Baking Inherited Animation

[Michael Bernard]

Hey Everyone,

I’ve been at this for a few days now and can’t figure it out. I’ve got a polygon object that is a child of a parametric object. The parametric object is animated, and so the polygon object inherits it’s animation. Now I need to bake the PSR data of the child, So when I pull it out of the hierarchy, it maintains animation. I’ve tried espresso, and it records keyframes, but no animation. I’ve tried point cache tag. No luck. Am I missing something obvious?

Thanks!
-Mike

I should also mention that it is part of a bigger rig, and I just need to bake a portion of it.

[Adam Trachtenberg]

Do this:

Create an Xpresso tag on your child object and pull it out of the hierarchy. In the Xpresso editor, drag in the parametric object and create a “global matrix” out port. Drag in the formerly child object and create a “global matrix” in port. Connect the two ports.

That will move your objects together. Now you can bake the former child’s motion to keyframes (make sure the expressions box is checked in the bake dialogue).

[Michael Bernard]

Thanks for your help. I think due to the nature of the rig, that route didn’t do what I needed it to but could definitely be helpful in the future. Expresso is an intimidating beast. I ended up getting a great plugin called NitroBake. It’s awesome. I’m pretty sure it bakes anything and everything into keyframes.

[Matthew]

This doesn’t work for me.

1) add expresso tag to the child
2) unparent the child (a null in this case)
3) drag both parent and child to the xpresso window
4) open up both global matrix ports
5) BUT – as soon as I connect the global matrixes the child snaps to the position of the parent

[Matthew]

a) if i create ANOTHER null

b) and then use the same method to acquire the global position from the (still-parented) child null that does work.