Issues with FBX Animation

[AverageAce]

Hey guys,

This is my first post here so sorry if I'm posting in the wrong section, but I have an issue with importing FBX animations from Maya.

When I import animations from my FBX scenes, the animations are cut off before they are finished and do not include any of the rotations I added to them in Maya. I have followed video tutorials AND the FBX animation pipeline provided by Epic, but I can't figure this out. I have also tried toggling off the "Anim Rotation Only" box but to no avail.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Ace

[jameskyle]

I'm not sure what your issue could be, having rarely encountered any Maya->UDK animation problems. I can give you some links that might help, as it does sound a little like the FBX export process might be incorrect somehow.

Generally my workflow is as follows:
* Select mesh and root joint and run a export selection script I found on an excellent blog (link later...)
* Select Export Selection... and check through my export settings to make sure everything is right. I've created a preset so all I need to do is change the frames to export.
* Import to UDK without any problems.

The only time I've ever had an issue is when my mesh was on the root of the Outliner hierarchy and the joints were parented to a NURBS circle (the circle was on the Outliner root also,) leading to the circle to export and cause UDK to flip the animations 90 degrees. :/

Anyway, here's the links I mentioned to the tools I use to get everything out of Maya successfully.
jbUDKTools: It has a export option that never seems to work for me, but is great for ensuring everything is consistently scaled.
You already probably know about this site.
A great thread on tech-artists.org on the subject of Maya to UDK export.
For your convenience, the blog post with the useful script I was talking about.

With these I was able to get my animations out of Maya okay. I hope these help.

[AverageAce]

Sweet! Thanks, James. I'll check those out. Reading your thread made another question pop into my head. What should I be keyframing in Maya? Should I be animating the joints, or the mesh itself? Because for the last couple of meshes I've been animating the Root joint.

[TroyMcClure]

You want to be animating the joints/bones themselves. When your Mesh is properly skinned to the bones, then it will also deform/move as well. Also you might want to try baking your animation keys to the joints before exporting.