Bringing in and Animating from Maya

Hello Everyone, My name’s Jay and I’m a Touch Designer Newbie.

Just as a precursor to my questions, I’ll just clue you in as to what I’m trying to do.

I’m basically going to make a stuffed reindeer sing karaoke.
I’ve built, rigged and weighted my model on Maya ( img141.imageshack.us/i/forumimageh.jpg/) and I’m now attempting to bring the reindeer into touch in the hope of (A) Making him imitate people when they sing into a microphone, nothing fancy… just opening and closing his mouth, and (B) Nod his head in time with the music.

Here come the questions!
First of all; is this, by any stretch of imagination, achievable? Bearing in mind this will be the first time I’ve used Touch.

Secondly, How can I bring in the head from Maya into Touch, I feel like I’ve fallen at the first hurdle.

Thirdly, HELP! I haven’t got the foggiest what I’m doing! :open_mouth:
I’ve checked out some of the tutorials into making things move to music and midi controllers, but I can’t see anything relating to what I want to do…

I’d really appreciate some guidance.
Thanks in advance!

You’ll want to use FBX to import the model and the animation. Try to spend time learning about CHOPs and exporting in paricular, since you’ll need those to control the animation of the model.

What you want to do is very doable.

I can give more help when you have more specific questions.

I’ve been practicing with CHOPs and experimenting with what I’ve learnt but so far no dice.
I cannot import any geometry into touch. I’ve exported from Maya as FBX but cannot seem to find the file when I try…

What kind of operator should I be using?
Should I be importing the Mesh seperate to the Skeleton and IK’s?

If I can just get the Deer in there, I should be able to pull this together…

You just drag the .fbx file into Touch to get it to import, or you can use the Import dialog under the file menu.

Dragging the fbx in directly automagically flattens the geometry whereas, opening it with the importer lets you choose to have everything separate - sometimes a daunting amount of nodes but good for when you want total individual control of everything.

rod.

My current uni project is using maya and touch with rigging involved so when I export and import my files next week I’ll record it explaining as I go along how it all works for you so you can see the exact steps that I’m using and see if there’s a difference in settings.

Richard

Hi, thanks for the help so far…

I seem to have everything up and running now. Deers singing along, bopping his head etc.

The two problems I’m having now are with the actual geometry, the deers eyes have no texture mapping, whereas the rest of his body does. Secondly, the deer is in it’s low poly form; jagged edges and poor lighting.

Any ideas?

The low poly is likely what is contained in the .fbx file. Try importing your .fbx back into a fresh Maya session, does it come in low poly in there?

Apart from the eyes, it’s exactly as I exported it… I’m not too bothered about the eyes though, I can live with them being plain white.

Hmm, can you send me the .fbx file? malcolm@derivative.ca. I’ll take a look at it

I think you are using build 3715 right? Can you try upgrading to the latest experimental. I’ve done some upgrades to the FBX importer that fixes the alpha issue that causes your geometry to look transparent.

Can you try saving your .fbx file in a earlier format (maya has the option to select the format) as you are using the latest which Touch doesn’t yet support.