Maya Camera in XYZ PLEASE

[patrick-geoffroy]

Hi,

At work we have this new software that we will be using every day for years to come. It's space coordinate XYZ.
In Maya I know were to change the World Coordinate System's  "Up axis" to Z but the camera is still facing Z axis.

When I export my camera movements,  I have to  make it a .wf file with ONLY  6 columns: pos (xyz) and rot (xyz).
This is the only thing that software will read. 

Now although the world space in Maya can be changed to XYZ, the camera stays ZXY (thus facing down) and the rotation applied to the camera in order  to be facing the x axis is written in my file. Bottom line: its in the wrong direction in the other app.

I was looking for a mel script or anything that could resolve my problem and I can't find any.

Any idea?

[nowayfra]

Just a try: put the camera and its targets (aim, up and all objects / paths that affect its movement) temporarily into a group and setup its appropriate rotation to compensate the offset, then read the camera rotation / translation values in worldspace using the xform command.

[patrick-geoffroy]

Its not working but thanks.

[nowayfra]

Whats the result?

[patrick-geoffroy]

Wether I group the camera, animate the group and query the camera rotation, it inherits the group's rotation. Its the same if I use a parent constraint. I can play with the constraint's orientation too but it doen't change anything, the camera still inherit the rotation.

[nowayfra]

I thougt trying to animate the camera in world space, then after all animation, put the cam into a group, rotate the group using its default pivot at 0,0,0 and after that query the camera transformations in world space.

PS: querying in worldspace: float $rotate[] = xform -query -worldspace -rotation $cam;

[patrick-geoffroy]

I'll try that.

[patrick-geoffroy]

In the end, it's just too much trouble setting everything up every time. I rather look into math functions to incorporate in a mel script that will  automatically convert zxy to xyz when I export my camera attributes.

[nowayfra]

Just to clarify it for me: are the translation values inside your new software correct? Are only the rotations wrong?

[patrick-geoffroy]

Let's just say that if, in Maya, I want my camera to look at and move along the X axis, I have to rotate the camera -90 degrees along the Y.

So when I import the flightpath in the software, it moves along the x axis as expected but the camera is tilted 90 degrees (along the Z camera axis inside Maya). I figured out the World Coordinates of that software was XYZ.

So in Maya i switched the World coordinates to XYZ to match the software  but the camera by default keeps looking at the Z axis. I can't make it look at the X axis without rotating it again. 

And your suggestion didn't work out. I still get a rotation value of -90.

[patrick-geoffroy]

Actually, you know what, your suggestion works if  I query in Object Space.

float $rotate[] = xform -query -os -rotation camera1;

Thanks 

[joojaa]

Wouldn't it be easier to swap matrix columns?