Depending on where you are in your retargeting workflow, you can bake the retargeted animation either to the target character’s skeleton or Control Rig.

Typically, you bake animation to the target character’s Control Rig when you no longer need the live link between your source and target characters, and you still want to make some adjustments to the retargeted animation by animating the Control Rig.

You can bake animation to the target skeleton when you finish making all adjustments to the retargeted animation and are satisfied with the results.

To bake retargeted animation to the target character

1. Select Skeleton > HumanIK from the main menu bar to open the HumanIK window.
2. Using the Character drop-down list (in any of the tabs), select the character to which you want to bake animation.
3. From the HumanIK menu bar, select one of the following:
   • To bake to the skeleton, select Bake > Bake to Skeleton.
     NoteWhen you bake to the skeleton, the character’s Control Rig is automatically deleted.
   • To bake to the Control Rig, select Bake > Bake to Control Rig.

   The retargeted animation plays in the scene as Maya bakes to either the target Control Rig or skeleton. For each frame of the retargeted animation, Maya sets one key on each effector or joint.

   ImportantIf you added the retargeted animation and the Control Rig to animation layers during retargeting, the layered animation overrides the baked animation. Mute or delete the layers to view the result of the baked animation on the Control Rig.
4. (Optional) If you are finished working with the source character, you can delete it from the scene.