baking ncloth animation (maya 2009)

I'm trying to bake out ncloth animation so I can export as FBX and import it in another app (specifically XSI). I found this thread but it was never actually answered.

I've tried edit->keys->Bake simulation, but that just seems to plot keys on each frame, and it makes it so I can delete the ncloth node (which means shapes are being stored somewhere), but the shape manager is empty too! If I try to export the baked cloth out as an FBX it comes into XSI with all of the frames, but no animation (as expected from mayas shape/graph editor). Anybody know how to get this baked out so I can export to FBX with animation?

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hrm, actually I just realized that FBX doesn't support shape animation. Guess it's time to get a point cache going

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AFAIK you can bake it by using the ControlPoint option in the Bake Box - baking each points position into an animation curve - it will be slow, or depending on the density of your cloth, very slow. But I have done this a few times to get stuff into Houdini from Maya.

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"It was just a dream, Bender. There's no such thing as two!"

I am also trying to bake my nCloth simulations so that I can export my cloth object (in this example a cloak) to another Maya file so that it can be merged with existing animation and then hopefully be rendered…

I have tried your point method Thomas but had no luck, or am I not doing something correctly?

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Ta ta for a bit...
http://www.gazzamataz.com

I am not sure what you mean by "no luck" - essentially if you bake the animatino you should have an animation curve per vertex. Then exporting and importing, particularly in maya should be trivial - where does it go wrong and how?

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"It was just a dream, Bender. There's no such thing as two!"

If you use the regular geometry cache instead of the nCache and export using FBX it should import fine into any application that uses a recent-ish version of the FBX SDK. I have gone between Maya and Houdini like this a number of times.

OK, this is what I do:

Select the nClothShape1 (the Current Mesh not the Input Mesh) and then go to the Edit>Keys>Bake Simulation options box. I leave everything as it is except control point which I click. Once it has baked the keys I then go File>Export Selection (using default settings) and save it as a *.mb file.

Then I open up the Master Maya file and import the *.mb object (default settings) that I just exported.

Is this the correct method?

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Ta ta for a bit...
http://www.gazzamataz.com

When I did a test object this method worked. In my actual scene I am using a reference object and that is where the fun starts…

It don't seem to work with referenced objects!!!

I will have to import my object, transfer the animation from the referenced object and then export it - that should work

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Ta ta for a bit...
http://www.gazzamataz.com

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