Tutorial Details
- Software: Autodesk Maya
- Difficulty Level: Intermediate
- Completion Time: 15 min
- Additional Files/ Plugins: None
Final Product What You'll Be Creating
In this Quick Tip tutorial, you will learn how to seamlessly import Maya camera information into After Effects for use in your compositing work. This is a fast and simple technique, which can open up a lot of possibilities and be used in many creative ways, to move back and forth between renderings from Maya and After Effects’ 3D environment.
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By Jostein Finnekasa
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Oooooh thank you, really useful tips there !
Heey, cool tip! Whats by the way the camera on the little preview window on the home page? Cheers, Hugo :)
Thanks Hugo. Not sure what you mean by the camera on the preview window but if it is the ae to maya image at the start page that is just an image I put together in Photoshop for this tut :)
cool, would really love to see a version for 3ds max if thats possible? so hard to find an in depth version
Hey Simon. I haven’t used 3ds in a long time but after some googling it looks as if you can use an rpf file format to transfer the data to AE
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7e3da.html
Cheers
Hi!
Does anyone know why this import camera thing doesn`t work on a Mac?
Thanks!
Thanks again for another great Maya tut. This is probably the simplest explanation of this process I have seen. Even I could follow it! Please keep writing the Maya tutorials! There are so few Maya tuts that cover Maya for Mograph. Yours have been excellent!
Superb tut!!! Thanks for taking the time to create this. It’s allot easier than I thought it was going to be. :)
This is great but for some reason I can get the play blast and the Maya export file imported in AE to match the same resolution. I have my camera in Maya set to 640×480 (i.e.) when I import the Maya ascii into AE, the comp comes in at 656×486, even though the resolution gate in maya says 640×480, so the screen matching is a bit off, I mean I hand matched it, but I can see how this could potentially bite me in the butt when working… any ideas what’s wrong.
I’m on a Mac (intel), Maya 2009, AE CS4.
p.s. Also 2 comps come into AE one with the nulls and camera, and another with this comp precomped in it … any ideas.
here’s a quick sample
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwbYDYP9eys
Hey Pedro,
The playblast output will not necessarily match the resolution of the comp so you’ll probably have to hand match it but that was just for the sake of this tutorial and to get an idea of how the final result will look. I guess that for your final you would render out the sequence which will give you the right resolution and ratio.
As for the 2 comps I am pretty sure this is how AE reads it. I would guess you could pull them out of the precomps but I can’t see why this would be necessary….
Hope this helps
Cheers
do someone know a work around for AE’s CameraData Export to Maya Scene ?
First off, Thank you Jostein for the post I really appreciate it great work!
So I imported my rendered scene and camera info into AE and the “locators” (NULLS) don’t match up.
I think it may be that i changed the focal length in Maya from it’s default…So when I went to AE I checked the focal length and it was the same???
I tried exporting it as Centimeters and Millimeters and no luck matching exactly.
I’m working on a PC with Maya 2010 and AE & CS5..let me know and I’ll send you the files…
Thanks again!
I seem to be having the same problem as a few people. My locators dont match up in after effects. I have tried baking the keys, parenting to the geometry, milimeters, centimeters, everything I can think of but theyboth end up in the same spot. (there are only 2 locators.)
HELP!!!!
THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!!! This is such help and opens up so much more for me to do!!
Very useful tip, thank you
is there a way to do the opposite? like camera from AE to maya.
sir,
cool….
i try it but hare in problem .
i use maya 2010 and Ae cs4.
Ae import the camera but cant import locator or named null ?:? problem ( huge key frame) or Ae import setting option???
i have in my file 3200 key frame in maya file … is it problem .
i does not under stand … please help.
Hi!
Thanks for this tip!
Please describe some examples of this solution.
Thank you!
Thanks for this mate, this is a fantastic tutorial. I had it in my head it was a laborious process getting camera data between the two, so thank you for simplifying it so well. Keep up the great work!
Kris