Bake deformer tool not working at all

[Anonymous]

Hello I need to use the Bake Deformer Tool. I tried following the video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i-gxtXj1Ww in Maya 2018 and Maya 2020 but it doesn't seem to work at all. I have tried many options and none of them seem to work. No error message. It starts doing the rotations and then there is no result.

If the target skin has no skin, no skin is created.

If the target mesh has skin, it remains unchanged.

I selected the parent joints, I selected the whole hirearchy, nothing works.

Am I missing something? please help

[Anonymous]

Did you ever find a solution for this? I'm running into this too.

Thank you,

[kelly_hynes]

Hi there,

I have just tested this in Maya 2020 gold release and it is working as shown in the tutorial.  What exact version of Maya are you using? 

My test was to start to with a character mesh, create a skeleton quickly using the quick rig tool, duplicate both and offset on the x axis, then follow the tutorial you linked.  Everything worked as expected.  

What exactly are the steps you are following?  Can I test on your file? 

Let me know,

Kelly

[Anonymous]

I'm afraid I can't share the file because it's a work related file. Please
let me know how the testing goes!

[Anonymous]

Hi Kelly,

Thanks for replying and testing on your end!

I was able to bake in delta mush with the Bake Deformer tool on a different non-human character, so not sure why it's not working for my human/bipeds. I'm using 2019, but I also tried it on 2020.2 and it still doesn't finish baking. I'm trying to bake the delta mush deformer onto the same rig (which worked for my other character). When I hit Apply & Close on the Bake Deformer tool, I see it running through the character (i.e. I see all the crazy morphing happening at each joint), but I notice it only does it on the right side. It doesn't morph/move the character around on the left side. Then it just hangs without doing anything. The Bake Deformer GUI never closes on its own, as it does when the operation completes, and I don't get any feedback in the script editor. I've left it alone to see if it's just taking extra time, but it still never seems to "complete." 

Here's a link to a video showing what I did:

https://www.loom.com/share/144cb88ccb77431baee170c8d3b60f09

Please let me know if you have any ideas on what's going on. Thank you!

[e.losavio]

I've also ran into this issue several times, and never really found a solution. It's so frustrating!

However, today I realized that running the same operation onto another computer with more RAM actually did the trick.

I have a computer with 16 GB of RAM. It's not a lot, but it's enough for virtually all of my tasks, but apparently not for this one. I attached a video where I show the RAM usage on my pc when I run the tool, and how it drops as soon as it reaches the peak. It's as if the tool realized it was never gonna make it, and left without closing the door.

The computer on which the tool worked has 32 GB in fact, and the BakeDeformer tool used them all. This of course depends a lot on the resolution of the mesh and the number of joints in the skeleton, so that's probably why it doesn't always fail. 

I'm not really sure why Maya doesn't rely on paging files, or why it doesn't have the decency to at least throw an error. Autodesk, this is one of the most useful tools you've released in a long time... * !!! Please fix it !!! *

If you don't have another computer with more RAM available, I guess that a workaround would be to work on a lower-res version of the mesh, bake deformations, and then project skin weights back on the hi-res. Or cut the mesh up in smaller parts, and then put it back together after backing? Not the ideal workflow, but these are just a couple of thoughts off the top of my head...

Hope this helps,

-

Enrico

[ukdesigner]

Any updates on this?

8 out of 10 models from Blender to Maya work with the DeltaMush > "Bake Deformation to skin weights"

2 of them for no real obvious reason both display some verts which prevent the "Bake Deformation to Skin weights from working..."

Really appreciate the support on this please Autodesk because across the net it seems many are finding just some rogue verts prevent this baking of deformers in Maya.