animation layer corrupts when muted or imported

[coeuscreative]

Hi,

I'm trying to use animation layers to copy animations to and from rigs that are the identically structured but vary in shape. 

So I have 7 characters, some are taller, fatter, longer necks etc... 

My plan was to store the animation data in one layer and use another layer to "adjust" the shape of the rig to fit each character but it doesn't seem to be working.

I can export/import the animations but the "adjustment" layer seems to change when I load the animation layer in. Even worse, if I mute or unmute either of the layers then the rig corrupts even further and won't return back to the start positions when I mute/unmute again.

Has anybody seen this or know of a solution?

[jan.huebner]

Hi coeuscreative!

My apologies to response so late to your question.

Can you please tell which version of Maya you are using?

In general the Animation Layers are not designed to transfer animation data from one object to another.

For the import to work the objects need to be named exactly the same.

In your case the whole rig need to be of the same naming, otherwise it's not working.

Here is the respective Help topic:

http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2016/ENU//?guid=GUID-A9775404-5F21-4F4C-A5BB-745AC0566562

... see the note at the end.

You probably want to go for a explicit animation transfer from one character rig to another.

For this purpose we have the ATOM Export/Import.

Here is a tutorial:

http://thenavneetsingh.blogspot.ch/2013/02/how-to-transfer-animation-from-one-rig.html

Greetings,

Jan

[coeuscreative]

Hi, thanks for getting back to me.

I'm using 2014.

All the rig is named the same. Effectively I'm just trying to transfer animations to the same rig a different scene.