Maya Collada Animations export

Hi

I’m really struggling to export just a simple animation via collada.
I have no problems exporting a mesh and texture out that seems to work fine.

has anybody actually managed to export out animations from maya using the collada export?

I’ve been trying for quiet a while now but with no success, and from looking on other forums it seems I’m not the only one struggling.

Is it actually possible?

I running Maya 2008 on PC with Collada plugin 3.05B
I’ve installed CG Toolkit 1.5
and I’ve used both PVv3d Preview v1.1 and installed the necessary components to be able to import and preview from flash.

Is there something I should be aware of and I’m not doing?

Please give your feedback its frying my brain!!!

Cheers

Wayne

I’ve had success using clips. A different clip for each animation.

That’s good to know. But how are the Clips set up? do they sit in visor, or in the trak editor? So I need a character set. Do the bones need specific names?
I’m going through the same problems. I can export everything Mesh, skin, bone, texture) but the animation.

Also are there certain settings to have when exporting. I’ve managed to have an object move after an export but it wasn’t following the animation I’d made, and was only tracking the root bone. The rest were unaffected.
This happened when I left the animation on the skeleton, No clips, no character set.

Sorry if I sound rude, but it’s been doing my head in for the past few days. And there is no documentation on how any collada exporter works. :smiley:

I might be able to help, I recently got animated models working from collada data, although mine came from max, the maya exporter is very good and should provide all the info you need.
The older collada exporters had a “[] Export clips”, like check box under “Animation” when exporting. Not sure about the newer OpenCollada exporters but they should have it too or something similar.
My code was translating just the root bone at one point while I was writing the animation code. I assume youre writing something to load Collada models, I dont have that problem now so I might be able to help if you can share a little about what point youre at.
I havent used <animation_clip>'s yet but they seem to indicate which <animation>'s go together to create what we would call an animation. <animation>'s in collada store frame data, and many <animation>'s together seem to make a single animation.
My COLLADA files only contain a single animation so the only contain a single <animation_clip> and the model. I pull out just the animation, and write it to my own file.
I dont store all my animations in one COLLADA or max file in case something happens, file corruption, etc.

Hi!
I have a question about your animation issues,
I have no problem for load meshes and textures but is currently impossible for me to load animation, i compared my collada file with oldest and i don’t find the node <library_animations>, i don’t know why because i check the same parameters for the export.
I use maya on mac, 2010 and 2011 version with the plug-in 1.4.1 for collada’s export.
If you have any idea about why it doesn’t work and why i don’t find this node in my collada, i’ll be glad to know :slight_smile:
ps : this is my parameters for export
bakeTransforms=1;relativePaths=1;copyTextures=1;exportTriangles=1;exportCgfxFileReferences=1;
isSampling=1;curveConstrainSampling=1;removeStaticCurves=1;exportPolygonMeshes=1;exportLights=0;
exportCameras=0;exportJointsAndSkin=1;exportAnimations=1;exportInvisibleNodes=0;exportDefaultCameras=0;
exportTexCoords=1;exportNormals=0;exportNormalsPerVertex=0;exportVertexColors=0;exportVertexColorsPerVertex=0;
exportTexTangents=0;exportTangents=0;exportReferencedMaterials=0;exportMaterialsOnly=0;
exportXRefs=1;dereferenceXRefs=1;exportCameraAsLookat=0;cameraXFov=0;cameraYFov=1;doublePrecision=0

Hey All,
I’ve since been using and exporting Collada for a few months now. Even though I’ve found an exporter for Maya 2010 it doesn’t export animations properly. Mostly it’s a fluke if it works. So I’m using Maya 8.5 for all my modeling and animation, and have been putting together a guide for the other artists I work with.

To export an animation from Maya 8.5:

Set up your mesh and skeleton per normal, rig the mesh and create a character set with the joints.
From here you can create all your clips, and use them in the traks editor.

Our workflow here uses clips exported as .ma files on a character.

For the animation you want on your model, open the mesh with its rig and character set, but with no animations on it.
In traks editor import the clips to the character set and lay them out (or blend them) as normal.

Delete any non-essential meshes (for our compiler we are only allowed one mesh per collada file) and select export all.

I was using export selected, but you need to select some hidden nodes, exporting all ensures that everything related to the animation is exported.

Here are the settings I use on export:

Tick the following…

Default file extentions
Preserve references

Bake transforms
Relative paths
Triangulate

Polygon meshes
Lights
Joints and skin
Animations
Invisible nodes

Normals
Texture Coordinates
Per-vertex Colors

Set mode: Excluding

Export References
De-Reference

X-Fov
Y-Fov