How to make animations interact with environment? (cinematics)

Keep in mind this is intended for something like cinematics, scripted scenes, not actual gameplay.

Okay first, this question was difficult to word. The scenario relevant to this question is this: I have my scene setup in UE4. Lets just say for example, its a forest with a campfire in the middle of the map. Now, I want to make an animation with this setup in mind. In the animation if I wanted my character to walk around a tree then go sit next the campfire, how can I make this animation in Maya, without being able to see where my character will be in the UE4 environment? How can I know where my character will end up being in UE4 while animating in Maya? The problem I’m having is that when animating the character in Maya, I don’t know where he’s going to end up being in UE4 if he’s animated to walk a certain distance and then do something.

Is there a way to get a scene reference in Maya of my UE4 scene, so that I can animate a character around the physical surroundings to have them properly interact with them and NOT clip through them?

You have the right idea. The best approach is to export the level’s objects to a file. I prefer FBX, as that will import into Maya well.

To export, in the Editor select the objects you want to export. Go to File > Export Selected.

If you want to export everything in the map, simply go to File > Export All.

Each time you update the level you’ll need to update the FBX and reimport to Maya. So it’s a good idea to try and lock down your object placement as much as possible before animating.