I am very new to Maya and I am trying to figure out if there is a way to export a 3D model that I have created/textured in Maya into After Effects. And once it is in After Effects, maintain it's 3 dimensionality so that I can move the AE camera and still have the object as 3D.
Alternatively if this is not possible, (and I know this is probably a completely ridiculous question) but how do you actually export a movie (or even sequence of images) from maya? I have an object with it's transformations keyframed, and a camera that moves around a bit, I can see my animation happen inside Maya, and I found the Render Settings, but how do I actually make this happen? Ideally I'd like the timeline toexport to like a .mov file, but even an image sequence would be fine. (I'll be editting a few clips together).
Sorry if these are obvious questions, but any help is much appreciated, thankya
hi, I can not answer your question regarding exporting an object to After Effects, but from my experience I think it is very unlikely that it works.
To get Maya to put out an animation as an image sequence you will have to render. Set the renderGlobals first, then use "Batch Render". Rendering a Sequence of images is better than trying to render into a Quicktime or .avi. (I don't think quicktime is possible at all)
You should set the render globals as follows: - set a name under "File Name Prefix" - set "Frame/Animation Ext" to "name_#.ext" for example - set the start and end frame as desired - set frame padding to 4 to get a four digit number (for example "0001" instead of "1") - choose the correct camera! - set the option for Alpha Channel if you need one for Compositing in AfterFX - set the "Image Size" above you'll see where the files will be rendered to and the complete naming. If you want to change the path, you'll have to set that under File->Project->Edit Current...-> Project Data Location -> Images Back in the Render Golbals go to the "Maya Software"-tab to set more options: - you can set the Edge Anti-aliasing to HighQuality to get better results. - under Render Options->Color/Compositing turn off Premultiply if you want to do a compositing using the Alpha Channel later.
Of course there are many more options you can set, but that will do it for a start. In your scene use lights and materials on your objects.
Now the rendering problem is already solved by giantlizard, so about exporting into after fx.
I dont think that's posible. I think after fx is just for post production, designed to work with video. You cant get 3d into it. What you can do is render that object and then put the resulting video onto something else in after fx, and if you want to have some effects that require your object to be 3d, you can render z depth as well and then use that to define the dimensions of this obj.
Lol hope you understand...my English is not perfect and sometimes i just cant find the right word .
Hey thanks a lot to both of you. I haven't tried the AE plugin yet but it looks promising! Realistically that was just a short term substitute to learning how to animate and do camera work in Maya, so at this point I thinkit's just a matter of dedicating some time over the holidays to learning...
However thank you both for your feedback, I'll let you know howitgoes.
Have a look at the animation I ended up putting together with your help... I just did a frantic soundscape myself and then animated and textured some simple spheres. Any feedback is much appreciated...
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