[Request] FBX camera import

I’d appreciate having the ability to directly import keyed cameras from Maya as an fbx file.

Currently I’d have to export the entire scene via matinee, import my animated cameras into the scene in Maya, copy the keys to the matinee camera and export the whole thing again.

Hi Christian,

You can do this currently in Rocket.

  1. In Maya, make and keyframe the camera
  2. File > Export Selection
  3. Export as FBX with Animation
  4. In Rocket, open your Matinee
  5. File > Import… (choose the FBX)
  6. When it asks if you want to create the camera, say Yes

This will create the Camera Actor in the level and the keyframed Camera Group in Matinee

Let me know if you have any issues with this.

The movement of the camera has been transferred successfully but the location and rotation values are messed up, as you can see in the picture. Ironically only the Y to Z conversion worked. I already tried the “axis conversion” FBX option.

Unfortunately your image did not seem to upload correctly. Can you try again?

Hope it works now:

Your attachment is still not working. Could you try uploading the image to your Rocket FTP folder? I can grab it from there.

Now?

ftp://Christian.Hecht@ftp.epicgames.com/FTP_Dropbox/Christian_Hecht/cam.jpg

The picture works via the FTP, thank you. I see how the values are swapped. But you do say that the actual animation is still correct, yes?

(p.s. after you respond, do not mark the answer as accepted. That actually closes this post and makes it harder for me to find it :slight_smile: )

Yes, the basic movement of the camera is correct, only the world position and rotation of the camera itself are swapped.

Okay, I’ll do some more testing and report the issue. If I find a workaround I will let you know. Thanks for your help.

Have you found a workaround? I noticed that the issue has unfortunately not been fixed in the September build :[ It would be such an enormous time saver for me!

Hi Christian,

There has been no update on this bug yet. I am not aware of a convenient workaround, except for possibly modifying the camera’s position in Maya prior to exporting, accounting for the fact the FBX appears to import rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise.

Cheers!

I managed to correctly offset the location so that it’s correct in UE4 but I’m still struggling with the rotation.

I finally figured it out:

In Maya the dublicated (prepped for UE4 camera) has to have:

  1. Swapped TranslateX with TranslateZ values.
  2. Mirrored TranslateX values from positive to negative.
  3. Added to rotate values:
    RotateX +180
    RotateY +90
    RotateZ +180
  4. Mirrored RotateY values from positive to negativ.

This should do the trick.

This is a bug that has been around forever. It’s even in the current version of the UDK. To fix this what I do is in my 3D Package I make a bone(Usually a very small box) that I skin and attach to my camera and then animate that bone and export it to Unreal. Then inside of Unreal I attach a camera actor to the bone and then using matinee I active the animation. Probably not the best way to go about it as you can not animate your FOV but it will work. Let me know if this works for you or if you have any issues with my suggestion and I will be more than glad to help you out. Oh on more thing I have noticed that the closer to 0,0,0 you are in the world the less that this bug seems to happen.

Hey, thanks for the hint. But it is not a practical solution for more complex scenes with 8+ cameras. I really hope EPIC fixes this soon, it’s such an essential part of a Maya cinematics pipeline.

Has this issue been fixed yet? Because animating the camera directly in Maya alongside my character would really be an enormous time saver. With a working camera import, I’d have the correct timing for both straight away, rather than doing the character animation in Maya and the camera work in UE4 separately.

Hi Christian,

There has been no update on the status of the issue yet; it is not marked as a high priority.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Okay :[
I wonder what’s the workflow you guys use regarding camera and character animation balancing/coordination in cinematics.

Go ahead and make a new UDN post for that question (feel free to make it in-depth and ask specific questions on your mind) and I’ll assign it to someone in our cinematics department.

Cheers!