Anyone know anything about Maya conversion??

[Spacer One]

I am currently attending school for 3D graphic design...I have access to what is arguably the best 3D program available...Im wondering if it is possible to turn MAYA constructions into units somehow?...there is no option Ive found to convert to a story board or collection of pics like Bryce/Poser(or however its done)...can anyone help me with this?? I can use Maya all day and night...Unit will pour forth if its possible...

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Welll...... What are the rendering output options for animations? Just about all 3d progs I've worked with (including, believe it or not, AutoCAD) can render some kind of file sequence (BMP, JPG, GIF, etc).

 

[Spacer One]

I dont see one...Im only familiar with Bryce (Thus why Im in school)...give me an idea where to look and I'll see what I can do...

 

[Micaelus]

How do you export a finished animation with MAYA? Does it only create .AVIs or the like? If there is any way to get individual frame bitmaps, that would be the easiest, because then they can be converted to a storyboard etc...

Not knowing anything about this program, I did some quick Google-ing and came across a forum. There was a post on rendering a movie and from what I could discern, there was a way to render individual frames of an animation, which is what you want. Here's the link to the thread http://forum.simplymaya.com/showthread.php?threadid=10281

 

[Spacer One]

Great...I should have thought to browse forums...people can figure out how to do ANYthing!

thanks...

[edit] after looking at Maya, I can only export in JPG (low quality) or 4-5 other formats Im not familiar with (No BMP)...anyone know of a good free pic converter?...(Im leaving school as I write this, so Im no longer in front of Maya) or another file type I can use to make flics?

 

[Leaven]

I don't know what kind of file types MAYA can make, but XnView is a great free program that can open a lot of obscure file types. I'll try and find a download link...

EDIT: oh, haha, it's http://www.xnview.com/

 

[WildWeazel]

What are the other formats? JPEG is not good for anything that is going to involve a palette, because it uses compression that distorts the image and its color data ("lossy" is the technical term)

 

[Spacer One]

Im not sure...I will have to open Maya when I get to school today and look...Im sure there is a Bitmap/rastor format somewhere in Maya...

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

Well, if you can't do BMPs, render at TIFF format, if available, since that is a good, solid, high-quality image format that can be converted by most image programs (including MS Paint, believe it or not!)

Sorry I can't be of more help, but I only know Bryce (I'm in the process of upgrading from 5.0 to 6.1 so's I can export some of my stuff as meshes and import them into poser as props... Especially since Bryce 6.1 comes with DAZ studio as a standard plug-in, meaning I can directly import and export Poser-ready objects and animations... might come in handy with making an intro vid for the FF mod), Open FX, Poser 5 and AutoCAD 2008 (I also was given an older copy of AutoCAD by the IT guy at work, due to the fact they were getting rid of it and installing AutoCAD 2007, so I may start modelling some of the more fiddly stuff in AutoCAD 2000).

 

[Spacer One]

Ok, so after a day of toying with Maya, and getting the Lab Techies to help me, Ive come to 2 conclusions...

1) Maya CAN export in Targa, and Tiff, and PNG formats...SO...I COULD convert them to BMPs and make it work...

BUT

2) Maya exports a "Picture series" which all dumps in one folder....

not knowing that would happen, and not really understanding Maya well enough, what ends up happening (Keep in mind that Im working on a school project, so my "unit" test subject is an alien guy going through ALL of the civ animations in one 14 second burst) is that ALL the pics dump in one file...for a 14 second animation, thats 3200+ files...SO...

I will attempt to do a basic animation for the unit test subject in question, but even the shortest animations in Maya take an insane number of frames compared to Bryce...

Maya has an added feature I can figure out how to turn off...If a motion is too dramatic from one frame to the next, Maya will put in these things called "Tweens" and add 2-5 frames a motion...then you adjust it with a speed control setting...but when you export to multiple pics, you get all those "tweens" too...so unless I am to go through them 1 by 1 (Only say 35-50 pics) or someone writes a proggie to delete the 2-5 frames I didnt add, Maya is crappy for units...

Plus the resolution of Maya is intense. When you export to Tiff or Targa ALOT of quality is lost...and PNG format is not as desirable IMO (Maybe Im wrong?)...the whole idea isnt what Id like...tho it does seem that I can also make Civ 4 units not that I would do that...why work on a game I wont play??

Meh...all in all, the technology has moved past Civ3. The newest 3D progs out are all but worthless for units (Tho Im SURE I can create wonders/improvements/Tech Icons in Maya)...