After Effects transforms exporter

The script "ae_transform_exporter_1.3.mse" show an unecpected error attepmting to export animation.
It show "Filestream cannot create: c:\AnimatePositionForAE.txt"
But no any dialogue about 'where to save', no even a possibility to do that.

I had the same Issue. It dissapears when I run Max as Administrator. Great Script!! Thanx a lot!

Just create the *.txt yourself and put it in c:/

AnimatePositionForAE.txt

Hi. Awesome script, only thing is that the rotations get mixed up when I go from max to AE. How do I fix this?
Thanks

This script is awesome! Thanks!

But I have a question. I am using it not for import into AE but just to get the animation key data. In my test scene, I only have 3 keys at frame1, frame50 and frame100. But the script outputs data for every frame from 1-100. Is there a way to only output data for frames that have animation keys on them?

In my real scene, there are hundreds of animation keys and I only want the data for these frames, not where there are no animation keys in MAX.

Thanks again.

Hey Aaron,

Not sure why but my rotation keyframes came in mixed up. They were mapped like this:

x should have been Z
y should have been X
z should have been y

Unfortunately I'm in a crunch and can't isolate why this is happening right now, but thought I'd post it and let you know! I was also getting an unhandled exception on the "save to text file" command, whereas "copy to clipboard" worked fine (I just pasted the data into a txt file).

- Spencer

Thanx! This is a great work!

I've encountered a problem though :(

I've tried using Max2010 and 2011 with AE CS3.

Everything works except when I try to transfer a rotation from an object that rotates about more than one axis. It just doesn't match. The rotation is completely different and I can see in the clipboard data that it's different than in max.

If I rotate an object about only one axis, it matches perfectly.

Any clue as to why it's happening?

It's help, thanks

hello, thanks for your script : it works fine :-)
but I have some problems with position precision values in after effects.
could you please add a option value (default is 1), so I can multiply by 100 or 0.01 (for eg) when I have such problems...
I then simply make an expression in ae to multiply camera position by the same value.
Thanks.

Is it the float value is not great enough? I can carry the float farther, or set a value that will control the float distance. That way you wont need to 'fix' it in AE.

If this will work, I can roll it in pretty quick :)

Nice script. Thanks!

Oh wait, exporting the postion of the Max camera and the target DOES work with a 2-node AE camera... you just have to make sure that the AE cam's "orientation" is set to 0,0,0

This script is really cool, but missing an important thing: Camera support (and not just for the FOV)

With the great copy-paste concept it's a shame that it's still necessary to render out an RPF sequence to get the Max camera into AFX. Obviously it's not easy, because when I tried exporting the camera transformations (or just positions for camera and POI), nothing did fit together.

This would be a killer script if you could export camera animation as well... then simply paste it onto a camera layer and all the settings are taken care of.

Also, do you think it would be possible to add 2D screen coordinate export? Basically what the Max2AE script currently does, for stuff like corner pinning (because sometimes you don't need 3D coordinates).

And maybe a "Export and copy to clipboard" button, so that the notepad doesn't open, but the data is automatically copied to the clipboard.

Sorry for the wishlist. It's just that your script shows so much potential! ;)

Simple, I am adding the extra copy modes to it right now, and should have a new version up tonight, thanks for the ideas :)

As a note, you don't need to import an RPF camera to apply the transforms to it. You can just create a camera in AE, and paste the transforms onto it.

If anyone has an idea how to translate the correct focal length info into AE i'd love to add that. I just don't have a clue where to get started.

The 2D co-ordinate information is a great idea as well, i'll look into it.

edit: copy directly to clipboard version made and uploaded

Thanks for the addition :)

And while I'm better at suggesting than coding it myself: As an extension to 2D coordinate export (which still should be included, if you just need a single point), how about making a corner pin mechanism, where you pick 4 points in Max and the export is actually a script that can be pasted on a layer to automatically create a PowerPin with the four coordinates (like what madbc2004 did here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbsx1RxQZ44)

Although it might be better to actually have 4 object pickers for that, instead of a list that has to be sorted a certain way...

Hey Aaron, it's pretty simple really. The ONLY data that you need to get the camera focal length to AE is he Field of View (FOV). Copy that across and you're fine.

The reason the lens focal length is different is because AE by default uses a film back of 36mm, whereas 3DS Max changes this depending on your rendering resolution (I have NO idea why...). For example if you choose HD as your render preset, it for whatever reason changes your film back to 20.12mm, thus "cropping" your image and effectively zooming it in. You don't actually see a difference in the viewport, but if you change this with your camera selected you'll see all of the numbers change.

So a 50mm lens is no longer visually a 50mm lens... Just to make things confusing, right? ;)

Hope that helps!

- Spencer

Awesome!
I specially like the "copy-paste" approach to it! Excellent for super-fast iterations.