All language subtitles for 2月21日 (7)

hi everyone Matt here with the Maya Learning Channel

in a series of previous videos

Matt Harwood showed you how to connect assets like

cameras lights and props

between Maya and unreal

you can click on the link on your screen

if you happen to miss out on those

this plugin allows you to do things like

controlled camera

change lighting

or animate meshes in Maya

while seeing those same assets update in real time

and unreal

however one thing it didn't do was stream animation

data to unreal level

or animation sequences

well thanks to an update to Livelink 2.0

that's now possible too

so let's do a

quick walkthrough of how this new workflow works

first make sure you download the newest

version of the Maya Unreal

Live link plugin

and install it onto the same system

that you have both Maya and unreal installed

I posted a link to it in the description below

next you'll notice that we're on Unreal 5 now

while the interface is different

all the same

workflows we showed in the previous videos still work

so don't worry

however setting up the link is a bit different

now you need to load the Maya

live link plugin in unreal

rather than the old live link plugin

and once you do that

the Livelink Editor can now be found in Unreals Window

Virtual Production

finally you'll need to go to Source

Maya Livelink to link your Maya session

next I'm going to disable auto save

this is to make sure that unreal doesn't inadvertently

save while Maya is in the process of sending it data

possibly causing a corruption

now we're ready to start streaming

there's basically

two ways to stream animation data to unreal

either you stream a light

camera or mesh to a level sequence

or you stream a character

to an animation sequence

in both cases

you'll need to use the Unreal live Link Editor's new

link button

so for example

you'll see that I already

have this animated character in Maya

that I exported to unreal using the file

sent to unreal function

making sure to enable animation and shape attributes on

export and animations morph targets

custom attributes and no zero value curves on import

to link them

I'll first open the unreal live link editor

and add the character to the object list

you'll need to be very careful here to

ensure that the root node you add to the list

is the exact same one you exported to unreal

for example

if I added this group node here

but had previously exported just the skeleton to unreal

the link won't work properly

once I click this button

I'll need to select an unreal character

for this to map to

again make sure that this character

matches the one you exported from Maya

even small differences in the skeleton hierarchy

could wildly corrupt your results

and lastly we can select or create a new sequence

in this case I'll create a new one

by typing in the path for it here and clicking create

now if you do want to reuse some preexisting sequence

once again make sure that this particular character

exists in that sequence

now I'll select the sequence I just created

and click link

notice the link icon turns yellow

and there's a progress bar

as Maya starts streaming data to unreal

and now when unreal

I can double

click the new animation sequence that I just created

and you'll see the animation is there

you'll also notice there's animation

curves here for the blunt shapes

I have running her expression

as well as a custom attribute which we'll get into

later

now if I need to make animation changes or

tweaks in real time

I can just switch the preview controller

to the Maya Livelink Preview controller

just a note about blend shapes

while I can edit the existing

blend shapes and watch the results just fine

I wouldn't be able to add

new blend shapes and just have them appear and unreal

for that I'd have to re export the modified character

from Maya first

then set up the link again

the same goes for

custom attributes

which are also supported in the newest

version of Live Link

you could use these to do things like

trigger in game

reactions to specific parts of your animation

like a dodge or parry window to this

character's downward slice

one other thing

you might notice is that every time I change

or add a new key

Maya stops for a moment

to send that new data to unreal

depending on the number of changes you're making

and the complexity of the asset

this could get pretty annoying pretty fast

luckily there's a pause button in the Livelink window

just click it

to pause the data stream from Maya to unreal

then you can make a bunch of uninterrupted changes

then unpause when you're done

and Maya will send all those changes at once to unreal

pretty handy if you ask me

so that about does it for the character

animation workflow

the camera light

and prop workflow is actually

mostly the same with only a few small differences

for one

you will need to link to an unreal

actor instead of a skeleton

and a level sequence instead of an animation sequence

also notice that like the level sequence section

down here

you can actually create new actors right in Maya

to link to in unreal

this wasn't possible with skeletons

because they're just too complex

you can specify the path and name of your actor

as well as the type

in particular

it's useful to link to blueprint versions of actors

since they'll give you the most

versatility in unreal

when you do this

you just need to manually set the static

mesh since that doesn't get carried over from Maya

other than that these work exactly the same way

as characters

functionally these are a little bit

less strict than the character

skeletons I showed you earlier

especially for props which have the same

supported attributes

translate rotated scale

you can actually link

completely different looking objects

between Maya and unreal

this lets you do nifty things like

use simpler Maya proxy objects

to animate complex unreal objects

great for performance if your props are really complex

you can then use subsequences to view all your streamed

objects at once

so that's everything you need to know about

transferring animation data from Maya to unreal

using Livelink

I definitely recommend downloading the plugin

via the link in the description

and giving it a try yourself

until next time