Exporting Animation from Maya to Max

Hi folks,

I trying to exporting animation form Maya to Max, i tried lot of methods but none of them work correctly. So if u guys know any methods please share it here.

Recently i saw this video, but it also not working for me.
https://vimeo.com/29218395

To get an answer you need to provide more details than " I tried stuff and it didn’t work"

you should be able to export an animated, skinned mesh as an FBX file from Maya and import it into MAX.

@Brad Clark

Sorry for that, i tried like, first i combined the mesh in maya and then i take geometry cache and export the FBX to max. In max import option i unchecked animation and then i used piont cache.

After that i scrub the timeslider there is no animation the model. I do no wat i’m missing.

you need to have a skeleton, a model and the model needs to be skinned to the skeleton,
fbx wont take into account the controls you created so there is no use for them after export.
just create an animation with the controls and bake this out onto the skeleton (edit>keys>bake …)
get rid of the controls so you keep the 3 basics
test if the animation still works and look if all the joints in the skeleton are keyed

then you can export all from maya to an fbx file and make sure that animation is checked

geometry cache will not work in fbx or at least i have never tried it as it is easier and cheaper to export skinned meshes instead of vertex animation, and this way you will be able to edit the skinning and the animation in 3ds max afterwards

That vimeo clip is not representative of what would usually be done.
Most of the time you’d want to preserve the skeleton and skin weight data.
There should be no need to combine the mesh nor take a geometry cache.
Geometry caching bakes the vertex positions at each frame and ignores skeleton data all together,
it is a lot more data and most game engines don’t like it.

If you have properly skinned mesh animation, The FBX exporter’s default export preset ought to be enough.
Depending on the rig, you may need to check ‘bake animation’

@peerke88

Thank you much Peerke, you saved my life. But still i have one problem, the Blendshapes not working when i export the file into max. Any soultion for that.

those i have never tried to export, but i think you will need to export them as models and then re-attach them by hand in 3ds max

Ok peerke, I try that and i let you know the progress. Once again thank you so much :slight_smile:

There used to be the “fbx compatibility chart” on autodesks pages, that will tell you what type of data comes across between what, but all links seem to be dead.

Does anyone know where this information went?

Found. They changed the name to “interoperability chart”:

http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/autodesk_maya_2014_fbx_interoperability_chart.pdf
http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/autodesk_3ds_max_2014_fbx_interoperability_chart.pdf
http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/autodesk_motionbuilder_2014_fbx_interoperability_chart.pdf

Thanks Sune :slight_smile: It helps me a lot.