Exporting Point Oven Files

Point Oven is a commercial suite of plug-ins designed to bake vertex and fcurve data to transfer data between different applications.

Although it is still a commercial product, Point Oven is included with Face Robot to give you access to import and export compatible files. You can use Point Oven to share data with other users who have Point Oven capabilities with a different 3D application, such as Softimage, Maya, 3ds Max, Lightwave, or Messiah.

NoteYou can also use the Cache Manager to create a cache file of the Face Robot head's animation. If you're exporting the Face Robot head to Maya, you may want to create an nCache file for it. See Writing Cache Files and Cache File Formats for more information.

To export a Face Robot head as a Point Oven file

On the Act panel, click the Face Import/Export tab
Select Point Oven MDD Cache to bake the animation into the face mesh and export it to any 3D package as an MDD file.

Each of the face objects (the head, left and right eyeballs, and upper and lower teeth objects) is saved in its own MDD file. MDD files store deformation data. When you export in an MDD file, Point Oven saves the position of every vertex on the object for every frame of the animation that you have specified.
A window opens in which you can select a folder for your output files.

You don't need to enter a file name for the objects: their names are used as the file name. However, if you want to add a file name, you can enter it after the path name in the Path text box. As well, the MDD file extension is automatically added for each of the files.

If the folder path and name is already entered in the text box below the Update Timeline option, the MDD files will automatically be saved there. You can click the browser button (…) beside this text box to select a different folder before caching.

NoteYou can also choose File Export Point Oven Point Oven Baker from the main menu bar to export the face objects. This does the same thing as the Point Oven MDD Cache command, except you must set up all the options yourself (see Importing and Exporting With Point Oven).

However, if you have other meshes in Face Robot that you want to export, such as hats, shirts, sunglasses, etc., you must export them using this File Export command.

Click on the help (?) icon in the Point Oven property page that appears for more information about the options.

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