How to bake an animation

#1

Hey guys, ok so im trying to bring an animated character from lightwave in to cinama 4d, whats the best way to go about this? I heard that you can bake the animation then bring the character in, how do you do that? Sorry im a real newbie with this any help would be great cheers!!!

#2

hi, try using a plugin called ‘fbx’
it is a export / import plugin for both LW and C4D.

there are some threads on it,
the download page is located here,
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=8224901

it does have limitations, documented in the .pdf manual, but if it is a simple straigh foreward animation it should work.

#3

So now you have to give all sort of personal information to get this plug in? ugh, gotta love Autodesk.

#4

at sites like that I usually just type some bs, and download.
works in 80.3% of the cases…

#5

Hey, don’t complain, it’s a miracle they still have all that stuff up for downloading without buying platinum maintenance.

#6

I havn’t touched Cinema 4D in a very long time, but I’m quite sure it can load LWS and convert bones into its own “format” on loadtime. At least it did that years back.

#7

thanks for the replys! yeah I tried doing the scene file but the Ik system didnt work it made everything go very wierd. il try this fbx thingy, do u still need to bake the motion? and how do u go about doing that?

#8

IK won’t transfer with the current FBX version of LW. If you bake the IK inside of LW, you should be able to open the scene directly in Cinema 4D. DStorm has a very, very neat tool for baking IK. You simply hit the button and it will globaly bake ALL IK-driven items between the selected frames. When finished the baking, it will remove all IK from the items. Very handy! The first baked frame will look really whacky (bones flying all over the place) so make sure you bake one frame before your actual animation starts, so for example if your animation starts at frame 0, bake from -1.

http://www.flay.com/GetDetail.cfm?ID=1546

#9

I love u…

#10

Hi,

I tried to bake out an animation (particles) several times in Lightwave, but it doesn´t really work in C4D. I dont´t know what I did wrong or maybe I should better say, I don´t really understand the process “baking”??? or how can I bake the motion.
First I opened the “Graphic Editor” and baked all channels. It seems to me right, at least it did something … but I´m not sure …
Another problem is the file format.
After I had baked my motion I tried to save my file as an .mdd file, but I couldn´t find the option "save as or export as an .mdd file. How can I find .mdd files or can I use an alternative?
I´m so sorry, but I have never baked out an animation before, I´m totally a novice in this field (baking).

I hope someone can help me.

Many thanks in advance!

#11

Hi,

I’m not sure you can transfer particles from LW to Cinema. LW uses .pfx for particle caches, which you create in the ParticleFX menu. Select your emitter and go to the dynamics tab. Click on ParticleFX and go to the File-tab and you should find the saveoptions there. I really suggest you read the manual, because I’m quite sure it’s described there. MDD is a vertexcache which only works with polygon meshes but is supported by several other applications through PointOven.

#12

Many thanks for your answer. I will try this and hope I can figure this out …

#13

I think the idea is that if you’ve baked your channels, you should be able to load the LWS scene into C4D without the IK (ie. you’ve baked the keys, so IK is no longer needed)

MDD is used to record vertex deformation information. (Not needed if your animation is all keyframed from baking). If you want to ‘bake’ out the model geometry, then attach the deformation plugin MD_SCAN to record the .MDD file.

Good luck! :smiley:

#14

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