Re: Porting to Maya
1. I mostly do characters for games. Used to do animation too, but not lately and I've only done one project that involved this Maya-Softimage workflow with animation. We had to port characters animations made in Softimage to Maya and baking transforms and exporting in FBX was good enough. Now that I remember, the Maya rig wasn't "compatible" with the Softimage one so I had to write a few things to constrain the Maya rig to the FBX, bake to the Maya rig, and delete the original FBX data. Doing manually for all the characters would have been a nightmare. 2. The Softimage data had RGBA. I'm not sure how Maya handles Vertex Color because I only found how to get a vertex color through a vertex, not sample, so it may be giving me the average RGBA values. I just tried again, with an FBX that has some vertex color rotated. Selected 1 vertex, get the RGBA values : 0.37, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0. The Alpha value was already in 1.0, but if I set Alpha to 1.0, it fixes it. 3. I meant UV as in samples inside the UV editor, not Texture Projection. And with merge I meant something like heal. In Maya there is no "Tearing mode", but cut and merge. In Maya you need to have at least 1 UV Set (Texture Projection) called "map1", and this will be the default UV Set any texture in any material will use. So if you renamed your Texture Projection in Softimage to "map1" before exporting, this will be the primary UV as default. If you didn't then Maya will create a map1 and all your objects will have 1 more UV Set and it will a little troublesome to fix. So, be sure you have a map1. If you want to select which UV is going to use a texture, you can do it in Maya too through the UV linking editor tool. So you can have for example multiple objects using the same texture (and material) using UVSet "map1", and only one of them has multiple UVs and is set to use UVSet "map2". As always in Maya, you don't have this option anywhere near the texture node or object node, but in a totally separated "Relationship Editor" in your Windows Menu. Traditional Maya workflow. 4. Maya doesn't have Neutral Pose. Joints have something similar called Joint Orientation where you can have an angle in your joint while having different rotation values. You can Freeze your joint to set your rotations to 0, and by doing that the old rotation values will be merged with the orientation values. But you can't do the opposite (without coding). I mean, set your orientation to 0 to get your rotation value back, why do you need to do that ? No idea, but I've been asked to do that sometimes. Normal Transform nodes don't have this orientation attribute and they would need an additional transform node as a parent to have this double coordinate. If you export in FBX a Softimage object with Neutral Pose, it will be exported as 2 nodes. If it was a envelope deformer (bone, null) with Neutral Pose, you will have 2 joints in Maya. 5. I haven't done much rigging in Maya other than simple characters a few times, so It's been more like a try and error without too much researching. I can't really remember exactly but trying with a few nodes in the Node Editor worked for my needs. I haven't done any complicated though. 6. In one Softimage project, we had Maya designers doing it, so it was kinda the opposite. The bones (nulls) in Softimage had ICE expressions to the elbow, shoulder, knees, etc. Export to Maya through FBX and recreate the ICE expressions to simple Maya expresions. It worked fine and the Maya designers could see the deformations just like they were in Softimage. When sending the data back to Softimage, we only used the Maya meshes and their weights with the Softimage bones. 7. Since we do mainly characters, the workflow is always similar in one project. So for the first character it can take me a day to modify my scripted workflow to the new project. And a few more days to tweak it and make it more efficient. After that, the conversion is a matter of minutes, unless you have some unexpected error or mistakes. In the project I was talking in the 6th point, it was just a few minutes to execute a few scripts. The main script consisted in cleaning Softimage data, renaming to map1 and those things, create a Maya project folder, copy textures, export to FBX, open it in maya batch, run a mel script to clean it up, fix materials, texture paths, and all that can be automatized, and save as .ma ( I don't know if it can be done in Python instead of mel, but I couldn't make it work back then ). For Maya to Softimage exactly the same but in reverse, using xsibatch. Nothing too complicated but saved a lot of time with that. After that conversion there isn't really much to do but check if everything is ok and tweak a little. And a few scripts to export only weights or point position (for blend shapes) to be readed in Maya. Martin On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 12:27 AM, Matt Lind wrote: > thanks, Martin. > > A few follow up questions: > > 1. What kind of animation are you baking?
Re: Porting to Maya
thanks, Martin. A few follow up questions: 1. What kind of animation are you baking? (e.g. besides transforms, what parameters are supported?) 2. Vertex colors - I think Maya expects RGBA values. If you send only RGB, then that would explain the 'rotation' of values as the Red value of the 2nd polygon node will map to the alpha channel of the first polygon node (face vertex) Maya is expecting. And then ripples to all the latter nodes as well. 3. UVs - what do you mean by 'merge' UVs? You mean like 'heal' as it's known in Softimage? or do you mean put all the UVs into a single texture projection? Also, how do you handle the case of multiple objects sharing the same material, but with different UVs on their respective geometries? Example: 3 objects share the same material and phong shader, but the image node driving the ambient and diffuse ports of the phong shader references a different set of UV coordinates (texture projection) on each of the 3 objectsbecause that's the only way to do it. How do you replicate that setup in Maya? Same question for materials applied to clusters which are shared across multiple objects. 4. Neutral Pose - what is the technical equivalent of a neutral pose in Maya? Are the neutral pose issues specific to .fbx? 5. Constraints. What constraints do you need most (besides position, scale, orientation, direction, and pose)? After rebuilding your constraints in Maya, how do you handle cases where multiple constraints applied to the same object affect the same attributes? Example: in Softimage, applying 2 position constraints on the same object results in 2 position constraint operators being applied to the object. In Maya, applying 2 point constraints results in one point constraint operator with 2 inputs being blended. When more constraints are applied to the same object, additional nodes, such as a 'pairBlend' node, may be inserted to resolve the conflicts. How do you control/organize the logic of how the constraints are applied (e.g. what is Maya's logic for determining whether to insert a pairBlend node vs. plugging another object into the input of the constraint operator?) 6. Expressions. How important are expressions to your needs? What features of Softimage expressions do you need most? 7. How much time does it take you to finish your work after it is imported into Maya from Softimage? Minutes? Hours? Days? Matt Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 13:30:34 +0900 From: Martin Yara Subject: Re: Porting to Maya To: "Official Softimage Users Mailing List. I've been using that workflow for a few years. Softimage to Maya, Maya to Softimage. Mainly for character modeling and animation, shape animation. I scripted most of it. Softimage Script -> FBX -> Maya batch with a Maya Script. Works pretty fine, but it has to be a little customized depending on the project. It can be done in one click, and the part that takes the most time is the FBX conversion. 1. Modeling (including bones, weights, all except rig), Animation (baked and using 2 compatibles rigs in Softimage and Maya). 2 and 3. Lots of things, and I'm sure a lot of them you already know, but just in case: - Vertex Color. Usually if you match the FBX version to the Maya version it will export fine. The problem is Softimage only has FBX 2015, so exporting to 2016 didn't work very well sometimes. We were doing a Maya 2016 project and exporting to FBX caused the Vertex Color to be "rotated" like the old FBX UV problem. Weird enough, if I clean the mesh by export / importing to OBJ, copy weights from my old mesh and other things before exporting to FBX, it usually works fine. But even more weird, importing this bugged FBX into Maya, and setting the Alpha Channel to 1.0 fixed it. Yeah, I don't know why. - UVs. You have to rename at least your main Tex.Projection to map1 before exporting or it will get messy inside Maya. And merge all UVs in Maya once imported, because all your UVs will be separated. Selecting All UVs and merge them with a very low threshold value works fine. - Materials. Depending on the Maya version and how complicated your Materials are you will have to rebuild them. And obviously fix the texture paths. Delete Scene Material. - Delete Neutral Pose in Softimage before exporting or you will have an extra locator or bone. - Unlock Normals. When you import into Maya, the normals will be locked, and if you don't unlock them before doing anything in your mesh, your normals will get messed up pretty quickly. - Remove Namespaces in Maya. - Just in case, check that the weights are normalized. I don't know if that is normal, but I had a few problems with this so I normalize everytime I import into Maya. - Vertices numbers are the same. So if you are using shape animation with different objects, then it will be easily exportable with a custom script, just write the points positions and load them in Maya without having to use FBX everytime. I did it with JSON and OpenMaya. The same with w
RE: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots
What you mention here resonates well with my findings so far. Even a lot of the tools and functionality I see implemented from Softimage in later versions of Maya tend to be Mayarized, ie. packaged up in the nonsensical way of having to open several windows from submenus to submenus, instead of the direct context sensitive way we know it from Softimage. I guess this is in order to not break the workflow the large Maya userbase is accustomed to, but it provides a poor UI experience. After 2+ months of Maya transition I think I have only found one feature where I think Maya shines: Inserting edgeloops + to some degree the way the Arnold RenderView is implemented. The rest is pure rubbish. Granted, I have not delved far into modeling yet, and from what I read it is quite strong, but that remains to be found out. Not a happy camper - Morten > Den 9. oktober 2017 klokken 13:32 skrev Brent McPherson > : > > > That is definitely part of the problem. > > Existing customers become accustomed to the multi-step workflows (many which > have been there from the beginning) and so these basic workflow issues don't > tend to get logged or mentioned but they are more obvious to customers > migrating from another software package. > > When I worked in Maya modeling we definitely paid attention to the > small-annoying-things-to-fix-in-maya and the ideas-for-maya forums and would > address items that aligned with our goals for a particular release. > > https://mayafeedback.autodesk.com/forums/160518-small-annoying-things-to-fix-in-maya-forum > https://mayafeedback.autodesk.com/forums/160514-ideas-for-maya-forum > -- > Brent > > -Original Message- > From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com > [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Morten Bartholdy > Sent: 09 October 2017 11:59 > To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. > https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_xsi-5Flist&d=DwIFAg&c=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA&r=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA&m=UFigILe-df1wqnzGj84aTEiN_Sft6gzmozB3_XN3m7c&s=I5HvOi-JHRkYG59rNeIrGKW3vrCD4Ep1gVKjClkonlE&e= > > Subject: RE: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots > > Well I think there is no doubt Maya was groundbreaking at the time, and given > that the Sumatra team was delayed by the Digital Studio efforts, Maya was the > new software chosen by a ripe market. It is just sad to see how bad Maya > still is so many years on, compared to the smooth workflow in XSI. > > I have our Maya people proudly showing me absolutely lame unintuitive > multistep workflow solutions to really simple tasks which would take one > click, or a hotkey, interaction and be done in Softimage. It is mindboggling > that professional developers have come up with so many counterproductive > workflows, but I guess it is testiment to the genius of the Softimage core > dev team. > > Morten > > > > > > Den 6. oktober 2017 klokken 17:09 skrev Steven Caron : > > > > > > I an pretty sure Brent helped ship Maya 1.0... so maybe he isn't sane > > or a 'Softimage man'. > > > > :P > > > > > > *written with my thumbs > > > > > > On Oct 6, 2017 7:45 AM, "Morten Bartholdy" wrote: > > > > Being a former Softimage man, I'd peg you as at least a lot(!) more > > rational and logical than the other species of software dev's ;) > > > > Morten > > > > > > > Den 6. oktober 2017 klokken 14:30 skrev Brent McPherson < > > brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com>: > > > > > > > > > Huh? Where did you get the impression I'm sane! :-O > > > > > > -Original Message- > > > From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com > > > [mailto:softimage-bounces@ > > listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Morten Bartholdy > > > Sent: 06 October 2017 13:05 > > > To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. > > > https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__urldefense.proofpoint&d=DwIBaQ&c=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA&r=GmX_32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA&m=V2nXQ3LG2UuEiHAogrnDPhrDLjwmCkcpQWPX6XWupKE&s=Y0s_WCJw-nDfifXu4dvib4QqgFhVRUhRoIr2QWXEpCg&e= > > > . > > com/v2/url?u=https-3A__groups.google.com_forum_-23-21forum_ > > xsi-5Flist&d=DwIFAg&c=76Q6Tcqc-t2x0ciWn7KFdCiqt6IQ7a_IF9uzNzd_2pA&r=Gm > > X_ 32eCLYPFLJ529RohsPjjNVwo9P0jVMsrMw7PFsA&m=dpzgBs0ngbUSd3U7joA_ > > ugvV0VgBSdVPrZXoO0vZ_no&s=twFHsPAQtXj39VNITMISNu4qszGa7y4LhcRk3Q06k00& > > e= < softimage@listproc.autodesk.com> > > > Subject: RE: Maya - What were they thinking 3 - pivots > > > > > > Thank you Brent. It is good to hear at least one sane person is > > > working > > on Maya development ;) > > > > > > Morten > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Den 5. oktober 2017 klokken 15:54 skrev Brent McPherson < > > brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com>: > > > > > > > > > > > > I added bake pivot as it was frequently requested by Softimage users. > > > > ;-) > > > > > > > > If you want to look behind the curtain it is implemented by
