Animation from XSI

[chromecity]

I don't know anything about XSI, but how's its FBX (MotionBuilder) export? That might be a way to go.

[fuat]

importing cam-data from lightwave is no problem, so i think should go well with xsi, too.
good luck.

[Creature]

FBX is the way to go. There is a fbx exporter plugin for XSI but you need to make sure that it's the same version as the fbx importer in Cinema. I can't tell you what the versions are from the top of my head but there is a more recent exporter for xsi than the importer of Cinema (something like Cinema's got Version 6.0 and XSI exporter is 6.2. You need to make sure to get an exporter version 6.0 to match the import version of Cinema).

Then it should work rather well.

From my experience it is better to split your XSI file in smaller parts if you've got a lot of animation going on. So for example you export each object seperatley and keep the fbx files small and simple. That helps to reduce export/import glitches.

For Camera-Animation I found it really helpfull to create an Upvector-Object. That helps to align the camera the right way and avoids gimbal locking if you've got a lot going on in the rotation curves of your camera. Just add a Null to your scene in XSI, parent it to your camera (so that the Null is a child of the camera), locate it at the axis of your camera (0,0,0 in local space) then move it up so that the Null is above the Camera in Y-direction. Now plot the global position of this Null. After plotting finished un-parent the Null from the Camera. When imported in Cinema use the Null as the Upvector of your camera.

And one final tip - plot all animation in xsi before exporting. Efficient f-curves with few keys and heavy useage of custom tangents tend to not come through correctly. So plot all your animation to give you a key for everything at every frame. This way you'll get exactly the right animation. Downside is of course that you can't edit the curves in Cinema very well.

Edit:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=8230669
Here you can find FBX plugins. There doesn't seem to be a Softimage Plugin V6.0 so I'm guessing 6.0.1 works. I got my XSI/FBX plugin from that page so I'm pretty sure one of those is working for xsi>cinema export :)

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