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Wednesday 7 March 2012

AEtoMayaKeyframeConverter

Weird title but it makes sense... trust me.

I wrote a JavaScript for AfterEffects that basically uses After Effects awesome Audio to Keyframe function and converts the resulting Audio Amplitude Null to a Maya ASCII file. So basically: If you ever wanted to have some audio reactive animation in Maya, this is for YOU.

I made a quick tutorial (click here to watch HD version)

It's pretty straightforward and easy to use. Apart from writing and setting up the scene file the script doesn't do anything in Maya. It's up to the user to use the given data. The most obvious use would be to assign the channels to an objects scale. But there's definitely more use than that.

KNOWN BUG: The script stops after the import, when used for the first time after launching After Effects.
EASY SOLUTION: run the script again and it works fine.
(I can't work out where this is coming from. PLEASE, if anybody knows javascript and knows what's happening there, let me know. It's annoying the S*** outta me!)

Tips: The Normalize and Smooth Keyframe options work fine but there really just gimmicks.

Normalize Keyframes means that the values on the keyframes are remapped to range 0 to 1.
That you can easily do in Maya with a remap value node.

Smooth Keyframes does what it says. Instead of having a sharp Keyframe on every frame. It puts smooth interpolated keyframes every other frame. The result is less erratic (soo...smooth!).
BUT: if you set the frame rate to something like 24/ 25fps you'll run the danger of, literally, missing a beat. So I'd recommend to use a high frame rate (60fps is the highest allowed by Maya).
Generally, the higher the frame rate the more information (keyframes) you get. So if there's no real reason to use anything less than 50fps, just don't do it.

Where to download:
Either follow the link to my site: http://petestache.weebly.com/downloads.html

or... (right-click: Save link as...)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

you can go up to 6000fps now, as far as I can tell you can not specify your own frame rates but there are lots to pick from now. Nice little script

Pit said...

Thanks, George. I'm definitely gonna extend the frame rate list.