Question: Maya ---- Fail to export rigged animation (not sure what I did wrong

Hi everyone, I’m working an animation, and want to export it in glb or gltf file. But the babylon js didn’t export my animation. It’s on a rigged character and is all keyframe animation. I checked “Export Skin” “Export Normal” and “Export Animation”, but it still says “No animation data for this animation. It is ignored.”

I’m not sure what I did wrong, I searched and found someone else had the same issue, but I didn’t find the solution: Babylon Js Maya Exporter Not Exporting Animations

Please, can anyone help me out? It’s kinda urgent QAQ

I can provide the maya file if needed!

Thank you so much!!

cc @bghgary and @PatrickRyan

@strawberryreprise, do you have export selected checked in the exporter? If so, you will need to select mesh and the entire skeleton hierarchy, or the skeleton won’t be exported and you won’t get any animation. If you aren’t doing that, please share your maya file - DM is fine - and I will take a look.

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@PatrickRyan Hi, I tried with export selected (and I selected mesh, skeleton, and everything) and without, but they both didn’t work.
I’m new to this site and don’t know how to dm. Maybe I can send a link here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L-6lvd4kD1ISYfvU2Bpg3w-J7O7rd9Fx/view?usp=share_link
Thank you so much!

I’ll take a look. I requested access to your file. Thanks!

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Thank you so much! I just shared it with you. I also tried to bake the animation on the bones and then deleted the controllers, I just emailed that file to you. That might be helpful?

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@strawberryreprise, in looking at your character rig, there are a couple of things that stand out. One is that the skeleton that is skinned to your mesh was hidden, and without Export hidden objects checked in the export window, the skeleton won’t be exported. Another is that even when the skeleton is exported, the animation is not making it into the export. Your rig looks really complex, and there appears to be multiple joint hierarchies in it, one under DeformationSystem and another under FitSkeleton. From what I can tell, the animation your are placing on your control objects is not being baked to your bones, likely due to the complexity of your rig and constraints system.

Our exporter was made to the glTF 2.0 spec and does not have any concept of Maya constraints as they don’t exist in glTF. If the distance between the control surface and the bone gets too great or too complex with layered constraints, we won’t be able to path the motion to the bone. One way around this is to bake the animation to the bones and then export. This should work, but obviously isn’t great for iteration. I’m also not familiar with all of the layers of complexity in your rig, so I am not sure how to suggest simplification to export. It may be best to keep one file to iterate animations in and save a second copy to bake animations to the bone for export.

Sorry I couldn’t give a more direct answer, but hopefully this helps you narrow down what is happening.

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@PatrickRyan Thank you so much! I will try to bake the animation to the bones and delete all unnecessary controllers and joints. This is definitely helpful!!

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