AE3D EXPORT - AE scene to Maya, Max, and Lightwave

urbanspaceman · **Posted:** Tue Apr 29, 2008 5:26 am

The script uses the position information, which is the position of the anchor point. It does not use the centre of the layer, if that's what you are asking. It treats all kinds of layers the same way, with a few special rules for lights and cameras (surprisingly, even audio layers have position information so, they work too).

Not sure what happened...I would need to study your files. My only guess is the "shift origin" switch was clicked on, then clicked off in the middle of a project(?). Otherwise, I'm not sure until I investigate.

ymmij · **Joined:** Fri Dec 01, 2006 1:20 pm **Posts:** 28

urbanspaceman wrote:

The script uses the position information, which is the position of the anchor point. It does not use the centre of the layer, if that's what you are asking. It treats all kinds of layers the same way, with a few special rules for lights and cameras (surprisingly, even audio layers have position information so, they work too).

Not sure what happened...I would need to study your files. My only guess is the "shift origin" switch was clicked on, then clicked off in the middle of a project(?). Otherwise, I'm not sure until I investigate.

Sent you a file....hope you can help.

Thanks,

Russ

urbanspaceman · **Posted:** Tue Apr 29, 2008 8:23 am

Hey Russ,

I looked at your project. I got some errors with the second .ma file, and the model wasn't there (not sure if it's in the scene file. Doesn't appear to be...but I'm still an inexperienced Maya user). As far as I can tell the locator matched the anchor point in AE perfectly.

This is what I recommend trying next: attach nulls in AE as children to the layer you are trying to replace with the Maya model. Create a bounding box with these nulls, basically, with a null in the centre and nulls on all the corners. Name them accordingly (C, UL, UR, LL, LR, etc) so you can keep track of what locator is what. Run AE3D Export, then lining up the 3D model should be easy. Theoretically you could attach the 3D model to any of them, but the centre one would usually be best. If the scaling of the locator isn't working, you can always readjust to the corner locators.

Ctalkerx · **Joined:** Mon May 26, 2008 12:52 pm **Posts:** 1

urbanspaceman: big thanks for a script, it really very useful!) At me one problem - In AE coordinate system not such, as in MAX. At AE height - "Y", and in MAX "Z". Starting a script in MAX - I receive the turned stage) As it to correct? Thanks) I apologize for my bad English.

urbanspaceman · **Posted:** Tue May 27, 2008 3:59 am

Hey Ctalkerx:

This is correct. In AE Y is up, and in MAX Y is up too, but is rotated 90 degrees. The default orientation in MAX is looking down on the horizontal grid. I decided not to change that. In a future version I might add the option to rotate everything 90 degrees, but the math is quite tricky, especially the rotation values. But this isn't strictly necessary...from the render camera's point of view, everything matches between the programs.

Redsandro · **Joined:** Wed Jun 25, 2008 4:55 pm **Posts:** 108

This script is pretty awesome!

I don't know if you concider this a bug, but on first try, I called my locators 'Dummy' .. 'Dummy8', which coincidentally is a MAXscript keyword so the script didn't work. It's easily avoided on the AE side, but you might want to include a 'things not bugs but you must know' section in the about/read box.

Might be obvious to some, but it took me about the time for my aenhancers registration to pass through to find out heh :oops:

Also, resulting space looks very small in MAX on a 1:0,01 (the default) ratio scale. 1:1 looks normal.

Finally, settings are reset everytime I load the script. If I'm not doing something wrong, you might want to use settings to store entered values.

Code:

app.settings.saveSetting(string storename, string variable name, string variable value)

Theoreon · **Posted:** Thu Jul 17, 2008 2:41 pm

bravo!!!! you are awesome!

thank you a trillion times!

drswoboda · **Joined:** Tue May 16, 2006 10:35 pm **Posts:** 3

Hello UrbanSpaceman!

I tried your script (G.ABOUT = "AE3D Export, v1.16 (2008)) today, with MAX v8 and AECS3, but I'm a little confused on the results I am getting.

In AECS3 I added a camera, a light, 3 solids and 1 photo as layers. The camera simply moves towards the planes in a very simple move. I select all the layers and hit export. I get a successful file creation. I then run the script in MAX and I only get a camera in the scene, none of the layers have locator's.

I went back and looked a the .ms script and there is no mention of any of the other layers, just the camera (3600+ lines).

When exporting from AE the progress box showed it processing the other layers, but they are not in the file that is saved. I then exported to Maya .ma and looked at that file. In the .ma file there is information on the creation of the other nodes.

So what am I doing wrong here? Your script looks very helpful and I'd like to add it to my toolkit.

Thanks,
-David

psyshow · **Joined:** Fri Oct 17, 2008 6:14 am **Posts:** 1

I'd just like to say thank you for posting this. I only registered to praise your excellence! Very helpfull indeed. There are so many people out there still looking for a method to do this. I shall be spreading the word!

urbanspaceman · **Posted:** Thu Nov 13, 2008 6:58 am

Hey guys, it's been quite a few months since I've done some scripting, so I've been away from from this site for a while.

Theoreon, psyshow, thank you very much for the praise, it's great to hear.

Redsandro, thanks for the tip about storing the settings. I will try to incorporate that in the future...I didn't even know you could do that! Very useful.

To drweoboda (and Redandro), I admit this script has been tested on MAX the least out of the 3 programs. As a Mac user, it always takes more effort for me to find a PC to try it out on. So I need your help. Don't think either of you have done anything wrong, you may have discovered bugs I didn't come across before. Send me the files so I can track down the problem.

As Redsandro mentioned, I may have been using reserved words without knowing it. When I was working out the bugs for Maya, there were all sorts of restrictions that ymmij came across that I didn't, and they took some time to iron out. You guys are the beta testers...

Redsandro · **Joined:** Wed Jun 25, 2008 4:55 pm **Posts:** 108

I don't have the project files I was working on then, and no 3d project at the moment.
But something is coming up. I will share everything that goes wrong because this script is awesome.

philspitler · **Joined:** Wed Nov 02, 2005 10:20 am **Posts:** 39

The script is great but I'm having an issue importing my camera into Maya (2009)

The .ma file opens great but it says the scene is 24fps when my comp is 29.97.

If I change it in Maya to 29.97, it works but the camera is slightly off when I bring it bac into AE due to Maya interpolating between keyframes.

Any idea how I can make the camera export 29.97?

Cheers.

Phil

philspitler · **Joined:** Wed Nov 02, 2005 10:20 am **Posts:** 39

Sorted it... It was a Maya issue.

Thanks.

Phil

Atomic · **Posted:** Wed Feb 11, 2009 9:28 am

Hi,

I am attempting to modify this script to add export support for Blender.

I have put together a first draft and posted it here:
http://www.sharecg.com/v/32616/Script/E ... To-Blender

I replaced the Light Wave section with BLENDER export code (for now). It generates a .py (python) file with instructions to re-create the animated camera inside Blender.

I'm not sure how many Blender/After Effects users there are, but this is a first draft that worked on a non-expression driven camera. (i.e. regular keyframed animation).

clancy30 · **Joined:** Tue Apr 27, 2010 8:07 pm **Posts:** 1

any ideas how to download the script, all i see is text when i click on the link ,how do i get it to 3dmax? thanks

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AE3D EXPORT - AE scene to Maya, Max, and Lightwave

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