export animated fbx ncloth simulation

[yyumii]

hello,

I have a rigged character, on a rigged swing, wearing 3 pieces of clothing with ncloth dynamics applied. I want to export the entire thing as an animated fbx. I tried baking with control points on but that did not work. I made a geo cache but can't find a tutorial on what to do with the .mcx files... 

I need the animation for a unity asset. What is the best way to export from maya?

Any feedback is appreciated, thank you!

[hamsterHamster · Accepted solution]

Alembic (.abc) is supported in Unity.

AbcImport/Export plugins should be loaded in order to do that. Windows>Settings/Prefs>PluginManager.

Then, Cache>AlembicCache>.. to access its options.

[yyumii]

Thanks so much, just tried this out 

the alembic took a really long time for maya to complete. 

imported the unity alembic package. Opened the timeline: window>sequencing>timeline and dragged my clip out. pressed play and it worked. However, my swing came out in a different rotation from my character and her clothing. the clothing, character, and the clothing were all in different scales (screenshot attached).

I tried unpacking the asset and rescaling, rotating, positioning, but when I press play, unity undoes some of those changes.

Any ideas on why this is happening/suggestions on how to fix?

In the mean time, will try to export separate alembic files...

windows>packages manager> Packages: Unity Registry> install alembic

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.formats.alembic@2.2/manual/index.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS_r-AvGG8w

window>sequencing>timeline

[hamsterHamster · Accepted solution]

Afaik, shouldn't be too long, once you have your sim cached.

Also, I'd use alembic for clothes only, the character still can be be exported as FBX.

Besides, see what are cloth sim options within the Unity itself, as doing asset this way makes it quite inflexible.

[yyumii]

Hi, I played around with cloth simulation in unity first but had too many issues before switching to maya. I will try make almebic file for just the clothes then and exporting rigged swing and rigged character separately. then to combine them together in unity, i would just need to position them so that they line up with eachother? thanks for your help

[hamsterHamster]

Depends. If you baked the character in its own space, then it is fine to parent it to the swing rig, the swing board itself. However, if in the world-space, then just line up, otherwise your character will fly away within the swing space.