Maya: Exporting out Collada files

Coding
1

I am trying to make an exporter that saves out a scene hierarchy and exports the meshes in a scene as separate collada files. Yes, I know: Collada is crap - but the engine only takes this format I am afraid.

I’ve worked with FBX exporters before so I know the drill for exporting out objects.
But when it comes to the Collada format I am confused. I’ve tried both the file -command (with the type flag set to “DAE_FBX export”) and I’ve also tried the FBXExport -command and neither seem to spit out any DAE files for me.

Using pymel.core.FBX* (pymel.core.other.FBX*** in PyMEL 1.7 and earlier)**

pm.mel.FBXResetExport() # Then I run a couple of commands to setup the settings for the FBX plugin, like: pm.mel.FBXExportFileVersion(v="FBX201600") pm.mel.FBXExportColladaTriangulate(True) pm.mel.FBXExport( s=True, # selection f=export_path, # fullPath - directory, file name and type specified, ex c:\dolan\duk.dae caller="FBXDAEMayaTranslator" # Makes the damn dialog appear )No files output. Batch export gets stuck because the dialog appears and Maya then complains about “the dialog is already open”. But even if I export a single primitive, no file is generated. The only collada-related FBX -commands I find are:

FBXExportColladaFrameRate
FBXExportColladaSingleMatrix
FBXExportColladaTriangulate

Using pymel.core.cmds.file

options_string = "model=1;animation=0;material=0;optimisegeometry=1;normals=1;tangents=1;colorformat=2;colorsets=;uvsets=$map1$;" pm.cmds.file( force=True, options=options_string, type="DAE_FBX export", preserveReferences=True, exportSelected=True, )Does not work nor does it generate any errors. The only thing that happens is that some warning pops up in the “Warnings and Errors” -dialog:
“Warning: ‘Null’ type not supported by COLLADA. Only the transform data of node: ‘cylinder_grp’ will be saved.”

Not sure how to progress here as the FBX documentation is utter crap…

CLUE:
The wrong dialog appears. It’s not the options dialog for the Collada format that appears but the usual FBX options dialog. This happens both with the pymel.core.FBXExport() -case and the pymel.core.cmds.file() -case.

2

So this works for me with just a sphere selected.

cmds.file('%userprofile%/test.dae', type='DAE_FBX export', pr=True, force=True, exportSelected=True)

From what I understand the DAE_FBX exporter will open up the usual FBX export dialog, it just happens to included the collada section. I don’t believe any of the FBX options actually do anything, at least they did not change the options being passed to the file command.

If you need a more robust exporter you should probably look at the OpenCollada exporters available for max and maya. It’s been nearly a decade since I had to use these, so I can’t directly comment on easy of use.

3

Thanks for the reply.
I got it working with pm.mel.FBXExport()
I noticed that I had forgotten to specify the file name +extension for the fullPath -flag. Strangely enough the FBX plugin gives you NO warnings, errors or complains about it - it just silently refuse to output anything for you (isn’t that awesome)! So I added the file name and I was able to export the objects. However they default to the FBX format (also silently). You have to explicitly provide the .dae -file extension in the path. Once that has been done, Maya will export out the files as dae.

4

Awesome, glad you got it sorted.

Odd that it wasn’t throwing any errors though, but then again, even the errors I was getting weren’t exactly useful.