Maya Animation Events in a JSON file

Coding
1

I’m looking right know to create a tool to export a json file with with animations events like in unity.
Do you know a base python tool to start or example to start?

I found this tool that it could be as start, but just wondering if you know more about this topic
Thanks in advice!

2

What do you mean by animation events? The actual exporting to JSON will be ultra easy since python has a built in JSON module and can easily dump and load JSON. A python dict is directly translatable into a JSON object with that module, and most basic data types map 1:1 to JSON data types.

you can populate a dict with data and dump to json like this.


import json


with open('MyFilePath', 'w') as file:
    json.dump(myData, file, indent=4, sort_keys=True)
3

Thanks passerby for your reply!

I want to set in the timeslider a tag / flag in some of the keyframes and then export the frame number + the string tag / flag in a json file
Do you know what I meant?

4

Ya I can see what I can make up as a exemple tonight

5

I usually create an animcurveTU for a given event type and then mark an event for each key in the timeline on that curve.

6

Thanks passerby I really appreciate it!

I got the thing working, but now I have a little issue.
I’m using the json.dumps to write the file, but It writes a string


json_data = json.dumps( { 'frames' : self.frames, 'comments' : self.comments } )
            print json_data
            json.dump( json_data, file, indent=4, sort_keys=True, separators=(',', ': ') )

and I get this:


"{\"frames\": [63, 5, 98], \"comments\": [\"damage\", \"start\", \"end\"]}"

Do you know why is writting in a wrong format?
As far as I know should be like this:


{
    "frames": [
        63,
        5,
        98
    ],
    "comments": [
        "damage",
        "start",
        "end"
    ]
}

Thanks in advice guys! :slight_smile:

7

try this,


import json


frames = [
    63,
    5,
    98
]

comments = [
    "damage",
    "start",
    "end"
]

with open('c:/file.json', 'w') as file:
    json.dump({'frames': frames, 'comments': comments}, file, sort_keys=True, indent=4)

the separators you added was messing it up, also json.dumps creates json and returns it to a string. Which you would have to manually write to a file. json.dump creates json from the given object like dumps, but also takes a filestream to write the data to instead of returning as a string. Your not meant to use both of them together, but to choose based on if you want to dump to a file stream like i did, or dump to a string.

it can be read back into python like this.


with open('c:/file.json', 'r') as file:
    jsondata = json.load(file)

print jsondata
8

Thanks man!
Yes, I realized the problem with the json.dumps. Now it´s working.
I just changed the json.dump({‘frames’: frames, ‘comments’: comments}, file, sort_keys=True, indent=4) and it works like a charm!

Thanks!!