After Effects Live Link fail

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I just installed Maya 2018 as a trial and I'm using Adobe After Effects 2018 (Version 15, build 180). My problem is the After Effects Live Link is not transferring Maya content correctly at all.

I created a new Maya scene, added a Torus, opened Live Link on both programs, and dragged the torus object from the Maya Outliner to the Maya Live Link window.

In After Effect some link has been made but it creates what appears to be a 100x100 empty solid. This happens regardless of what I drag to the Live Link window.

It appears to only transfer "pTorus_Location" which is also strange.

This is very frustrating given my recent experience of instantly and easily working with Cinema 4D files in After Effects.

If anyone is willing to help, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thank you!

[Anonymous]

For those that come across this in the future, I was under the assumption the content and data were transferred to After Effects, somewhat similar to how Cinema 4D Cineware is integrated directly in AE but it does not.

It seems odd there isn't more information or a response at all on this given the push towards a motion graphics workflow, especially to AE.

[sean.heasley · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous and welcome to the community!

Unfortunately I don't have access to Adobe After Effects so it can be a bit tough to troubleshoot this issue.

That said, this is an in depth video on using live link in Maya with After Effects and it may help you out!

Please let me know if this helps or if you need any more assistance!

If one or more of these posts helped answer your question, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

Kudos are greatly appreciated. Everyone likes a thumbs up!

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Just wanted to check in to see if you were still having this issue. Did the video I provided yesterday help solve your issue?

If so, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

[diemobarz]

I had the same problem. I realised that the camera rig I had was scaled. when I parent a copy of the camera to the original and send this one over to AE via live link everything works.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I am having similar problems - all I see is a red 2D bounding box in AE that shows the location of the 3D object [but not the actual 3d model].

This very frustrating, so any help would be appreciated!

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Does my above solution not help you?

Can you please post some screenshots and/or some more additional information on your issue?

[Anonymous]

"Yes, I am having similar problems - all I see is a red 2D bounding box in AE that shows the location of the 3D object [but not the actual 3d model].

This very frustrating, so any help would be appreciated!"

It's misleading because on other AE integrations you'll see the live model but in the case of Maya, you're simply going to get the location data and not much else.

Illustrator and AE have direct integrations with another 3d software company (AE has the lite version of it) so there's real time manipulation rather than adding 3D in after the fact.

[Anonymous]

Hi Sean, thanks for your reply - I still haven't worked out why my setup is not working. I still only see 2d bounding boxes in AE ( I expected to see some 3d).
I attach screengrabs of both the Maya scene and AE scene (the camera is looking at three spheres).

Any help would be appreciated,
James

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Just to make sure you aren't missing any steps, here's a video breaking down exporting to AE that may help you!

Please let me know if this helps or if you need any more assistance!

If one or more of these posts helped answer your question, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

Kudos are greatly appreciated. Everyone likes a thumbs up!

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Just wanted to check in to see how things were going. Are you still having this issue?

If your issue is resolved, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

[Anonymous]

Hi Sean,
Somehow I missed your last reply - I still have not resolved the problem unfortunately.

Thanks for your help, but I don't think this helps me. Can anyone confirm that the new Maya / After Effects Live Link can take polygon models across OR is it only locators and cameras?

So far, I have only seen locators and cameras being exportable. Does the workflow require 3D models to be imported into AE and attached to the [Maya exported] locators? I only see red squares in position of the 3D models in AE  (please see attached screengrabs in my last post).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

James

[diemobarz]

Hi James,

indeed the AE-Maya live link only takes location-, size- and rotation values across the platforms. You still have to render your scene in Maya. You can add motion graphics in AE on top. 

My personal opinion: 3D rendering in AE sucks (slow and chunky). Rendering your 3D scene in Maya is by far the more professional and flexible approach.

Hope that helped.

[Anonymous]

Hi Diemobarz,
Thanks for your reply confirming that the Maya Live Link does not take through any 3D models - I found the Maya and Adobe advertising misleading with regards to this (I've been using Maya + AE for a long time, but thought this was something more powerful!). It makes sense though because there are so few tutorials on real-world use of the Live Link!

[tps_orders]

I can find the Autodesk Live Links add on anywhere. My After Effects Extensions only show color themes. There is no link for Maya. Maya does have the After Effects live link. I'm starting think this may be discontinued.

[sean.heasley]

Hi all!

Adobe contacted us that something was missing in our plugin installer on their store so they redacted it. Our devs are currently looking into what is wrong and are working on a fix asap!

[Anonymous]

I just downloaded Maya, and it will not link with After Effects. I tried downloading the plugin, but the plugin seems to be missing. How can I find the plugin?

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

As I stated above, the plug-in currently isn't available.

Our dev team is working on fixing the plug-in and making it available asap.

[Anonymous]

Hi I'm curious to hear if this issue has been resolved and whether the plugin works now.

Thanks and regards,

A

[PhilRadford]

I would like to know what is happening with the Maya to AE livelink workflow too. I have been trying to fix this for ages now. Maya will send the data over to ae but there seems to be a time/frame interpolation issue between the softwares. Either Maya or AE have an issue either exporting data or interpreting data between one another. You can try to offset this in AE by a frame or 2 and momentarily all seems fine but then the frames start to become more and more offset.

In contrast to sending a camera and object/null information to AE trying to send AE camera data to maya is also an issue. I spent some time trying to work this out and eventually have found the issue. I made a video of this here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9ktKSCt-RQ . So this video shows that if both maya and ae are set to the same frame rate there is still an offset issue. The work around is to change mayas fps to 24fps if ae is 25 fps. This is just for sending a camera to maya not the other war around which is another headache altogether. But it does show us something important and that is that something is broken and that the functionality isn't working and must be fixed as there are hundreds of Maya artist trying to use this and giving up. This needs fixing but more importantly having someone at Autodesk actually look at this properly and troubleshoot it like I have been trying to do. A link to some videos on how to start a live link wont do unless the videos are current and using latest versions of both maya and ae.