Matching Maya nd Bodypaint

Matching camera and objects setup in Maya & Bodypaint

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This is a simple tutorial, about setting up the objects and camera inside BodyPaint 3D that matches exactly to the setup you did inside Maya. Well, I want to achieve is to make sure both Maya and Bodypaint renders matches exactly using the same objects and seeing from the same camera. That sounds pretty simple but it took me a while to find a way around it. The solution provided here may not be all correct(by the book), but end result is what I wanted and I wanna to document it down before I start forgetting the steps. Hope this tutorial may be useful to you too.

This tutorial only covers the static camera. I have yet to apply it animated camera. Maybe you could it a try and let me know your solution. I have provided a working Maya objects and camera files for you to try out along with this tutorial.

So, lets start with a simple setup inside Maya. I have made an arrow object, duplicated it and offset it. Create a simple camera (without aim), open its attribute editor and it is important you set its Rotate Axis Y to -90. If you import the camera into Bodypaint 3D without doing this, you will have a camera orient in different direction. Snap the camera to the corner of second camera and orient it to look at the first arrow object. The reason for doing this is to ensure when we combine the camera and objects back in Bodypaint3D we can check if the camera is sitting in the right location. Next, we'll make sure the camera focal length is at 35 (default value) and set the rendering output size to 1024 x 1024. Make a render now from camera1.

As shown bellow is the rendered image from camera1. This image will be used later to match with the render from Bodypaint. It can also be imported as background image inside Bodypaint3D viewport to double check the alignment.

Next, we'll start exporting the camera and arrow objects. Select both arrow objects and export them as Obj format. Obj format does not support camera thus we'll select the camera alone and export it as Fbx format. I am currently using FBX200611 version of FBX exporter, and leave all the settings as default.

You should be getting two files in Obj and Fbx formats. I have got them ready as MayaArrow.obj and MayaCam.fbx