Is there a way to export the skin cluster properly into the FBX format from Maya using the export selection option instead of the export all option? I Know this is a Maya question but since I am using it to export into UE4 I figured someone else here has ran across this and possibly has a fix for it.
Issues Details below.
I was having the same problem exporting FBX skeletal meshes from Maya(version seems to be irrelevant) with the export selection option like discussed in these two threads
What seems to be happening is that when using the export selection option no matter what I try the skincluster is not exporting. Even if I manually select the skincluster, tweak, and bindpose nodes, the skinning information is not exporting at all. I can get the animation to export by selecting the animation curve data nodes or baking the bones in Maya. However nothing seems to allow the skin cluster to export without using the export all option. I am pretty certain my export options are correct since if I use the export all option they work fine. I am mainly wondering if there is a solution to this because using the export selection option keeps unwanted nodes out of the exported file without having to do complicated steps to clean out the Maya file before export.
Any technical wizardry would be greatly appreciated.
A couple things to check on your meshes before exporting them to fbx. First, make sure your history is nice and clean. You should have the skinCluster node at the top of the history stack. If not, things go bad.
This:
Not something like This:
If you have history like above, you can try doing delete non-deformer history on the mesh, and try exporting again.
Also, if for some reason that wasn’t it, check to make sure your meshes don’t have a crazy number of UV sets. I think fbx supports up to 4 UV channels. Sometimes, I’ve seen meshes that come into Maya with tons of channels.
Oh! another thing to check is that smooth mesh is turned off in your export options, and smoothing groups is turned on.
And not that I think this is the case, but make sure you’re grabbing your geo, and the root of your skeleton when exporting selected. That’s all you should need to grab for it to work.
What version/service pack of Maya are you running?
I tried your suggestions and it still didn’t work properly. The mesh I’ve been testing on is just a polygon primitive with auto mapped UV’s and no construction history, with 5 bones in total. I made sure my settings matched yours and its still is skipping the skincluster on export. I’m using Maya 2014 sp3
and have tried setting the FBX export option to 2013, and 2014
So you don’t have this problem at all when you use export selection?
I even tried using the Mel/python commands with different flags and it still doesn’t work.
Unfortunately, it sure doesn’t. I’ve not been able to reproduce this on my work machine. I believe I have 2014 sp3 at home, so I can check it there, but I know I’ve done dev work from home and it’s worked in the past.
Just in case, here are my full settings:
So after doing some more tests I decided to wipe my preferences for Maya and the FBX plugin and start with the default preferences. I have had issues in the past with carrying over my preferences from previous versions causing issues with random features and this seems to have fixed this issue. Not sure what in my preferences was causing the issue but now its working just fine
Thanks for your response Jeremy it made it easier to diagnose this issue
