Import Export Cinemachine Cameras to Maya + After Effects + FBX. Bake Camera Keyframes?

[vkovec]

@josterday

Bump again with an update:

We tried using the recorder’s option - “Animation Clip”:

• Add Primary CAMERA (with CM Brain)
• Setting Recorded Targets to EVERYTHING
• Record Hierarchy ON

This spits out an .anim of the camera with baked transforms. But now what? The thought was maybe creating an empty game object and parenting a new camera to it. Then apply the .anim to the empty (or the camera).

This would create an actual object with the transform data to be potentially output as an FBX. But…no luck. Maya, C4D, nothing recognizes any keyframe info when we output an FBX of the camera. We get the Camera object, but no transforms.

Any insight into HOW FBX EXPORTER WORKS is greatly appreciated.

Hi @josterday ,

You have the right workflow:

1. bake the animation of the CM Brain camera with the recorder
2. add the baked animation to a new camera in the scene and export the camera*

*Alternatively you can also export the recorded animation from the timeline:

1. create a new camera
2. add it to the timeline with the recorded animation
3. select the recorded animation and from the top menu select GameObject > Export Selected Timeline Clip…

Here is a video that also shows the workflow (from 0:19 - 0:47):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSqVwXfD7KA

As for not seeing the animation in Maya, would it be possible to send me the recorded anim file?

Here are also a few things to try/check:

1. check that the animation applied to the new camera can be played back in Unity (otherwise it will likely not be found by the exporter either)
2. create the new camera at the scene root instead of parented under an empty object and apply the animation directly to the camera
3. try unchecking “Record Hierarchy” in the recorder when recording
4. when exporting the new camera, check that in the Export Options either “Animation Only” or “Model(s) + Animation” is selected under “Include”.

Best,
Viktoria