Hey all,
Beginning to get into Maxscript by following the CGAcademy dvd series.
Im not too sure if this is beyond my ability at the moment, but the first script I would like to write would be exporting camera position/animation data and point helper position/animation data to a .ma (Maya ASCII file).
A compositing application I am a beta tester for can only import 3d tracking data through .ma files. Almost all 3d tracking software exports .ma files, but I would like to be able to take my camera data from animations in 3ds Max into this software for compositing purposes, without having to go to Maya first.
Is this actually possible? Or has someone already done this?
Any help would be great
Cheers,
Daniel.
may i ask you a question? do you know MEL?
a .ma file is a mel script. in your case the mel script has to create transform node for camera, camera, transform node for locator, locator, and keys with parameters for the transform nodes.
what do you want to know? how to write this mel or how to get the data from max?
Yep, that was my first stop Only thing of any relevance unfortunately turned out to export in .cam format and not .ma
Cheers
I’d love to help but my Script-fu is not strong enough.
There’s still here:- http://tech-artists.org/ and the Area
i think that will be easier to export max data in FBX format, import to maya, and save as MA.
Thanks for the replies.
Really, I need to know some more information on the creation of the .ma file. Now that I know it is basically a MEL script, I guess I will have to look into scripting MEL. This may be beyond my current reach, considering I don’t use Maya any more and never got heavily into MEL when I did.
Yes, it would be easier to save to fbx and then export the .ma from Maya, but I was hoping there was a way to save the data directly from 3ds max without someone else having to own Maya. Sending to Maya first would work for me because I still have a licence of Maya 2009, but other users of the compositing software may not/probably wont.
Of course, I’m not asking anyone to write this script for me. I am mainly looking for any information that may help.
I’ll keep digging around the interwebs