Maya Stand Alone Issue, Baking Animation

[Carlo]

Hey, I'm currently using Maya Standalone to baked out a list of controllers on a rig and copy their animation onto a locator. When I run the script any controllers that have key frames on them will transfer over, but if a controller is constrained to an object the script will only copy the first frame of its animation. I tried running the same script in the Maya and was able to copy the animation of all controllers, constrained or not. So is there an issue with Maya Standalone that prevents it from baking out the animation of a constrained object?

If that is the case then is there a way I can store the animation of the selected controllers, I was thinking about used Maya API, but I'm not to familiar with it and not to sure exactly where to start. Any help would be much appreciate. I also thought to store the information onto an xml file, but if a rig have 50 controllers and each have 10 attributes, and there's 100 frames in the shot, well that would just take an crazy about of time to write out and read back to the controllers and key them all for every frame. Also it doesn't seem very efficient or practical.

The reason why I can't just use the script in regular Maya is that I have to copy animation for several files and need a way to batch multiple files out.

I hope what I am saying makes sense, any help would be very much appreciate. Thank you. 

[Justin Israel]

Would you be able to provide a small reproducible example so that this can be tested? 

Also, what is the circumstance where you are able to get the data you need and write it to XML, but not use it directly?  

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[Carlo]

Hey Justin,

Right now I'm simply trying to bake out the animation of the controller and copying the animation back onto a locator. The problem is that will the constrained controller is baked out it only the first is baked over the entire time range. So when the controller is suppose to follow whatever was constraining it, it just stays in place.

It's not that I wouldn't be able to directly use data from the XML it's just that it would take time to load to the data back onto the controllers every time the animation is updated. Not only to mention if there are 200 controllers in the scene I would have to go frame by frame for each controller and their attribute and save the data out. It just doesn't seem very efficient.

This is a quick and dirty version of my code. The overall code uses just simple maya commands, which is why I find it very odd to be having such an issue.

import sys, os.path

import maya.standalone as st

##Start Maya Standalone

st.initialize(name='python')

import maya.cmds as cmds

path= 'animatedScene.ma'

##Open File

cmds.file( path, f=1, o=1)

path= os.path.normpath( path)

#print( path)

##Open File

cmds.file( path, f=1, o=1)

##Grab Start Frame

startTime= int( cmds.playbackOptions( q=True, min=True))

#print( startTime)

##Grab End Frame

endTime= int( cmds.playbackOptions( q=True, max=True))

print( endTime)

##Grab all sets

setList= cmds.ls( et= 'objectSet' )

#print( setList)

for set in setList:

ctrl_list= cmds.sets( set, q= 1)

#print( ctrl_list)

##Bake controllers from Set Lister

for ctrl in ctrl_list:

##Bake out controls

cmds.bakeResults( ctrl, simulation=0, t=( startTime, endTime), shape=1, dic= 0, pok= 0)

##Copy animation from controller to locator

for ctrl in ctrl_list:

##Fix namespace

newCtrl= ctrl.replace( ':', '_NmSp_')

#print( newCtrl)

##Create locator

sceneAnimLoc= cmds.spaceLocator( n= newCtrl+'_animLoc', p=[0, 0, 0] )[0]

#print( sceneAnimLoc)

##Grab attributes

attrList= cmds.listAttr( ctrl, k= 1, u= 1)

#print( ctrl, attrList)

for attr in attrList:

newAttr= attr.replace( ':','_NmSp_')

newAttr= newCtrl+'_'+ newAttr

#print( newAttr)

##Create attribute for locator

cmds.addAttr( sceneAnimLoc, ln= newAttr, at= 'double', k= 1)

##Check if controller attribute is keyed

checkKey= cmds.keyframe( ctrl, q= 1, at= attr)

#print( ctrl, attr, checkKey)

if( checkKey):

##Copy key from at Controller attribute

cmds.copyKey( ctrl, time=[], f=[], attribute= attr)

##Paste Controller Attribute onto SceneAnim Loc

cmds.pasteKey( sceneAnimLoc, attribute= newAttr)

##Save File

cmds.file( rn= 'baked_animScene.mb')

cmds.file( s=1, f=1)

currentFile= cmds.file( q=1, exn=1)

print( currentFile)

[Damon Shelton]

Try setting simulation to 1 for bakeResults.

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[Carlo]

Hey Damonshelton,

I've tried that flag before and still had the same problem. Also the default on that flag is already set to 1. Thanks though.

[Jesse Capper]

I have used bakeResults in maya.standalone without issue on parent/
point/orient constrained attributes, so I know it can work (I know
that doesn't help much).
Is the animation not baking for the full range on the constrained
attributes? Or is it just not copying for the full range?

Re your concern with XML:

"Not only to mention if there are 200 controllers in the scene I would
have to go frame by frame for each controller and their attribute and
save the data out"

The keyframe command can query an entire animation curve, so assuming
you have a list of the attributes you wanted to query for a given
object:

obj = 'locator1'
attrs = ['tx', 'ty', 'tz']
for attr in attrs:
# When querying time and value (tc/vc), the command returns a list
# of [time, value, time, value, time, value, ...]
keys = cmds.keyframe(obj, q=True, at=attr, t=[], vc=True, tc=True)

Unfortunately if you pass it a list of attributes maya doesn't
distinguish between them in the resulting list so as far as I know you
have to do it one attribute at a time.
Assuming you're doing this to baked keys, you don't need to worry
about tangents, but if you weren't you would have to use
cmds.keyTangent as well for the weight/angle/type of each tangent. I'm
not saying you should necessarily go down this route, just that it's
not as cumbersome as you seem to have assumed.

[Carlo]

Yeah the problem is that its not backing the full range of animation on the constrained objects, it only does the first frame. Yet if I run the same code while maya is open it works just fine. I'm not sure where the problems is occurring and I have tried many different flag options to see if I had something marked wrong.

And I agree with you it wouldn't be that horrible, but it would just ad another step in the process. Not to mention that the baking keys of a constrained object still is working for me.

I do appreciate the effort and time given to try to help me out though. I'll keep on trying to figure something out with this maya.standalone issue.

I'm not to sure if I install the standalone wrong, or if I am not using it correctly, because I have notice. That if I try to run the standalone on any other computer at work it crashes while opening the file. Yet on my computer it can open it up perfectly fine..

[Jesse Capper]

I tried your script out on a simple scene with a cylinder parent
constrained to an animated locator, and the cylinder added to a set,
and it baked out fine.

I threw the scene I used in a pastebin: http://pastebin.com/DduyZz1L
If you feel like it try that out and see if it works for you (I had to
add a boolean check of ctrl_list before trying to loop through it,
otherwise I didn't change your script).

[Carlo]

Arite thank you, I'm going to give that a shot in a few. Also, what is the best way of running maya standalone? I've been making a bat file and executing it that way, but when I try that same method on other computers it crashes?

[Justin Israel]

Crashes with what? I do something similar in bash scripts like this:

    #!/bin/bash

    /Applications/Autodesk/maya2012/Maya.app/Contents/bin/mayapy /path/to/script.py "$@"

And then script.py might contain:

    if __name__ == "__main__":

import maya.standalone

maya.standalone.initialize(name="python")

import sys

print "Args:", sys.argv[1:]

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 11:22 AM, Carlo <carl...@gmail.com> wrote:

Arite thank you, I'm going to give that a shot in a few. Also, what is the best way of running maya standalone? I've been making a bat file and executing it that way, but when I try that same method on other computers it crashes?

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[Carlo]

It crashes every time I try to open a file. And I don't believe it the file that has a problem, because when I do the same script on my computer it runs fine, but if I try to run it on other computers it will run mayapy and initialize but the second it tries to open a scene file it crashes. So I don't if I installed something extra on my computer or if I'm just missing a certain step. I'm completely new to all this, so I'm sorry if my questions/ or replies are a bit vague.