Bake every animation frame to timeline

[Anonymous]

I have an animation and I want to bake every frame to the timeline, I need every bone's position and rotation baked to every frame. How to do this?

[Anonymous]

I guess I found the answer myself. In the Biped "Motion" panel there is the "Convert" option.

[ads_royje · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous,

to bake animation;

. with your objects selected

. in Command Panel Motion > Trajectories

Sample range

. Start time

. End time 

. Samples (This is the 'tricky' one, Sample is amount of keys for time start to time end) For 1 key per frame, set sample to the frame count)

for instance, 0 to 100, sample should be 101 (including frame 0)

Then click 'Collapse' button

Choosing the the Transforms you want to bake (Position, Rotation, Scale) default is Position and Rotation.

I hope this can help! 🙂

[Anonymous]

Hi 🙂 Glad you respond so quickly. You became really helpful for my project. I checked your solution but I don't fully understand how it works. Looks like it works with the mesh selected, not biped bones. Biped has its own option to convert. Is Trajectories option for non-biped objects?

[ads_royje]

ha yes, for Biped it is a little different indeed !

What I mentioned (Trajectory > Collapse) would be for any max animated objects. Biped is a 'special beast'

you found it ! The Convert Button in Biped menus.

Have you got it to work as you expected ?

Click both options ; Flatten to zero and Key every frame.

Let me know if you cannot get it to do as you expect.

[Anonymous]

Yep, the conversion works for Biped. It creates keys in every frame for every Biped object, but it ignores other objects attached to biped such as bones, dummies and other stuff, so it's only for biped, which is ok for my task. And thanks to you I now know how to do the same for other bones and stuff, so I learned things for both aspects!

Btw, I clicked only "key every frame", I didn't click flatten to zero, what does it do?

[ads_royje]

Great to know it worked ! And that you've learned new things on the way! 🙂

The "Flatten to Zero" is used by Biped's Footsteps systems.

If you have not tried it, you don't need to worry about it 🙂

Footsteps are Biped objects you can put on the floor (they look like foot prints, the mode is just to the right of figure mode), this is a system to 'automate' the legs for walks. Kind of cool too! 🙂

But hand key frames looks much better! 🙂

So when collapsing, this insures that the 'footsteps' converted to key frame would be all set to Z 0.0.

[Anonymous]

I saw those foot steps in third party animations, I actually didn't get the idea of those, I usually do all animation myself so I'm not very familiar with different automation/helper tools 🙂 Thanks for answers!

[ads_royje]

! 🙂 My pleasure! 🙂

So if you see another 3rd party biped animation with the footsteps, you can convert them to key frames ! 🙂

[Anonymous]

I can convert footsteps as well? Good to know I can do something with it, I'll try!

[kenneth9NZ2K]

@ads_royje 

Hello, instead of making a completely new topic I thought I'd just follow up on this one with my questions:

I'm using 3ds Max 2021, and I want to collapse only a specific range of frames without deleting other existing keyframes. The collapse works as expected with adjusting start and end time and sampling, but my other keyframes gets deleted (or collapsed?) when applied.

I'm used to using Maya as an animator, and sometimes I had to constrain object A to another already moving object B for a specific time and then bake out only those specific keyframes for object A, and Maya didn't delete the other keyframes I had set for object A after baking. Are there options in 3ds Max that can take this method into account?

Hope this makes sense!

[ads_royje]

Hello @kenneth9NZ2K ,

would the Animation Layers work for you ?
Having a keyed animation on a base layer and a constrained animation on a second layer. The second layer weight can be animated to affect only a certain time range.

Let me know if that can solve what you're looking for.

Regards,

[kenneth9NZ2K]

@ads_royje 

I'll give Animation Layers a go, thanks for the tip!

[Anonymous]

@ads_royje 

hi, I'am having a very similar issue, so I think I just might as well ask it here.

I rigged a model and create a short animation out of it, but when I exported it as an FBX file it does not move. Onlythe biped inside that I used to rigged move, not the model. I tried to bake the animation of the model and the biped, but it sill does not work. Please help me fix this problem.

Thank you.

[zain221120]

Hi, i don't know if you still have this issue, but i think you are trying to see the fbx exported in the fbx review program which doesn't show the geo animated, at least on my side. Try checking the fbx in 3ds max by importing it in the scene.

[zain221120]

I thought to share my experience as well.
As for the Baking the animation guys, when i was making an animation of a character who is playing in the playground on swing & then the swing rotates in circles very fast, so i linked the biped root to a helper and when i done animating i needed to bake the root animatino in order to unlink it, so when i tried the Convert option and unlink the root, it didn't work, so then i baked the animation in the Biped Helper by Lorne Brooks and then unlinked the root then the biped was rotating as desire. So the Covert option didn't work for me but Baking from Biped Helper did.

[MartinBeh]

FWIW this is a little tool I wrote long ago to bake down the transforms of arbitrary scene elements (it won't work for biped but (hopefully) most other objects in 3ds Max):

https://scripts.breidt.net/#mbCollapse

[zain221120]

Thanks a lot, really really, can't tell you how much it's appreciated, i always wanted a script for baking the animation that stays animated even after unlinking, only got for biped from biped helper before but no for other objects, so thanks for it. Hope you gets success in the world.

[MartinBeh]

@zain221120 - thanks for the feedback, glad to hear the script is useful for you!