from Maya to MB - what the?#!$*

[Grenal]

I don't understand exactly.

He jumps off his skin when he comes back into Maya or still in MB?

[donvlatko]

look where is your pivot of mesh,if it's not in origin than put him.,,hope it work

[anopheles]

I know I have asked this a million times:

When I export a Maya model into MB with the newest fbx plugin, the
Character is so small, then when I want to scale the Character up,
he stays that small and only he "moves up" in the Y Axis.

Is there a node which I can put the correct scale settings on, so he gets
actually scaled!

Thanks

[Grenal]

MB 6 has a bug in it which defaults the scaling properties for each item to something wierd.

You need to select your entire heirarchy and go into the Properties window and switch one of the scaling properties to RrSs (or something like that, one of them is correct)...

[donvlatko]

did you try to frezz to scale 1 1 1 also do same with transfor model?

[cgtriguy]

Before you export anything from Maya you need to make sure you have forzen all your transforamtions as well as delete all the history from the objects. You need to plan for this while you are modelling/skinning your character because deleteing history will remove the skinning you did. You can use the "delete nonskin history" from the skin menu. I was having similar issues until I figured this out.

[mttjss]

thanks all, but I think cgtriguy is on the right track.

I know about deleting history and freezing transformations.

I save out my character in fbx format to open in MB.

When I open the character file my character is stretched like it is being deformed .

It basically looks like a big M shape - the character is completely deformed and it was perfect in Maya. If I get a chance I will attach pics - my teacher says it might have to do with the weights so I may have to go back, delete history and then re-paint my weights.

arrrrgh!!

[cgtriguy]

I noticed that I had some weighting issues as well. How many influences did you allow for the weighting. If I set this too low then I would also have a similar problem. For example if I set it to 2 then my model would come in ok but it would deform unpredicably but when I set it to the default (5) all was well.

Sorry to hear that you may have to reweight your model though. What a pain in the arse. Before you do that make a really simple model and test out the weighting and such with that before you go reweight anything too complex and waste more time.

[electrobus]

MB 6 has a bug in it which defaults the scaling properties for each item to something wierd.
I had similar issues with scale and deforming of geometry.
"This is because by default, Maya's working units is set to
centimeters whereas Motion Builder's is set to meters. To correct this, in
Maya, you will need to create a character reference node that Motion Builder
can use to offset the scaling of the character. You can do this by
selecting the top node of your character and do a Edit > Group. Then rename
it something like "CharacterReferenceNode". When you import the character
into Motion Builder. Characterized the reference node as shown in the
referenceNode.jpg attachment. Then Motion Builder will create a control
reference node on your character which you can select and scale your whole
character to your preference." - Thank you Glen, from Alias

[anopheles]

okay,

here a video of my problem:

export the model
import it
dropped the characterize node onto the ref node, still nothing to select from:

http://david.nemesis.geekcamp.org/images/user/david/Unbenannt.avi

please look at it ...

when I now scale my obj nothibg happens, it just moves up
... where are those "tweaks"

[anopheles]

here my hierachy:
http://img273.imageshack.us/img273/8743/unbenannt12du.jpg

[anopheles]

Hi
Kind of frustrating all of this, can't just someone help?
Grenal where are you??? All those Maya MB Gurus ...

Here another Video that shows my scaling issue:


http://david.nemesis.geekcamp.org/images/user/david/scaling.avi

after a LONG I figuered it "out", well not really still have problems:

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/787/leg5ke.jpg

As you can see in the Image above I managed to get a "Refernce" Node into MB hat to make a CR first ... where is this "reference node" thing documented?

The Problem:
Do you see the deformations of the feet ... weird, by the way: I had to change the parenting of the horns and eyes to the second head joint ... but the deformation ...

Another thing I noticed: Why does my Background get black?? I'm using the Maya 6.0.2 plugin ... please please please please please help!

Thanks Guys!



EDIT:

Okay solved the deformation problem, here what I have:
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/3383/tetstsa1ig.jpg

A nicely scaled Character, but those boxes, so hudge! How can I get them smaller, also when I put on Forward Kinematics a hudge yellow "thing" goes over the character.
Any suggestion scaling my character properly?

[Grenal]

The scaling issue works like this...
Grab your entire heirarchy, go to the Properties window and under Type set it to "All", then you should see Transformation Options and set it to Parent.

The camera turning black when you Import from Maya is just that it's taking that property from Maya. Every camera in Maya defaults to have a black background. (This one I could be mistaken about...)

The Feet Floor Contacts thing has to do with the older issue of your character being so small in MotionBuilder. Just scale them down and move them into position.
I have noticed a HUGE thing, however, when it comes to the Floor Contacts; When you have a tiny character like that, and you don't set them up properly because you don't want to use them, even when they're turned off they affect your characters feet. I think this has messed up a lot of people coming from Maya...

The big yellow "things" are your FK and IK markers for the Control Rig. Again, you can select all of them in the Schematic view by holding down Spacebar and Right clicking on the top node, going into the Properties window and changing the "size" value.

Best thing to do in the future; Actually create your model in Maya (or rescale it) to be real world size. If your ogre in 8 ft', make him 8 ft' (or 243.84 cm!)

[anopheles]

Thanks man!

All of your tipps helped, the best one was the last one!

Always scale/build your character in the right side, then you save alot of time!

The one thing I also learned is that you have to freeze transform your ref node
before skinning! (You can't freeze transform on skinned nodes)

[anopheles]

Okay, now I'm about to put some "expressions" on my character, I will first do some basic expressions with cluster and then later blendshapes for talking!

I have a problem with the maya clusters (this has been asked alot of times on this forum but no one can answer)!

Okay whenever I create a cluster in maya and export it over to Motionbuilder the cluster get
the 000 cordiantes as location! I tried to reset the transformation + freeze transformation on the cluster in maya but that didn't help either (it only made the pivot point onto the 000 coordinates), so is there a way to always set it to the original coordinates?

Thanks!

need some pics ask me

EDIT:

Tried out some blendshapes! Everything works fine, even in Motionbuilder!

But I'm missing the "generic pane" to go in and say "95 % of the mouth blendshape should go onto the generic mouth" - It's just not there! Only normal expressions!

EDIT:
found something http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?p=2449772

EDIT:
I just found out that you can't export meshes with a ramp texture on them! The UV's get
kind of screwed up! Is this normal?

EDIT:
Here my first little animation:
http://david.nemesis.geekcamp.org/images/user/david/anim.avi
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/9973/untitled12mq.jpg

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