Animating With A Motion Path In Maya And Exporting To COLLADA Format

In practical use, you would want to animate an object along a curve if you were animating a complicated path for a train, car, plane, etc. There are also other uses you might find like animated sprite effects along a curve. This tutorial features a space ship and curve.

First of all, Make sure that Playback speed is set to Real-Time 24 fps.

Maya-Set-Playback-Speed

Then, select a primitive curve or create your own with one of the methods on the shelf, if you are familiar with a pen tool then you will probably like the bezier curve tool which is what I’ll be using here. However if the bezier is too much, there are other tools on the shelf that can accomplish the same thing.

Maya-Select-Bezier-Curve-Tool

Click and drag depending on the curve you are using, and continue to click on the grid until you’ve finished the curve, then press “Q“ to return to your selector tool or press enter when you are done. It’s suggested to draw your curve in an orthographic view from the top. Once you have finished the curve, you may find the pivot is off center which will make issues when trying to place and rotate your curve. Go to Modify, Center Pivot. The rotation, scale, and translation pivot will now be centered to your curve.

Maya-Draw-Bezier-Curve

Once you have finished your curve, bring in your object that will be animated, here it’s a ship. Click on your object then shift+click on the curve. It should look like this:

Maya-Import-3D-Model

Now, go to Animate, Motion Paths, Attach to Motion Path. Click on the hollow square on the right to pull up the options.

Maya-Attach-Object-to-Motion-Path

These are the settings I used to get the ship to face the right direction, however yours may differ depending on your model.

Maya-Attach-to-Motion-Path-Options

It should be animating along the curve now.

Maya-Object-Animate-Along-Path

Go to File, Export All…, and click on the hollow box to the right.

Maya-File-Export-All

Match the settings to this then click Export All.

Maya-Export-All-Options

Finally, open Vanda Engine, Make sure that you are in Prefab mode (Mode | Prefab), add _LOD1 post-fix to the  name of your dae file (for example spaceship_LOD1.dae) and go to File, Import, External Scenes… Select the scene you just exported from Maya and your object will be animating along the path now in Vanda Engine.

The Author

Vanda-Engine-Krista-Albert

Krista Albert     (Kalbert.1993@gmail.com)

I’m an aspiring 3D game artist and a current student at the School of Visual Arts. My main focus right now is in modeling/sculpting, texturing, and lighting 3D environments as well as characters.

(c) copyright Zehne Ziba Co., Ltd. For more information, please refer to copyright notice.

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