I am currently learning rigging and was wondering if it was possible to transfer the rig to max for animation. I will have a custom rig I have a feeling it might be a bit complex. I can see transferring via FBX even, can cause problems. But the posts I read are from 2009-2012. Have those problems been solved? Is there a tool that I can use to make things easier?
You can transfer a skinned mesh, skeleton joints and possibly the control splines/objects. You will not get the constraints imported you will instead get the basic child/parent hierarchy. The FBX export from Maya will generalize as much as it can, so it will not be the same scene you exported from Maya depending on the specifics. You will get a much greater compatibility between Maya and Motionbuilder but even there you will not get 100%. The usual compatibility charts all seem to be offline, below were the best I could find quickly.
Maya FBX document.
This is the best I could find for 3dsmax
http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/troubleshooting/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-88149DC1-D912-4E12-A1B1-CAC76B7E89DA-htm.html
Thanks for the info Randall, but this seems too much for me right now. I guess I will not transfer the mesh to max… I wish the transfer was easier though… How do big studios do it? Do they even do it?
I guess it would be possible if you manually wrote a script for it. You could write a MEL script which outputs a notepad file or whatever with a list of bone positions, constraint types and stuff for the whole rig. Then you could write a MAXscript file which takes that notepad file and then follows its instructions to manually rebuild the whole thing…
…that would take aaaaaaages though. (Maybe there’s a ready made script online somewhere?)
If you’ve already animated it in maya and you just want to light/render it in max, you could export the geometry as a point cache.
Thanks for the reply [user]Twiggy[/user]!
I just wish this process was easier. :\ I guess I will be using maya all the way…