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This article

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shows how

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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

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Although it is not the recommended workflow, it is possible to export animated scenes from anima® Chaos Anima to 3 different external standard formats: FBX, VrSceneVRScene, 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® Anima are compatible with those formats.

For example, the 4D models cannot models cannot be embedded inside a non-anima® Anima native format due to the exclusive technology that we have included in them. More about this in the following article: 4D Digital Humans. Also, when using anima® ALL, none of the subscription models that are used in the scenes can be exported to external formats because those models are provided on a rental basis only, and we need to keep them in the anima® native format to be able to verify their ownership.

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Notice that the limitation is in the subscription models, not in the anima® anima ALL version, so you can still export scenes from anima® 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.

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These are the reasons why exporting to external formats is a worse workflow:

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  • Exporting to external formats takes a lot of resources in time and disk space.
    • Notice that you simply
  • You don’t need to do this step when using the plugins
    • , you skip it completely
  • .
  • 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
    • using a high number of actors
  • many actors are used in the scenes.
  • The shaders of the actors cannot be automatically adapted to the Render Engine
    • that
  • you are using because the importers from the 3D applications only create standard native shaders. Instead, the
    • anima®
  • anima plugins detect your render engine and automatically adapt the shaders to them.

And this This is a quick list quick list of the advantages of using the  anima® 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® Anima and your 3d application using the alive™ connection Anima Alive.
  • Dynamically load Dynamically load multiple anima® Anima scenes from the same anima® 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® 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 anima® Drop exclusive AnimaDrop panel that will let you use our models directly from inside your 3D application.
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In Unreal Engine®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® Anima plugin available for your 3D application, like Blender®Blender, Unity®Unity, Modo®Modo, Lightwave®Lightwave, or Houdini® Houdini on the Windows platform, or for any application running on the Macintosh platform with OSX.


Export to FBX

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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

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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

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Anima, you can start the export process by going to

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 Scenes >

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Export 3D Scene:

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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.

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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® anima scene (we recommend to use using unique names to avoid issues with some FBX importers):

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It is also possible to export anima® 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®anima.

As far as we know the latest versions of V-Ray have some issues visualizing the VRScenes exported from anima® anima in the viewport, but they are rendered without problems.

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In Animation Channels, you can choose the format that in which the animation tracks are exported in. The options are are Transforms (uses transformation matrices) or Components (uses translation, rotation, and scaling components separately):

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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 must just needs to use the ones from the anima® anima scene (we recommend using unique names to avoid issues in the import process):

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