I use Maya to create my animated character. Strange thing happened. I use rigid binding for my character, the animation seems find but when exported to egg file, the character stands still and does not animate at all. However, I try to use smooth binding for my character and the character animates correctly but a longer time to load the animation. Is that a problem of the exporter? Or a limitation of panda3D? Thanks!
The failure to support rigid binding is most likely a limitation in the maya exporter. The problem is that maya is so incredibly complex, there are probably 50 ways to create an animated character. The exporter only supports the most common methods.
As for the egg file taking longer to load: that’s probably because it actually contained an animation. 
The other one didn’t.
If you’re concerned about load-times, be aware that panda’s egg file format loads very slowly. Panda has another file format, bam, which loads a lot faster. The disadvantage of bam file format is that each bam file is only compatible with the version of panda that created it — whereas egg files are compatible with all panda versions. So usually, what people do is use egg files during development, and then they convert to bam when they release a game.
There’s also a mechanism built into the latest version of panda that allows panda to automatically cache a bam file for each egg file loaded. To enable it, you have to add "model-cache-dir " to the panda config file. I’ve never tested this feature myself, so I can’t vouch for it. It’s brand-new.
Your insight solved the problem haunted me for three weeks! Thanks again!!