Maya - How to Ungroup animation and keep animation? - maya

Question

There are some old animations that I want to reuse, but the old animation use different axis (For example: old: Face negative Z, Y as up; new: Face Y, Negative Z as up). So I fix this by grouping the animation and rotate the group so that it faces the right axis. But when I ungroup, it's only work for current frame (I turn Auto key on).
I have search several forums:
Grouping animated objects, Scaling, Ungrouping
Need help maintaining offset during ungroup
ungrouping but keeping animation
Grouping animated objects, Scaling, Ungrouping
But nothing works.

Answer 1

Ok, it works for the current frame when you ungroup. So to make it work for the entire animation, you can group & un-group for all the frames. Of course I won't do it by hand but I'll do it with script.
proc GetPlaybackRange(string $bone, int $outStartEndTime[])
{
float $arrKey[] = `keyframe -q $bone`;
$arrKeyLength=size($arrKey);
$outStartEndTime[0] = floor($arrKey[0]);
$outStartEndTime[1] = ceil($arrKey[$arrKeyLength-1]);
}
proc UngroupAndGroupNextFrame(int $frame, string $groupName, float $transform[])
{
currentTime $frame ;
ungroup;
currentTime ($frame + 1) ;
group -n $groupName;
xform -worldSpace -matrix
$transform[0]
$transform[1]
$transform[2]
$transform[3]
$transform[4]
$transform[5]
$transform[6]
$transform[7]
$transform[8]
$transform[9]
$transform[10]
$transform[11]
$transform[12]
$transform[13]
$transform[14]
$transform[15]
$groupName;
}
proc UnGroupForAnimation()
{
string $sel[]= `ls -sl`;
string $groupName = $sel[0];
float $transform[];
$transform = `xform -q -worldSpace -matrix $groupName`;
string $bone[] = `listRelatives -children $groupName`;
int $startEndTime[];
GetPlaybackRange($bone[0], $startEndTime);
for($i = $startEndTime[0]; $i <= $startEndTime[1]; $i++)
{
UngroupAndGroupNextFrame($i, $groupName, $transform);
}
currentTime ($startEndTime[1] + 1) ;
ungroup;
timeSliderClearKey;
print ($bone[0] + " range "+$startEndTime[0]+" : "+$startEndTime[1]);
}
UnGroupForAnimation();
Usage of the script:
Step 1. Select the group (the children of the group should be the bone)
Step 2. Run the script.
And that's it.