Baking transforms reliably

[nemyax]

What's a good (and hassle-free) way to hard-bake an animation? I mean that the result should be the following:

• All visible transforms from the original animation are recorded to bone channels.
• All relationships such as IK and constraints are stripped from bones so that only the direct transform animation kicks in.

I tried Bake All Actions, but it didn't give me the results I needed. It appears that this command doesn't really bake all relationship-driven motions: if you delete the model's relationships, the "before" and "after" animations are different.

I need this "barebones" motion for my action importer. When I import simple FK-only animations, the import results look adequate. When I try to import the output of Bake All Actions, the results are unsatisfactory, but still consistent with what you get in A:M with the relationships nuked.

So, is there a way to really really really bake things?

[robcat2075]

A quick test shows that IK relationships do indeed not bake correctly.

 

A bug report may be in order.

[John Bigboote]

Maybe an obj sequence export- or an MDD export. Both would eliminate all bones and constraints and each frame would be a separate file... I don't know if A:M would import it back in tho... gee- would be great have FBX as an option.

[nemyax]

John Bigboote

I want this for a Blender importer that applies animation curves (transformed from A:M animation splines) to bones. Mesh deformations are a different story.

With the baking feature being in the state it's in, I might be better off coding a .bvh exporter for A:M.

[robcat2075]

Since it is already possible to force a key on a bone that includes constraint results, it should be feasible to include that power in "baking".

[John Bigboote]

John Bigboote

I want this for a Blender importer that applies animation curves (transformed from A:M animation splines) to bones. Mesh deformations are a different story.

With the baking feature being in the state it's in, I might be better off coding a .bvh exporter for A:M.

Have you tried the existing BVH exporter?

[nemyax]

Have you tried the existing BVH exporter?

Heh, I didn't know there was one. Thanks for tipping me off. If it produces WYSIWYG motions, then that's all I need.

[John Bigboote]

I thought there was... but now looking for it I don't see a BVH export option...

[nemyax]

It's a plugin in the shortcut menu for an action. It seems to work well, but unfortunately it doesn't have bone orientation adjustment options. And it silently replaces spaces by underscores in names. Both of these things need to be accounted for on the receiving end.