as this is switched.

 

Try this please and let me know how it goes for you.

1. Start by expanding your top right viewport by mousing over the view and tapping the spacebar.

2. In that same viewport at the top find "Panels > Perspective > Persp" and select.

3. in the viewport at the top find "Shading > Smooth Shade All"

 

Once done i can even see your character making its movements when i scrub and everything so i assume your character is aok.

 

(I did this with the Robot version)

Areas of Expertise - MayaLT : Mudbox : 3DS Max : Inventor : Game Dev
Follow me on Twitter : @paulkind3d

Please remember to give kudos freely and mark acceptable answers as solved!

PLEASE do not send me private messages unless asked to do so. If you have a question, start a thread, and ask me on the public forums where answering your question may help others.

Did you know there was a YouTube learning channel for Autodesk Games? New videos are posted regularly with all sorts of content relative to Stingray, Maya/MayaLT, 3DS Max, and other game related tools. Get your game on @ https://www.youtube.com/user/autodeskgameshowtos
Message 6 of 7
GadgetGirl
in reply to: paulkind

Thanks, that did the trick.

Message 7 of 7
paulkind
in reply to: GadgetGirl

Happy I could help 😃

Areas of Expertise - MayaLT : Mudbox : 3DS Max : Inventor : Game Dev
Follow me on Twitter : @paulkind3d

Please remember to give kudos freely and mark acceptable answers as solved!

PLEASE do not send me private messages unless asked to do so. If you have a question, start a thread, and ask me on the public forums where answering your question may help others.

Did you know there was a YouTube learning channel for Autodesk Games? New videos are posted regularly with all sorts of content relative to Stingray, Maya/MayaLT, 3DS Max, and other game related tools. Get your game on @ https://www.youtube.com/user/autodeskgameshowtos

Can't find what you're looking for? Ask the community or share your knowledge.

Post to forums  

Autodesk Design & Make Report