Maya to three.js with animation

Question

I have a rigged (skeleton and soft bind) model in Maya. The model is all one seamless low poly with a single jpeg texture mapped. There is simple animation of the skeleton. (joint rotation). I need to get it to work with ThreeJs (webGL).

Do I try to export an OBJ with Morph Targets some how? I can do OBJ but how do I get the morph targets? Can the developer that I am working with read Maya's baked animation file (.MC or .XML) in webGL. Do I export a Collada DAE?

Any help that can steer us in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Cassaundra

Answer 1

THREE.js comes with an exporter for Maya, but it only works for static models. I have created an updated version that also supports exporting rigged and animated models. It doesn't require any intermediate steps: it just outputs straight to a .JS file. We have a pull request to integrate the updated exporter with the THREE trunk, but if you want to get the new and improved exporter immediately you can get it from this repository: https://github.com/BlackTowerEntertainment/three.js/tree/maya_animation_exporter. The exporter files are in utils/exporters/maya.

Hope this helps.

Premise

Answer 2

It is best to export a Collada DAE file from Maya in order to get your data into ThreeJS. You can preview and share your data via http://Clara.io (an online 3D editor, modeler, animation) which imports Collada DAEs and uses ThreeJS for display.

Actinology

Answer 3

You should have read the FAQ as there is plenty of info there. https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/wiki. Most probably you need to export to Collada as Wavefront obj's do not support animation.

Eustatius