Joint Rotation Keys: Radians to Degrees?

[jsarclight]

Hi, long time lurker here and not very "knowledgeable" about maya even though I've used it for years...

Can someone answer me what is most likely an easy animation question:

I have a character given to me by someone else that has it's joint rotations animated using RADAINS, making it's rotational key information all very small floating numbers between like 1 and 1.5... I want to take that character's animation, export it as a .anim file and pop it onto another character of my making that is similar to this skeleton... but my character has it's joint rotations set to degrees and for some reason when I import the .anim file onto my character the Radian keys remain and directly apply themselves to my degree rotation joints resulting in a goof.

Is there a way to convert radian rotational keys into degree rotational keys in the original file and export it as an .anim to my character?

[failure]

Change angular units to degrees before exporting. It's in preferences

[jsarclight]

That didn't work though. The only way I have been able to get it to work is to change MY scene's prefs to match those of the original scene and then import the .anim onto the skeleton. The problem I'm up against is that I need to then convert that animation into a clip to use in trax with the other clips I'm using on this character (which are all degree info). Even when I switch the original scene from radians to degrees it does not change the keys that are set on the joints, it just interprets them as degrees... and when importing that animation onto a new skeleton for some reason it does not retain that "conversion" and it assumes the radian keys are degree keys.

I guess my main question is how do I convert the radian rotation keys in the original scene into degree keys? I tried baking the animation but that did not work.

[failure]

It shouldn't behave this way. All angular keys should be changed, not reinterpreted when you switch angular units. Try it with simple skeleton and a few keys.

There might be a problem if rotations are not keyed directly and are fed trom other source or expression instead. It all depentds on how the rig is set up.

Baking could be a way to go if you don't want to mess with the rig itself.

[jsarclight]

OK I ran a quick test by creating a fast skeleton with the prefs set to radian, made some quick rotational animations then checked their keys. In the graph editor the keys appear as radian keys with integers between 0 and like 1.5. I then went into prefs and changed the rotation from radian to degree and BING the keys all changed as they "should"... but in the scene I am trying to convert when you do that the keys do not change, they remain as radian info yet in the channel box the rotations are displayed as degrees. I cannot for the life of me figure out what is preventing the keys from changing... the skeleton has no scripts or expessions on it that I can see, just regular rotational animation.

I'm at a loss.

[failure]

It's hard to tell without seeing the file.
Do you have any unitConversion nodes in your scene? ( They are hidden by default )

[jsarclight]

I just duct taped out a workaround rather than keep beating my head up against it. I duplicated the skeleton in the offending scene, constrained it to the original then baked the keys out on it. This generated degree rotation keys that I could save out as an .anim file.

Dirty but it worked. As for what is still causing the original radian animated skeleton to retain it's radian keys I have not found anything in the scene that would cause it. The scene is remarkably clean, just the skeleton with the animation on it.

[joojaa]

Did you UNhide all by default hidden features?!

[jsarclight]

Nothing is hidden that I can find. I went through the scene, unhid everything, even checked the skeleton's tree rollout for strange connections and I did not find anything hidden or otherwise out of the norm controlling or influencing the skeleton. It's a mystery to me what is preventing the keys from auto converting to degree from radian.

[failure]

Open Hypergraph and go Show->Auxiliary nodes... and remove all from the hidden list. Now turn on Show->Show auxiliary nodes and inspect the complete dependency graph.

Also you can open outliner and do the same. And make sure to disable Display->DAG objects only.