RE: xsi to maya envelope

[Raffaele Scaduto-Medola <raffaele(at)inch.com>]

Hi Andre

Right now Point Oven is the only solution (that I know of) to deal between 
transfer of data between XSI, Maya and LW (that I know of).

MDD format are binary, which is a good thing. I think you can find out 
more about the format on some of the doucmentation that comes with the 
OpenSource Maya2LW project. Its a good thing its binary, as the file tend 
to get huge. The only downside, is that to be compatible with 
LW(standard), MDD are relatively crude (since its an older format), and 
has no compression scheme that I've been able to figure out.
You will want to think about how you partition your meshes out, as one 
large mesh will create huge mdd files vs. smaller segemented baked mesh 
which create multiple smaller but more manageable mdd bake file. This 
comes into play especially if you are rendering on a renderfarm (lot of 
open file connections to your mdds).

You should also realize you can "bake" out transform data as mot files 
which are basically ascii animation keyframe format straight out of LW 
files. Its is better if you have non-deforming objects, or props that need 
to track with objects.

This is not particularly an optimize workflow, but so far its the most 
broad cross platform tool I have seen to let you work with Maya, XSI and 
LW (and maybe 3DMax ???).

Cheers,
RSM



_____________________________________________________
Raffaele Scaduto-Mendola - charSetupSup - Gigapix
			   www.turbolinea.com
			   raffaele(at)turbolinea.com

On Wed, 8 Mar 2006, Andre DeAngelis wrote:

> Raffaele
>
> That explains a great deal thanks,
>
> I have been tryign to think of a way to apply presets to a mesh after
> renaming the defromers and obviously, presets doesn't allow you to do
> that.  Very elegant in hindsight and very straightforward.
>
> I too am surprised that presets are not wrttne to an XML format.
> Hopefulyl this wil lbe implemented in future. I can't see hwo it would
> be too difficult to achieve.
>
> We are looking intpo evaluating Point Oven.  I agree that FBX is limited
> and dotXSI is too unpredictabel for our liking.  Is the Point Oven cache
> internediate file an ascii format?
>
> Thanks again,
>
> AD
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On Behalf
> Of Raffaele Scaduto-Medola
> Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 8:49 PM
> To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
> Subject: RE: xsi to maya envelope
>
> Lu is right,
>
> I setup a system were we could rebuild rigs (so when ever we made
> changes to the rigs, or one of the rigs needed to be fixed we would just
> rebuild it), and run a script to reapply weightmaps (by reading a
> weightMap file).
>
> Now you can use presets (for XSI->XSI) but the problem remains that if
> you change some of the influences names/setup, you can't edit your
> "setup"
> file. In our case we could change the influence name in the text file
> and run/attach the envellope again.
>
> As a general rule, some of the more laborious/manual labor intensive
> things you can do in rigging is applying and tweaking weightMaps, so its
> really important as a TD to have access to the data (in ASCII form)
> "should anything happen" that would mean rebuilding the rig. The preset
> is nice, but its a closed format, not easy to edit. Now if it was a text
> file... with maybe xml tags %-}
>
> We extended the process to also save uv data maps (again just in case),
> and have also worked on a process to save out data for blendShapes (as
> well as corrective shapes).
>
> As a side note, since I am using Point Oven, I think the lwo format
> (Lightwave scene Object) does allow to save out multiple vertex maps
> including "weightMaps". As in Lightwave, the lws file contains the
> actual rig, and the lwo contains the weightmaps which get reconnected at
> load file time (from what I've been able to gather).
>
> So theoretically you could save out a .lwo out of XSI->lwo using the
> point oven plugin, and then import the lwo into Maya. But I'm not sure
> if lwo import in Maya includes a weighMap file, and you would still have
> to recreate the rig (which you can if you have a standard scripted
> process in both software).
>
> I remember looking at FBX, and .XSI formats. but there are limited.
> And there are issues transfering rotational coordinate information of
> XSI bones onto Maya joints.
>
> And as a general rule, I stay away from anything that involves .obj
> format as you are not sure you will always get the same point index
> order.
>
> RSM
>
> _____________________________________________________
> Raffaele Scaduto-Mendola - charSetupSup - Gigapix
> 			   www.turbolinea.com
> 			   raffaele(at)turbolinea.com
>
> On Tue, 7 Mar 2006, Andre DeAngelis wrote:
>
> > Someone posted 2 scripts to write and read envelopw weight data out to
>
> > an excel spreadhseet, posted on XSI base recently. (Jeremy Meunier aka
>
> > The Ki e-mai: jeremy.meunier(at)gmail.com / http://kiworld.free.fr)
> >
> > Raffaele,
> >
> > Why did you write this data out to ASCII if you were simply
> > transferring from XSI to XSI?  I we have used this for symmetry maps
> > but haven't had the need to go beyond XSI presets.
> >
> > Would be interested ot hear your views.
> >
> > AD
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On
> > Behalf Of Raffaele Scaduto-Medola
> > Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 4:57 PM
> > To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
> > Subject: Re: xsi to maya envelope
> >
> > I would recommend the easiest solution is to write a script to export
> > out point[index] weightList/influence information as a table.
> >
> > This was one of the main component of our rigging pipeline at Omation
> > (from XSI->XSI), but I have used the same process for Maya.
> > Saving weightMaps, UV data, cluster data in general would be better in
>
> > an ascii file format.
> >
> > For weight map you will want to save a table with...
> > pointIndex, xPosition, yPosition, zPosition, weightValueForInfluenceA,
>
> > weightValueForInfluence B, ....
> > ...
> >
> > It would be nice if both XSI and Maya provided for binary plugins to
> > read data apply data (Fast), as you will need to write a script to
> > write the data out of XSI (slow) and then a reader script to read the
> > data in Maya (really slow).
> >
> > The same process can be used for UV data, blendShapes/MorphTargets.
> > The reason for storing x,y,z point position is should your point index
>
> > information ever changed, you can still reapply weights based on a
> > closest point algorythm.
> >
> > Not the perfect solution, but workable.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > RSM
> >
> > _____________________________________________________
> > Raffaele Scaduto-Mendola - charSetupSup - Gigapix
> > 			   www.turbolinea.com
> > 			   raffaele(at)turbolinea.com
> >
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