MAYA/MAX animation workflow question

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

Hi all,

we currently bumped into a workflow obstacle which we need to cross somehow.

Our new external animator is used very much to animating things in MAYA, including rigging etc.
However, we are MAX based studio and we need to render everything form max/vray.

Does anyone have any hints and tips/complete workflow how to make this work?
Animate in MAYA and then transfer the animation/rigging/textures to MAX for scene incorporation rendering?

I am aware that in the new AD releases, 2014, there are some possibilities how to exchange the scene content among those two apps but we tried it on the trial versions and it doesnt seem to work.
For example SEND TO MAYA button is greyed out.

Thank you very much for any clues, we havent been able to find decent answers on AREA yet.

Best Regards

Martin

[steveblake]

IMHO use Pointcache 2 (pc2). Rig everything in Maya, bring over the OBJ(s) ,textures as normal and apply the pointcache file(s). Combining objs helps a lot here.

FBX has the same / similar features. You just keep saving over the motion files for each animation iteration.

Blur studio had a nice long thread on CGtalk a few years back - I think it detailed their workflow... might have been this one:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=243015

Hope this helps?

[Morbid Angel]

What steveblake said is probably only way to handle this. What I would say though, is if you do end up animating in maya, point caching it and reading the cache in max would be best and simplest way. You can for example setup your complete character in max ready for rendering, and the same character in maya strictly for animating. If point order is the same then point cache should just drop onto your model and you will be ready to render. One other tricky thing would be the cameras, if they are animated in maya you may try fbx to export them, just need to fiddle around with options to make sure all the settings come through correctly.

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

Thank you guys for your professional pointers, i will pass this to our animator and see what he can make out of it

Best Regards

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

it works guys!!!! thanks a lot