nice job Steven, always glad to see more info on tool data path stuff. Maya with layers now makes the FBIK system really powerful for doing editing work.

This was very helpful. Thank you for this...................

Dylan you can bake and export your camera switcher data as one camera. Just right click on the camera switcher in the navigator and select Plot to new camera and your good to go. As far as scaling goes, please check the autodesk website to make sure your Maya .fx plugins are up to date. It sounds like you may have a versioning problem.

best,

Brett

Thanks Brett. Yes as far as I know you should be able to bake animated cameras in the same way I baked the multiple still shots in the demo movie. Have you tried this?

Also... I believe Brett means .fbx. Check to see that the Maya plugin is the most recent and try test the scaling issue again.

Nice!!!

Seems like Motionbuilder and Maya finally work together. Next step is to merge them into one software )

Thank you very much for the great tutorials on this site! Keep on going!!!

Hi. I stumbled upon this excellent 2-part video tutorial. I am very impressed with how MotionBuilder can add efficiency to the workflow. Just a further question though - is it possible to have the assets segregated & bring it all together into a final Maya file? In this demo, the assets came out of the Maya file, were manipulated then that manipulation was fed back into the same Maya file. Is it possible to have a rigged character each in their own Maya file, bring that into MotionBuilder, then feed that further on into the final scene? I think that if it's all based around the same Maya file (as shown in the demo), then workflow bottlenecks can occur.

If what I've described is possible, can at least one demo of these 2 tools together touch on that subject please. For a graphical representation of the segregated workflow I'm trying to describe, I knocked up this:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v647/DaveLock/WorkflowExample.png

Thanks!

DaveLock - Yes you can definitely do what you are describing. In fact is is a more common workflow. I just included the environment for the sake of the demo but it was not necessary to have it all together in this way. More commonly one would just bring in a simplified version of the env as a visual reference for blocking out the animation. The anim would then be merged with the hires env later back in Maya.

Thanks so much for the speedy answer, very much appreciated.

Thanks also for the feedback that a segregated workflow is possible (& more common). I realised you had set the demo up the way it was to make it easier to demo, but I was curious as to how it translated to a more linear workflow. Thanks for the explanation.

In my previous post I meant to say (2nd para) "can at least one future demo of these 2 tools together (Maya & MB) touch on that subject (segregated assets workflow example) please". It would be excellent to see a video demo of a simple workflow with segregated assets such as we're talking about, done by the gurus. I've read on the net of some issues people have had (not necessarily with Maya) trying to use an approach of using externally referenced characters within their env scene & difficulty trying to get rigs to work etc, so to do all that char animation function in MB & then bring it all together with the env (whilst still being able to alter everything at any time) makes alot of sense to me.

BTW, my opinion (as a bit of feedback) is that I hope MB isn't merged into Maya, Max etc. They are better to stay separate. I much prefer the approach that Autodesk seems to be taking of making the main software elements independent, but having them communicate & interact better. That, together with deals like your entertainment bundles to make the main tools more affordable, is the way to go IMO.

Keep up the great work Autodesk!