This article shows how the export scenes process worked in Anima version 5.6 or older for non-subscription and non-4D models. Please notice that it only works when the scene includes only Demo, Purchased, and/or Custom imported models. Also, this does not work for 4D models, even if they are Purchased ones, because those use a technology not supported by the FBX format. Since Anima version 6.0 onwards, this option has been removed because the option to purchase individual models was discontinued, so the only models available in the library are subscription models.
Understanding the Limitations
Although it is not the recommended workflow, it is possible to export animated scenes from Chaos Anima to 3 different external standard formats: FBX, VRScene, and Open Collada.
We don’t recommend using this feature mainly because the workflow is much worse, but also because not all the actors that can be used in Anima are compatible with those formats.
For example, the 4D models cannot be embedded inside a non-Anima native format due to the exclusive technology that we have included in them. More about this in the following article: 4D Digital Humans.
Notice that the limitation is in the subscription models, not in the anima ALL version, so you can still export scenes from anima ALL if those scenes do not have any subscription model inside or, in other words, if the scenes are only using purchased models, custom imported models and/or demo models.
These are the reasons why exporting to external formats is a worse workflow:
- Exporting to external formats takes a lot of resources in time and disk space. You don’t need to do this step when using the plugins.
- The import process of the exported files in the 3D applications also takes time and is prone to errors, depending on the settings used (units, animation bake, skins, shaders, etc.). Again, the import process is much faster with the plugins and fully automatic.
- The viewport performance of the destination 3D application is reduced exponentially, especially when many actors are used in the scenes.
- The shaders of the actors cannot be automatically adapted to the Render Engine you are using because the importers from the 3D applications only create standard native shaders. Instead, the anima plugins detect your render engine and automatically adapt the shaders to them.
This is a quick list of the advantages of using the anima plugins:
- Support for our exclusive 4D Digital Human type of models using state-of-the-art technology for dynamic 4D geometries.
- Synchronize Scenes, Cameras, and Backgrounds between Anima and your 3d application using the Anima Alive.
- Dynamically load multiple Anima scenes from the same project.
- Multiple viewport optimizations to keep up performance even with a large number of people (like dynamically limiting the number of visible actors, easy hide/show of textures respecting the render time, taking care of all the bone/skin calculations on a separate process, automatically pre-baking of all the animations, etc.).
- Adapt the Anima materials to the render engine that you are using (we support a long list of Render Engines).
- Generate anchor points to link other objects.
- Playback speed control (to easily generate time-lapse or slow motions).
- An exclusive AnimaDrop panel that will let you use our models directly from inside your 3D application.
In Unreal Engine some of those features are not possible or even don’t make sense because of the real-time philosophy that is behind all the Game Engines.
That said, we understand that there are situations where there is no other option than going through the scene export process. For example, this can be a viable solution when you only need to use Rigged actors and there is no Anima plugin available for your 3D application, like Blender, Unity, Modo, Lightwave, or Houdini on the Windows platform, or for any application running on the Macintosh platform with OSX.
Export to FBX
The FBX format is one of the most widely supported 3D formats in the computer animation industry. It was created by Kaydara Inc. and purchased by Autodesk in 2006.
The FBX scene exporter from Anima can generate a single animated FBX file including all the actors and animations that have been simulated in the scene (with the important exceptions explained above). The resulting exported FBX can then be imported into any compatible 3D application.
Once a scene is finished in Anima, you can start the export process by going to Scenes > Export 3D Scene:
A pop-up window may appear if you have not yet simulated or baked your animations. The window will prompt you to calculate all the frames before exporting. Please click YES to proceed.
The Export: 3D Scene window will appear with several options, including Output path, Format, Range, Units, Texture Quality, etc.
Click on the ellipses ( … ) to the right of the Output path to assign a different export path:
Click on Format to choose from one of the following options; FBX (FBX Exporter), DAE (OpenCOLLADA Exporter) or VRSCENE (V-Ray Exporter).
Use the Range option to either select All (Scene Bounds) if you want to export all your animations or to select Current Frame if you only need the placement of the actors in a specific frame.
The Units option allows you to choose the unit of measurement that you need to export your scene correctly. The units should match those found in your target 3D application.
To speed up the process, we have also created some presets, that have the proper units and exporting parameters for various 3D software packages.
Animation Format allows you to choose whether or not to export the skeleton and mesh together, just the skeleton or just the point cached mesh.
If your Anima scene has escalators you can choose between Animation as nodes or Animation as bones.
Select the FBX version that corresponds to the FXB version in the software package you will be importing to.
Select whether you want to embed the texture files inside the FBX or not. This option is especially useful if you want to export your scenes to applications like Unity because it simplifies the automatic import and processing of all the actor’s textures.
Choose if you want the exporter to generate unique names for all the nodes (actors) in the FBX file or if you want it to use the ones from the anima scene (we recommend using unique names to avoid issues with some FBX importers):
Finally, click on EXPORT to commit using the selected export parameters.
When the export process ends, you will find the exported FBX in the path selected. Depending on the options chosen might get a different set of folders and files. In the example used above, these are the files we got:
As we did not select to export any point cache data, that folder is generated but it has no content.
Export to VRScene
It is also possible to export anima scenes directly to VRScene, the Chaos scene descriptor. Again, as it happens with the FBX exporter, there are important limitations that must be considered when using this feature that have already been explained above, at the beginning of this article.
Our VRScene exporter generates and bakes all the geometry and animation in Alembic format and then defines the V-Ray native shaders inside the VRScene scene descriptor. Depending on the V-Ray version used, there might be some issues caused by referencing Alembic geometry from the VRScene code, but this is something that depends entirely on the VRScene development itself, not on our export process from anima.
As far as we know the latest versions of V-Ray have some issues visualizing the VRScenes exported from anima in the viewport, but they are rendered without problems.
The process to export the scenes is mostly the same as the one described above, in the FBX export section. The 4 first options are exactly the same (Output, Format, Range, and Units), and the only one you need to change is, of course, the Format:
The main difference is in the second batch of options, which in the VRScene case are reduced to only one (Gamma):
Depending on your render workflow you might want to use let the exporter automatically adapt the gamma of the textures to the Linear Workflow standard (Gamma = 0.4545) or leave them without changes (Gamma = 1).
When ready, click the Export button and the process will start. After a while, this was the result of the export for the sample scene:
Export to Open Collada
The third scene export option is the Open Collada format which is an Open Source format created by The Khronos Group Inc. Unfortunately the development efforts behind this format have been kept on hold since a few years ago but still, it is one of the few Open Source formats available that can be used to manage 3D animated scenes.
The options available in this format are very similar to the ones available in the FBX exporter described above. Again, the 4 first options are exactly the same (Output, Format, Range, and Units), and the only one you need to change is, of course, the Format:
Here again, the lower batch options are similar to those used with FBX, with a few differences that are discussed below.
To speed up the process, there are 2 presets that have the proper units and exporting parameters for two of the software packages that support this format by default (Blender and Lightwave). These are the differences between those presets:
In Animation Format you have the option to export the skeleton (actors meshes rigged to animated bones) or point cache data (vertex animation positions):
In Animation Channels, you can choose the format in which the animation tracks are exported. The options are Transforms (uses transformation matrices) or Components (uses translation, rotation, and scaling components separately):
In Material Instancing, you can choose to either store the material data per instance (Yes) and not per geometry (No):
In Texture coordinates, you can choose the name of the channels that will be used to store the texture coordinates (some applications might only recognize one format or the other):
In Texture path mode, you can select whether the paths to the textures will be stored relative to the path where the DAE is or if they will be absolute and exclusive to your current system:
The Naming mode option lets you define if the exporter has to generate unique names for all the nodes (actors) in the DAE file or if it just needs to use the ones from the anima scene (we recommend using unique names to avoid issues in the import process):
Finally, click on EXPORT to commit using the selected export parameters. After a bit of waiting, this was the result of the export for the sample scene:
