Maya - Referencing FBX files

Rigging
#1

Hi All,

I am very used to Maya referencing but noticed recently that the reference nodes are not limited to referencing only Maya files but they can also reference FBX files also.

This could be incredibly interesting as it may allow for pipelines that allow Art teams to work in a multitude of applications without the overhead of funnelling through Maya ( Providing you wrap up their FBX files in a consistent manor ).

My question is, has any took this approach within a production environment or could share an insight into any potential Maya caveats/limitations before I start doing a deep sanity check?

Thanks

Mike.

#2

For more than one year now I used to reference fbx files, but only temporarily to transfer the contained animation onto also referenced control rigs.
I did this to easily remove the fbx from the Maya scene after the anim transfer.

That worked well for most files, but recently I changed our tools to import fbx files instead of referencing them. I did this because my animators experienced exceptionally long loading times for bigger fbx files (15MB files took around 30 seconds to reference, vs 10 seconds to import). Those files usually came from Motionbuilder, containing also the MB rig and references, plus multiple takes, poses and other stuff.

Also, I do not know how you would be able to access different anim takes of an fbx file if you’d reference it.

If you think of using referenced fbx files to streamline your pipeline, you could as well think about using alembic. Haven’t looked too much into that but it shows good potential in bridging apps, import/export performance and versatility. And is open source.