Camera exporting question (FBX or .chan or..?)

Started by yesmine, May 13, 2014, 04:56:13 PM

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yesmine

I'd like to hear practical opinions about exporting camera movements from Terragen to Maya and vice-versa. If you bought Terragen with animation capabilities, would .chan or FBX be preferred by professionals and is one actually better if available. Since the Nuke .chan format seems to be handled by Terragen, what is the best way to get a .chan file into Maya, if .chan is preferable?

For practical purposes, if animations from Maya need to be incorporated in a project, what would be the best option to export a camera from Terragen so that it imports to Maya and functions correctly with the least difficulty so the two animations can later be composited?

Also, if Terragen defaults to centimeters, what problems does that cause with other programs that maybe in metres or feet?
Thanks...

Oshyan

Terragen's default unit is Meters.

I don't have hands-on experience with this, but as far as I know Maya does not natively support .chan. There are some tutorials around that show workflows for export, but I'm not sure about import. There are also plugins and scripts that make it all easier. However I think it should be a lot easier with FBX, not only because it should be supported by both Maya and Terragen, but also because it handles translation of rotation order, among other things.  If you need a full-function evaluation license to test FBX import/export, contact us at support@planetside.co.uk and we can set that up for you.

- Oshyan

jo

Hi,

Using FBX should resolve any problems with units too.

Regards,

Jo