Maya Camera Import – Unit Translation

[Tobias Pfeiffer]

im curious about that, too.
please post it here if you gathered some more knowledge about that.

i had some problems with comp sizes when importing maya scenes. they were everytiem 320X240. that sucked.
is that your problem, too? i fixed it with the usage of image planes. this way i forced maya and AE to recognize the right comp size.

thanks,
payton

[Tobias Pfeiffer]

well, i just wanted to test this again.

but no luck with the image plane.

right now im not able to import a maya scene into AE with the correct resulting comp size…

do you get this working, death_or_glory?

thanks,
payton

[Mylenium]

Do not use inches. I believe the correct unit to use in Maya is cm. All calculations are based on SI/ metric units anyways, US unit conversion is a mere interface thing. My info may be outdated, though. Haven’t seen a Maya interface in a while…

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Death_or_glory]

No, whether using cm or mm or whatever, what I’m hoping to find is the conversion. For example, 100 cm in Maya = X pixels in AE.

I’m looking into the image plane as a solution as well, no luck yet.

Thanks

[Tobias Pfeiffer]

please tell me what size the imported comps have?

if anything other than 320*240. how do you did that?

isn

[Mylenium]

As I recall, Maya stores its values in meters (like 90% of all 3D programs), this is regardless of what actual interface unit you use. It will only store a global multiplier somewhere. You are right that units are converted 101 – one meter/ centimeter or whatever will always become one pixel. I was assuming he uses an odd inch-based resolution which AE doesn’t re-create properly for whatever reason.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[Wisorxn]

Hi,

I also have this issue. As for the comp size issue, it seems to be tied to the 648×480 default . . . the .ma file will come in as 320×240 . . . there is proably a more techincal reason for this, but making a custom size, say 800×600, or whatever, has yielded a correct comp reading in After Effects.

But yes, the problem is that the .ma information (camera + null_objects) do not line up with a corresponding set of rendered frames from maya.

death or glory . . . how do you go about changing the “move” by your eyeballed factor of 15? What is the process you use to get the comp to match uo better? Is it actually dealing with the .ma file info or in AE?

Why is there no info on this anywhere? Surely this method has been used correctly before no?

[Tobias Pfeiffer]

this problem really sucks.
i thought that i got rid of it, but its still there. just tried it without any luck.

but when i go through boujou and use the .ma file generated by boujou everything works perfect. even if i take the boujou-generated scene and scale things up or down – everything stays lined up.

there need to be a way to force the correct alignment. boujou knows how to do it.

someone else?

payton

[Wisorxn]

Try this, things seem to be working, but I have just tested literally 5 minutes ago and posting because |I think it could be the answer. In maya I checked was looking through my camera attributes. There is a section called film back. there is an attribute called film fit. My camera was set to FILL. I switched to horizontal, rerendered frames, reexported camera/null info and brought to AE. Things are lining up perfectly now. Please try this out ane let me know if you get the same results as me. For some reason the FILL attribute does not work. There is probably a more technical reason for this, but for now I am happy that this is working.

Look through the maya MEL command reference for filmfit, there will be some explanation on the attribute and why it does what it does.

Let me know if it works . . .

[Mauro Carlieri]

Hi there, I have the same problem as well,
What I’m doing now is linking the camera to a null and scale the null,
but it’s not perfect, you still need to fine-tune…

Check this link as well, I don’t think is possible but I’m a quite new Maya user so
might be..

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=98396&archive=T

Mauro