can I bake a CV curves animation to a FBX?

[nickholl]

Im having an nightmare animating a simple cable animation and exporting to an FBX for use in Unity3D.

First of all i tried ncloth - but that couldnt be baked down to an FBX (without an extension)

so then I tried animating an extrusion along a CV curve - which in maya looks great, but I cant for the love of me get it to export to FBX and keep its deformation.

Im I right in thinking that the only way to do this is by using bones?  Ive been trying to avoid that as im a bit of a beginner and wanted to avoid the skinning and boning process. Simply animating the CV curve was really easy, and looks great in Maya - is there no way to get this working in an FBX within Unity?   Im baked the similuation, baked channels - everything I can think of but with no luck 😞

thanks for any help!

Nick

[Calebos]

Hey,

ikSplineHandle is probably the best way for your purpose.

Make a skeleton chain for your geometry, bind the geometry to this skeleton chain. Then make your nurbs curve and attach the skeleton to the curve with ikSplineHandle. Then when you select the handle it has custom attribute Offset so you can offset the skeletal chain through the curve shape.

F2(or animation menu)->Skeleton->IK Spline Handle Tool->Option Box->uncheck the Auto create curve.

You have to click on start, end joint in the skeletal chain and the curve at last.

[nickholl]

thanks - yes I tried this, and then ran into the problem that I need my telephone cable to squash and stretch and I dont know how to do that using bones 😞  (its something i havent learnt yet)  Is squashing/stretching bones something simple to do or would it take a while?

To be honest, Im beginning to think about removing the cable altogeather as this is taking more time that Id hoped 😕

[Calebos]

You can do squash and stretch with scaling of joints. Try to scale any joint in your hierarchy. It may work well for you. But I dont know details.

[Calebos]

One thing I forgot: the scale needs to be disproportional so you can keep volume of the cable: when you scale front axis upthen scale down sides axes. And the same way in opposite way.

[nickholl]

ill give it a try - thanks 🙂

[nickholl]

im giving up 😞

this has taken way too long unfortunately :(. Its obviously something a seasoned pro could probably do in 2 seconds

[nickholl]

could somebody please cclarify something for me.. is the only way to get mesh deformation into an FBX by using bones? I found ncloth andCV curve animation so easy to use but impossible to export 😞

[Calebos]

What I know for sure is the FBX is able to get blendShape deformer and skeleton from Maya. In Maya you can do many things with huge palette of tools but each time you have to think of the final result in which it will all be used. For example game engine: is it possible to get cluster math/information? Lattices, wires, etc. ...

 Almost all game or realtime engines are able to handle skeletons and sometimes maybe blendShapes(im not exactly sure here, so correct me anybody if possible) aka interpolated geometries.

 So the common recomendation is: use skeleton as oftenly as possible. You can be sure that your setups/animations can be implemented with FBX to game engines.

 The second hint: keep your skeleton in single hierarchy and separated off your rig because then it is much easier to just bake animation keys to skeleton and then send to FBX format without any pain. Otherwise you have to make up how to convert your rig solution to game engine and it is I dare to say almost every time impossible.

 If you want send me the .ma scene and I can look at it and maybe make some solution.

[nickholl]

Thats very kind Calebos.

Ive attached my file (with no bones).  I tried to rig the cable last night, but I was having problems due to the fact that the receiver animates up and down at the same time as I was animating the joints/IK curve.

Basically I need the cable to be fixed to the base of the phone and the handle of the receiver whilst the receiver moves up and down.

thanks again

[Calebos · Accepted solution]

So here it is,

I did it a bit rubbish way because wanted phone to ba able exported with FBX. So no joint scales(cable is not stretchy). It is done with ikSplineHandle method. In the scene there is quick select set with joints for cable bound. If you want to export this setup just select bones of the cable with this set and bake animation(translate and rotate) and then delete the group named Phone_Cable_RIG_Grp ... this group is just help one containing all ik elements i used.

 I hope you can reverse ingeneer the scene. 🙂

[Calebos]

Just one thing a top of it all: I got rid of animation from your objects and put it on skeleton, so if you wanna change animation of handle or phone itself, there are selection hadles for propper joints.

[nickholl]

wow - you're a star Calebos - thanks!

I really need to get my head round rigging these kind of things. It's the skinning part that normally stumps me

thanks again!

[Calebos]

You are welcome. Do not rush with learning character setup or rigging of anything. Do it right and piece after piece. It is very vast and difficult thing. It needs knowledge from all parts of cg. Especially modeling/topology. With bad model you can't get good animation. It is just matter of time as you become more expirienced. 🙂

[Calebos]

If you have some issues with the scene let me know ... i will try to respond asap.

[nickholl]

thanks 🙂