Stumbled upon a super helpful script for After Effects and Maya. It’s called MoCon and you can download MoCon here.
If you are trying to bring locators from Maya into After Effects, or camera data this is a very important tool to have. I especially enjoy the fact that you can simply select any object in Maya, type “pass2obm” and save it to a file. Once in After Effects you can simply import the OBM file and it populates layers with white locators for each object. After Effects has the ability to bring in .ma files from Maya, but the nulls have to be named null, and they are imported in as a hidden null object. The MoCon script works with any naming convention, and creates small solid layers for easy visualization.
5 Comments
i love the mocon script so much, but i met a problem that i cant import maya obj with animation into ae , when i press the OBM obj import , it gives me a lot of solid layers at the same position , it seems i cant get the animation information of the obj object in maya . could you help me ? it is appreciated that you send me a emial .. thanks so muck . and sorry for my poor english.
your english is fine. If you are wanting to have the OBJ file come into After Effects as it’s own mesh, it’s simply not possible. The only way to do that is to render it in Maya and import the footage into AE. However if you simply want a null object (solid layer) to include the keyframes or animation you have in Maya that is possible. You just select the object and then in the channel box select the values you want to copy over. Then just use the “pass2obm” command and you should be good to go.
Let me know if this makes sense.
I am also having a similar issue as qinghe. I have tried simplifying the process down to a single locator in Maya 2009 this locator does not move. I have tried baking all the keyframes as well as no keyframes. I have tried selecting the locator in the outliner, and also selecting the position channels (XYZ) whilst exporting. When I do the import OBM object it populates my composition with many layers all named ChanObject. I have also tried importing the test data files with the same results. I am using AE CS3 and CS4 both with the same result. Maybe I am doing something wrong here with the import?? Camera imports fine I assume its correct.
Have you any suggestions on what I might be doing wrong?
-Chris
Hi Chris you are doing nothing wrong, I confirmed the same bug using After Effects CS5 and Maya 2011 on OS X 10.6.8. The OBJ import script was broken accidentally in version 3.7.5, and Barry (being the awesome man he is) quickly fixed it tonight. Go to his site and download the new version 3.7.6 and all should be good again.
Here’s a direct link to 3.7.6
Perfect!!I test it in maya2011 and cs5 and it works fine .!!Thank you !!