Maya Animation - Script - Rig Model?

[AnnAngel Qinan]

       Hi everyone! I have maya and I wanted to start making animations for second life.

A while back I remember there was a script that allowed you to export the poses/animations from maya to second life. But now when I search the interwebs I only find dead links. I was wondering if anyone still had preserved that script file? Also, I was wondering what other things are necessary to create animations in maya?

[Chosen Few]

abbloch.com/slmaya

 

Be sure to read the directions.

[Medhue Simoni]

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AnnAngel Qinan wrote:

       Hi everyone! I have maya and I wanted to start making animations for second life.

A while back I remember there was a script that allowed you to export the poses/animations from maya to second life. But now when I search the interwebs I only find dead links. I was wondering if anyone still had preserved that script file? Also, I was wondering what other things are necessary to create animations in maya?

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First let me say up front, I don't know much about animating in Maya. Recently, I had to download the trial version and I'm not all that inclined to ever open that program again, despite wanting it for a very long time.Unless you can find a good rig in Maya for SL, I think you are just going to be using the basic animation tools in Maya, which kind of means that it's not much better than anything you can get for free to animate with. I could not even find a way to import a bvh and retarget the bones in Maya. If you are very experienced with Maya, and can make your own rig, throw all of what I said out the window.

Personally, I've been very impressed with DazStudio, even tho it does lack a couple features that the high priced programs have. To me tho, it more than makes up for it with other features that are just made so well, that it makes animating a joy. Heck, as far as I know, Maya doesn't even have a basic copy and paste of a keyframe. Plus, DazStudio is free, and can import any Poser model, which is what the default SL avatar is. Of course, these are just my opinions, which probably doesn't mean much.

[AnnAngel Qinan]

   Thank you guys so much! This is exactly what I needed!

Wow SL forums are so wonderful, such accurate and fast responses!

[Chosen Few]

Medhue, I'm sorry to hear you didn't get very far with Maya.  I know you're a very capable animator, so I have no doubt you'd do very, very well with Maya, if you were to invest the necessary time into learning how it works.  It would make the things you're already doing much easier, and it would open up a whole new universe of possibilities for things that aren't possible with your current tools, things you may not have even ever thought of before.

The only catch is that the initial learning curve is quite steep.  However, one of the most beautiful things about Maya is that its governing logic is so amazingly consistent that once you do absorb the basics, the more advanced stuff is right there for the taking.  Once the logic of it gets in you, it all becomes EXTREMELY intuitive.  It just takes a bit of dedication in the beginning to get there is all.

 

With that in mind, if you're interested, allow me to address the specific concerns you mentioned:

 

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Unless you can find a good rig in Maya for SL, I think you are just going to be using the basic animation tools in Maya, which kind of means that it's not much better than anything you can get for free to animate with.

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All you really need in order to create SL animations is the avatar skeleton, and there are plenty of those floating around.  It's also super easy to make your own.

As for what tools to use, the full power of the entire program is at your disposal, no matter what rig you're using. I'm not sure why you might have thought otherwise.  I guess since you haven't really used it yet, you haven't had opportunity to adjust your thinking to Maya's very unrestricted way of approaching everyhing.  I hope that will change.

 

Someone on this forum once said using Maya for SL purposes is like cracking a nut with a planet.  That's about the size of it. There's virtually nothing it can't do.  (I even did my taxes in it once, no joke.)  The parts of it you'll use for your SL endeavors are just a tiny fraction of its full capabilities.

 

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

I could not even find a way to import a bvh and retarget the bones in Maya.

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Maya used to come with a BVH import plugin, but it no longer does.  To do it now, you just need to run a script, or install a third party plugin.  There are loads of them out there, many for free.  If you Google "Maya BVH import", you'll find tons to choose from.  

BVH export was never an off-the-shelf function.  BVH was originally developed for motion capture.  The assumption at the time was that you'd be pulling data into Maya from a mocap suit or something.  Nobody considered that you might one day have cause to also spit that same kind of data back out. There wouldn't have been any point in that, back then.

But not to worry, just because Maya doesn't inherently know how to do something doesn't mean it can't be taught to do it.  Again, Maya's capabilities are practically limitless.  The answer to just about any problem is usually no more than a script or a third party plugin away.  These days, most of the available BVH scripts and plugins that you'll find for Maya will handle both import and export.

 

As for retargeting, Maya's tools for that are quite easy to use.  In recent versions, they've made it even easier.  And again, there are additonal scripts and plugins you can add, for even more functionality.

There's also MotionBuilder, which is a companion product, also made by Autodesk.  Retargeting is one of its primary functions, so it has a lot more bells and whistles built in for that than Maya has by default.  Maya will certainly do the job, though.

 

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

If you are very experienced with Maya, and can make your own rig, throw all of what I said out the window.

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You don't necessarily have to be very experienced to make your own rig.  Really, any newbie can do it, once he or she has learned the basics.  Plus, as I said, there are lots of pre-existing SL avatar skeletons available.

 

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Heck, as far as I know, Maya doesn't even have a basic copy and paste of a keyframe.

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Oh, it certainly does.  In fact, it's got about a dozen different ways to do it.  The most immediately available method is simply to right-click on a keyframe in the time slider, hit Copy, then right-click on another frame, and hit Paste (or Paste Connect, depending on what you're trying to do).  More advanced, more powerful, methods include the use of Maya's various animation editors, which I have no doubt you'd find yourself drooling over, once you learn what they all are, and the things they do.

Just so you know, oretty much anything can be keyframed, by the way.  That means not just typical character animation stuff like bone rotations and such, but also just about any aspect of any item, even things you wouldn't typically assiciate with animation.  If it exists, and its adjustable in any way, it's keyrframable. This has implications for modeling and textuirng (as wel as lots of other things), in additon to just animation.

For SL animations, bone rotations are basically all there is, of course.  (Cracking a nut with a planet, again.)  I just figured it was worthy of mention that there's more out there, if you want to go there.

 

 

It sounds to me like the problem you had with Maya is the same problem I constantly try to warn people about.  You put the cart before the horse.  You went in looking to try to figure out how to do a specific thing, rather than just starting at the beginning, and letting the learning happen.  The only truly effective way to learn Maya is to forget all about whatever it is you think you might want to know, and just open up wide, to absorb the program's fundamentals as a whole.  Whatever you might have thought you were looking for will be there, as a part of that whole.  If you try to skip to extract just one thing, it's not going to work, no matter what the one thing happens to be.  When it comes to learning the basic fundamentals of Maya, it's all or nothing; there is no in-between.

I do hope you'll give it another go.  From some of the conversations you and I have had on the forums, I think you'd love it, once you get into it.

[Chosen Few]

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AnnAngel Qinan wrote:

   Thank you guys so much! This is exactly what I needed!

Wow SL forums are so wonderful, such accurate and fast responses!

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You're welcome, Anne.  Happy animating.

[Medhue Simoni]

Oh, I'm sure you are totally and completely right. As you can probably tell by now, I've never been formally trained in any program. I just get something and stick my head in it and start playing with stuff. I kind of had a clue of what Maya can do because I've just seen so many different things made with it. Amazing things, but all by huge teams putting the magic together. The reality is, I got the trial because I need to adjust a rig that I only had a MA file, and I needed a specific set to in a dae, or fbx file to get the rig into my mocap system.

The is why I mentioned BVH too. If it could import BVH then I won't even need a rig for my mocap system, I'd just import the bvh files. Then, at least I'd know I could export the proper dae with Maya, cause the creators of the platform I was playing with used Maya. I guess I still got about 20+ days to seek out those scripts you mentioned.

Motion builder is another 1 that I really want. I've played around in 3ds Max's animation system for years, and I know my way around most of it, but in my opinion, it's a pain in the ass. Really tho, what seems to be kind of obvious when you seen a bunch of these different program with just enough knowledge to understand the lingo and some of the interfaces, is that all these programs, and I mean all the most expensive, seem to go out of their way to purposely make things more complicated than they needs to be. This format and that format and this file and that file, which only work with this version. It gets down right ridiculous, lol.

Now, I can't say that I have any appeal for Poser, but it does handle about anything you would every need to convert. All the parts are there to animate somewhat easily. if you get used to the whole camera system. I just hate the whole set up and UI. To me it is just so slowly painstaking at times. Now Daz, Ok, we are getting into a whole different category of programs with Poser and Daz, but this is more my area. These program can't do even a fraction of what something like Maya can do, but what the do do, they do very well and easily. It is difficult to jump from those and into 3ds Max and Maya with all their controls and thingy mabobs. And creators of these things think of it all as an art.

Me, I just want a figure that is well built with IK and lets me animate it. Just give me a good IK. I guess I'm just starting to realize that I'm not getting any younger and I gotta start picking my poison and stop spending all this time trying to learn it all. LOL. I've like spent the last couple of years playing with like 8 different complex programs, instead of just animating, which is the only part I actually enjoy, LOL

Cloud Party is why I got the trial Maya. Now they have mentioned that they will probably be looking into a bvh importer for that world. This makes me very happy, so I probably won't be spending too much time in Maya, I should give myself a day or 2 on it before the trial expires, just for the experience. OMG, tho, I just have so many things all going on at the same time. Thanks for the incite into Maya tho.

 

[Ichago Dougall]

You might really want to look at motionbuilder someday. It is the bread and butter imo of working with motion capture. Working in the story window ghost mode makes it easy to rotate the animation to make it face the right way if its off center.Then you have the Butterworth filter, it by itself can make this program worth it. A combo of smooth and butterworth applied in the right places and you will clean your mocap files in a fraction of the time it takes with slat/poser/daz ect. If you ever have the chance to play with it, then I suggest giving it a try. The 2012 and 2013 versions have the ability to go back and forth from motionbuilder to maya with the click of a button.

[Medhue Simoni]

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Ichago Dougall wrote:

You might really want to look at motionbuilder someday. It is the bread and butter imo of working with motion capture. Working in the story window ghost mode makes it easy to rotate the animation to make it face the right way if its off center.Then you have the Butterworth filter, it by itself can make this program worth it. A combo of smooth and butterworth applied in the right places and you will clean your mocap files in a fraction of the time it takes with slat/poser/daz ect. If you ever have the chance to play with it, then I suggest giving it a try. The 2012 and 2013 versions have the ability to go back and forth from motionbuilder to maya with the click of a button.

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Yes, I have heard much of this and most definitely will be looking to get it when I have the cash to spend. I just have no reason to race to buy it because the IPI mocap system that I use has all that stuff built into it's program. I've used it since the program was first released to the public and even submitted bug reports for the SL skeletons and others to IPI. So, I really know how to use it and when I export the final mocaps, they are way smoother than any mocap I've ever got my hands on. Having such a clean mocap to start with makes a huge difference when you get it into an editor. Motionbuilder does sound like it could be that 1 program with every possible animation feature. I do tend to find myself jumping from program to program just to use those specifc features because they seem to do that the easiest and fastest. Having it all in 1 program would rock!

[Ichago Dougall]

Cloud Party is why I got the trial Maya. Now they have mentioned that they will probably be looking into a bvh importer for that world. This makes me very happy, so I probably won't be spending too much time in Maya, I should give myself a day or 2 on it before the trial expires, just for the experience. OMG, tho, I just have so many things all going on at the same time. Thanks for the incite into Maya tho.

 

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Was talking to Fitz in Cloud Party, he mentioned that the mesh skeleton he was playing with was animated by imported bvh. I didnt have time to ask him more about it as I had to run. I do not know if he was beta testing the feature or if it was released yet but it looked good for a key framed animation. I think this world holds promise, you are in game within seconds if you use your facebook account or even just anonymous. Though anonymous is limited in what you can do heh.Plus the tutorial is pretty well done and you get a free house after you complete it, win win. Most sl mesh creators will be importing within moments since its dae files same as sl. They just use triangles instead of a prim count ect.

[Medhue Simoni]

Yep, I completely agree. I was just there the other day and saw an announcement about changes to the avatar. I'm assuming this has to do with bvh uploads, in some way. When they first opened, I was in there the first few days, and was pretty vocal about having direct bvh uploads, not that any1 would actually listen to me. To me though, this is just obvious, considering that bvh is the standard for motion capture and every mocap system in the world exports to bvh.

[Tia Biscuit]

Hi All,

I've just tried to put that shelf into maya as per instructions from that link of goodies Chosen gave. 

http://abbloch.com/slmaya/

Unfortuantely it didn't work. Says its compatible with maya 7. I'm on Maya 2011. If anyone else as a working maya 2011 compatible bvh exporter please could you post it here... unless I've done something silly with what Chosen has supplied?

Much thanks

Tia :-) 

[Orion Fhang]

FYI - after doing some digging through the forums I came across a couple of mel scripts which seem to work for importing / exporting bvh files. 

 

http://circle.twu.net/progs/bvhexport1_5.mel

http://circle.twu.net/progs/bvhimport.mel

From:

http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/52/7d/42181/1.html

 

As for getting the models to work, I'm a bit of a beginner when it comes to Maya in general.  Modelling is easy, but I'm still tinkering when it comes to animations.  Although I'll say this, compared to Poser the UI and navigation on this thing is a god send!

 

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