Egg animation in Maya

General Discussion
1

Q1: I tried to use mayaeggimporter to import egg animation file into Maya but failed. No animation seems to be imported - even when the animation is boundled with the model (only model is loaded, no erro message). Is anyone know what the problem is?
Q2: I made an amination for my character and exported with seperate egg files. I found that when the animation is displayed, the character is translated down a little bit and the animation is distorted. I use roaming ralph as my testing example. Do I need to modify something in the code? Thanks!!

2

Q1: The mayaeggimporter, and the egg2maya command line program (which use the same code), don’t currently convert animations. Converting animations into Maya from some other animation package is a difficult task, especially because the egg syntax doesn’t represent animations in the full generality that animation packages do–once it’s been converted to egg, all you get are the per-frame transforms of each joint. It’s rather like importing motion-capture data into Maya. It can be done, but what you’ll end up with isn’t something that will be easy to edit.

Q2: No idea what you’re referring to. If playing an animation shifts your character, it must be that the animation itself is shifted.

David

3

Thanks for the answer of Q1.
In Q2, the situations are illustrated as belows:

Animated character at starting point.

Character is moving with his lower body sinking into the ground and exaggerated leg motion.

Actually, in my maya file, the character is moving with a small step. Here is the mb file:
http://homelf.kimo.com.tw/tyreal315/new.mb
The model and animation (frame 1-120) are exported seperately into two egg files. I use roaming-ralph example code without doing too much modification except the lines

        if (len(entries)>0) and (entries[0].getIntoNode().getName() == "terrain"):
            self.ralph.setZ(entries[0].getSurfacePoint(render).getZ())
        #else:
        #    self.ralph.setPos(startpos)

I have another question about animation from Maya to egg. I made a simple skeleton animated model (I am new to Maya). When I put it into the scene, the character can only translate but not animate at all. The mb file is here:
http://homelf.kimo.com.tw/tyreal315/dreamWalk.mb
I tried to export the mesh and animation together or seperately, it still didn’t animate. Got any idea?

4

It’s probable that the animation problems have nothing to do with the Python code. You should try playing the character together with its animation in pview. If it it animates incorrectly in the same way there, then you know it is just a conversion issue.

Are there any error messages when you apply the animation?

Unfortunately, I am unable to download your Maya files for investigation, since I only have Maya 6.0; and I have little experience with Maya besides. Can anyone else with Maya experience lend some advice here?

David

5

What joints were selected when exporting it ?
You should select the root joint only, and the other joints attached to it will be converted too.
If you have some animated sticky IK handles, you should select them too, I guess, I haven’t tried it though.

6

I have tried to select the joints (including IK Handle) but still didn’t work - even if I exported it with the entire scene. Does any one can provide a simple Maya skeleton animation mb file that works fine after exporting to egg?