AfterEffects

Baking and importing Maya data

After Effects imports camera data from Maya project files. Before importing Maya camera information, you need to bake it. This makes animating with keyframes easier later in your project. Baking places a keyframe at each frame of the animation. You can have 0, 1, or a fixed number of keyframes for each camera or transform property. For example, if a property is not animated in Maya, either no keyframes are set for this property or one keyframe is set at the start of the animation. If a property has more than one keyframe, it must have the same number as all of the other animation properties with more than one keyframe.

Reduce import time by creating or saving the simplest Maya file possible. In Maya, reduce keyframes by deleting static channels before baking, and save a version of the Maya project that contains the camera animation only.

Note: The following transformation flags are not supported: query, relative, euler, objectSpace, worldSpace, worldSpaceDistance, preserve, shear, scaleTranslation, rotatePivot, rotateOrder, rotateTranslation, matrix, boundingBox, boundingBoxInvisible, pivots, CenterPivots, and zeroTransformPivots. After Effects skips these unsupported flags, and no warnings or error messages appear.

By default, After Effects treats linear units specified in the Maya file as pixels.

You can import camera data from Maya project files (.ma) and work with the data as a single composition or two compositions.

For each Maya file you import, After Effects creates either one or two compositions:

  • If the Maya project has a square pixel aspect ratio, After Effects creates a single, square-pixel composition containing the camera data and transformations.

  • If the Maya project has a nonsquare pixel aspect ratio, After Effects creates two compositions. The first composition, which has a file name prefixed by Square, is a square-pixel composition containing the camera data. The second, or parent, composition is a nonsquare-pixel composition that retains the dimensions of the original file and contains the square-pixel composition.

    When you import a Maya file with a 1-node camera, After Effects creates a camera in the square-pixel composition that carries the camera's focal length, film size, and transformation data. When you import a Maya file with a 2-node or targeted camera, After Effects creates a camera and an additional parent node in the square-pixel composition. The parent node contains only the camera’s transformation data. After Effects doesn’t read 3-node cameras.

    When working with imported camera data, use 3D layers and square-pixel footage in the square-pixel composition, and use all nonsquare-pixel footage in the parent composition.

    Note: After Effects reads only the rendering cameras in Maya files and ignores the orthographic and perspective cameras. Therefore, always generate a rendering camera from Maya, even if it’s the same as the perspective camera. If you apply the FilmFit camera setting, make sure to use either horizontal or vertical FilmFit, not fill.

    After Effects can read Maya locator nodes, which enable you to track objects from the Maya scene as it is translated into After Effects. After Effects creates a null layer and applies the relevant transformations to it if a Maya locator node’s name contains the word Null, NULL, or null. Avoid parenting locator notes to each other in Maya; instead, parent the locator notes to geometry.

    Note: After Effects doesn’t read World or Underworld coordinates in the LocatorShape. Use a transform node to place them.