Let me explain.  I have a series of 11 unique animation videos I am producing.  The opening scene has two characters which are walking along a path with one of them doing most of the talking.  I’ve set up the scene with lighting and created all of the necessary render pass and layer information.  For each unique animation the only thing that changes is the character doing most of the talking simply has a slightly different script that he has been lip-synched to.  I am working with another animator so that individual has the original maya character scene sans, final lighting, render setup etc. He is creating the 11 unique lip-synchronizations for the videos. All I want to do is import the animation on that character for each of the 10 unique videos (the 11th is the original master copy that I’ve done the final lighting and render set up with) and then apply my render setup to crank out each of the unique passes.  I have to believe this is possible but I’ve never done it before.

"Yesterday is History, Tomorrow a Mystery, Today is a Gift, Thats why it’s called the Present”
Kung Fu Panda

Maya 2012, PFMatchit, Nuke, Modo 501, CS5
Win 7 Pro 64bit
i7 x980 3.3Ghz, 24Gb Ram
Quadro FX3800 Driver 8.17.12.5896

theres a few ways of doing that, all depends on the simularities between the rigs (controller name etc).

if you mean that yourself and the other animator are animating different sections of the same rig (one doing face and lip sync, the other works on the body) then its even easier.

personally i prefer to use this tool -

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/animation/c/paie

its fantastic if you use it right.

this way you are directly (almost lol) copying the keys from one rig to another identically named one (besides namespaces).

so select all the face controls from face anim file , export it out, reselect (in the same order) the facial controls on the body animated rig and paste :)

another way (which i personally have had more issues with, but its still widely used and decent if handled right) is to use character sets and anim clips.

select you controllers, create a character set from them, then in the trax editor, create an animation clip, save it out, create a character set again (good practice to select controllers in the same order again) then import the clip.

hope that helps.

Lee Dunham | Character TD
ldunham.blogspot.com