I agree with Alan, in my experience Crosswalk is probably the most reliable format to transfer animation from Maya to Softimage.
But If I haven't misunderstood you, you don't want to convert Mel scripts to VBS/JS/Python + SI SDK, you want to convert Maya Ascii files to Softimage without using Maya and I don't think that is possible without coding your own tool. Raffaele said it could take days of hard work, but I think that is only if you have vast experience with both packages and programming skills like him, otherwise it could easily take months. And for that you would still needing Maya to test and research. I think it would be easier and cheaper to get or borrow a Maya license and use Crosswalk. You could try a Maya trial version to test your workflow. For these cases, it would be great if you could rent Autodesk's packages like you can with Adobe's. Sometimes I need 3DS Max for a couple of months but buying a Max license just isn't worth it. Martin On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 8:18 AM, Raffaele Fragapane < [email protected]> wrote: > Maya doesn't make it easy either thanks to a staggeringly retarded > descriptor of the FCurves. > > We did write such a thing (something to move curves seamlessly and below > the float precision threshold between Soft and Maya), and in the end the > only way to propely re-interpret from or to Maya was a large hash table for > some elements like the handles. The Maya SDK doco and Devkit examples don't > help either since they largely revolve around exporting animation (a plot), > not FCurves, sidestepping entirely the problem of sparse animation with > higher order data. > > In Short: It's not quite trivial, and it's a gigantic pain in the ass that > takes a handful of days, not hours, to write. > > > On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 7:28 AM, Stefan Kubicek <[email protected]>wrote: > >> Converting a Maya ASCII file (I suppose this is what you refer to as >> MEL?) to a softimage scene is very hard to do, there are some concepts in >> Maya that don't translate well over to Softimage. For simple animation and >> Polygon Meshes it should be a bit easier, I thought about writing a Maya >> ASCII reader for Soft, but demand wasn't really high so I never dug deeper. >> >> Try baking your animations first before exporting the fbx file, and make >> sure you have checked the animation export flag in the exporter settings in >> the first place. >> >> >> >> As far as I saw there is the possiblity to modify the python script in >>> order to be read from Softimage...but programming is not my thing... >>> I was just looking for animation to transfer over SI ( basically the >>> scene >>> is some animated nulls ) >>> >>> >>> 2013/8/25 Alan Fregtman <[email protected]> >>> >>> No, there isn't. It'd be a good learning experience to try making one >>>> though. :) >>>> >>>> Do you expect a full 1:1 conversion of MEL to the Softimage SDK? Or just >>>> for animation to transfer over? >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 11:23 AM, Nicolas Esposito <[email protected] >>>> >wrote: >>>> >>>> Hello there, >>>>> I'm currently testing a software to expand my pipeline, but the main >>>>> problem is that currently it only supports Maya scripts as export ( >>>>> MEL ) >>>>> I succesfully exported the MEL script from Maya to Softimage and >>>>> everything is working properly ( however don't know why in FBX the >>>>> animations are not recognized, while with Collada .DAE files >>>>> animations are >>>>> ok ) but I don't own Maya, so: >>>>> Is there any kind of converter for Mel scripts in order to be read from >>>>> Softimage? >>>>> Something like Mel to Python/FBX or something similar... >>>>> >>>>> Cheers >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >> >> -- >> ------------------------------**--------------- >> Stefan Kubicek [email protected] >> ------------------------------**--------------- >> keyvis digital imagery >> Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3 >> A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien >> Phone: +43 (0) 699 12614231 >> www.keyvis.at >> -- This email and its attachments are -- >> -- confidential and for the recipient only -- >> >> > > > -- > Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it > and let them flee like the dogs they are! >
