Animation

Extra Options

Expand this section to view additional import options

Animation Take

Displays the current animation take in the FBX file.

• If no animation take exists in the file, the field shows a No animation message.
• If several animation takes exist in the file, the currently selected take is displayed in the field.

You can change the selected take of animation by selecting another take from the menu. The Maya FBX plug-in lists all available takes of animation contained in the file.

Note

You can only select and import a single take of animation at a time.

Fill Timeline

Activate this option when you want to update the application timeline by the animation range in the incoming FBX file. “Animation range” refers to the first and last keys of animation contained in the file.

Bake Animation Layers

When the Bake Animation Layers option is active, the plug-in collapses all layers into the base layer. If you disable the Bake Animation Layers option, all the layers in the FBX file will be imported.

Optical Markers

Activate this option to convert optical markers contained in the file into dummy objects on import.

If you disable this option, the import process ignores this data.

Optical markers normally come from motion capture data, as a cloud of animated points or markers. The Maya FBX plug-in does not import the animation as the data type is incompatible. However, the Maya FBX plug-in converts optical data into a cloud of static null objects in Maya.

Tip

If your optical data originates from MotionBuilder, you can set the state of all optical markers to Done in MotionBuilder which lets you import the animation data as curves in Maya.

Quaternion Interpolation Mode

Use this option to convert and resample quaternion interpolation into Euler curves to ensure interoperability.

Resample as Euler interpolation	This is the default conversion setting for quaternion interpolations . This option converts and resamples quaternion interpolations into Euler curves to ensure interoperability.
Retain Quaternion Interpolation	This option retains quaternion interpolation types during the import process. Tip Use this when you import animation that has quaternion interpolations. This is only compatible with applications supporting this interpolation type, such as Autodesk MotionBuilder. Also, the resulting animation is not identical since quaternion evaluations are different in Maya and MotionBuilder. Use the default (Resample as Euler interpolation) option in order to obtain visual results identical to your animation in MotionBuilder, or other applications.
Set as Euler Interpolation	This option lets you change the interpolation type of quaternion keys to a Euler type, without resampling the animation curves themselves. Tip Using this option results in the same number of keys, set as Euler types. The visual result will be different since it will now be evaluated as a Euler interpolation. Use the default (Resample as Euler interpolation) option to obtain visual results identical to your animation in MotionBuilder, or other applications.

Protect Driven Keys

Activate this option to prevent any incoming animation from overwriting channels with driven keys. Maya has special driven keys that link one attribute value to another object attribute. These keys are exclusive to Maya and are not supported by FBX. When this option is active, the Maya FBX plug-in prevents the disconnection or overwrite of attributes that use driven keys.

If the option is active, the driven keys are protected and no incoming animation is applied to the driven channels.

If the option is not active, the driven keys are discarded and the incoming animation is applied to the driven channels.

Deforming Elements to Joints

Activate this option to convert deforming elements into Maya joints. This option was originally provided because Maya did not support locator elements (that is, transform nodes that are not joints,) within a joint chain.

If this option is not active, all elements other than joints being used to deform are converted to locators. See Cluster import for information about cluster problems.

Update Pivots from Nulls

Activate this option only when you import older (pre-MotionBuilder 5.5) FBX files that contain an animated joint hierarchy, for example, an animated character.

This option lets you assign the rotation transformation of the null (or joints) elements in the hierarchy that are used as pre- and post-rotation to the joint orient and the rotate axis of the original node.

The pre-rotation and post-rotation nodes are then deleted. Older files created with the Export Pre/Post Rotation as Nulls option are merged back to the original Maya setup.

Geometry Cache File(s)

Activate this option to import FBX-exported geometry cache data during the FBX import process.

The Maya FBX plug-in generates three files when you export Geometry cache files using FBX:

• an FBX file
• an XML file
• an MCX file

The plug-in stores XML and MCX files in a subfolder named after the FBX file and has the suffix FPC (_fpc).

For example, if you export a scene containing a cube named pCube1 to the FBX file myTest.fbx, you create the following files:

• myTest.fbx
• myTest_fpc
• pCubeShape1.xml
• pCubeShape1.mcx

Deformed Models

Activate the Deformed Models option to import Skin and Blend Shape deformations.

You can choose to import Skins and Blend Shapes specifically by expanding Deformed Models to access individual options. You also have the option to Pre-normalize weights. Pre-normalizing weights normalizes the weight assignment of skin deformations so that smooth skin weights add up to one.

Skins

Activate this option to import all skin deformation into your scene.

Blend Shapes

Activate this option to import all geometry Blend Shapes into your scene.

Pre-Normalize Weights

Activate this option to normalize weight assignment.

Constraints

Activate this option to ensure that certain supported constraints contained in the FBX file are imported into Maya.

If this option is not active, no supported constraints are imported.

FBX supported constraints include:

• Point
• Aim
• Orient
• Parent
• IK handle (including Pole Vector)

Skeleton Definitions as

Select the Skeleton definition to include (FBIK/HumanIK/None) in the file on export. This can be useful if you are transferring to MotionBuilder, which also supports characters.