Maya to Unreal Scripted

Wrote a tool (that's still name dependent somewhat) that strips the rig clean out and baked anim on the bind rig, etc. Nice and tiddy. All things appear smooth. I have no excuse now not to have a character running around in game by Friday. I had an FBX issue that held me up over the weekend, that was fixed with an update on Monday.

in case you've been wondering

I've been on my UDK blog more than here. http://agentfxudk.blogspot.com/ I'll still come back here in a bit I've got some ideas and new tutorials to do, so sooner or later there will be a bunch of updates.

Success Rig & Anim import working!

I baked the bind rig, and deleted all constraints in the bind rig. Deleted the anim rig, then went through the DAG nodes and deleted everything expect the skin clusters and anim curves. (In future tests we'll figure out what specifically needed to be cleaned out) but as it stands now I even deleted bind poses (despite the warnings on FBX export). 

couple of things, when modeling in maya if you duplicate and mirror, meaning <<1, 1, 1>> mirrored to <<-1, 1, 1>>> it will reverse the normals on import. So either reverse the normals in maya on those pieces or freeze the scale transforms on the objects (maybe built into the rigging system) 

Also was getting some jacked up binds in Unreal with geo being offset from some joints (the left arm in my case). So I reset all joint rotations to <<<0, 0, 0>> at frame 1 (not keyed, just set manually) and exported all. That worked. 

Export selection never seemed to work, hence me having to really clear everything out. 

Pollock Run Cycle

Pollock Run Cycle Unarmed from destruct007 on Vimeo.

First pass at a run cycle. New rig, and first test animation. I referenced the rig into this scene, and quickly did this animation. I couldn't get it to bake down either in FBX export process or in "Bake Simulation". I'm going to talk to a TD friend of mind at work and see what can be done to get this character to import into Unreal.

Pollock Rig Walk Through

Pollock Rig Walk Through from destruct007 on Vimeo.


Just a video walk though of the rig from the character pipeline we're working on. This rig in this state doesn't import into Unreal, so thats the next step. Scripting a bake/export process. 
Josh spent 2 hours setting this up in the character pipeline, and I spent 2 hours painting weights. 4 hours from Character Model to Animation with this level of control (no facial rig).


Have a look at this awesome rig!

Re-modeled for rigging pipeline

First thing we needed to do to pipeline the character process is rename the objects. 

(side)_(part)_rez

ie. c_body_mid, l_wristguard_mid

Then came the first set of changes needed for the pipeline to work with the actual model. After fixing this and getting the rig back I can see some objects will need to be merged, and more resolution in the shoulder/arm connections. But those changes can wait until after its working in unreal and more game play has been developed. 

UV Mapping in Maya Tutorial

Its crazy how easy it is to UV map in Maya. I never knew this tool was added, the "Unwrap" tool. I've been UV'ing the old scholl way and its slow and painful. This is crazy fast and easy.
Thanks to Sergio Santos for pointing me in the right direction.

UV Mapping in Maya from destruct007 on Vimeo.