.FaceFX Exporters

The FXA plug-ins are Max and Maya utilities that can create, modify, and get data out of FaceFX Actor Files (*.fxa), which contain everything needed by a game or 3D application to play bones or morph-based animations. Actor files are used to store the reference pose, bone poses, animation data, and the face graph. The reference pose and bone poses are created with Max or Maya, but the face graph and animation data are created inside of FaceFX Studio. The FXA plug-ins can also be used to get animation data created in FaceFX Studio into Max or Maya.

Batch Import and Export Functionality

Both the Max and Maya FXA plug-ins support "Batch Import" and "Batch Export" functionality. This feature reads a text file to get a list of pose names and frames where those poses can be found. The text file has the following format:

// Comment lines are ignored
// the format is:
// pose_name  frame number
// Make sure there is only one space.
// The semi-colon is optional. 
// For pose names with spaces, make sure the name is enclosed in quotes.
// For pose names without spaces, the quotes are optional.
open 10;
W 20;
ShCh 30;
PBM 40;
"FV" 50;
"Pose with spaces in name" 60;
// And so on...

Baked Curves vs. Raw Curves

The plug-ins can return key information for curves (although not in mod-developer versions of the plug-ins). Curves can be raw or baked. Raw curves return the exact key values, times, and slopes. Raw curves may not accurately reflect the node's value over time because they do not take into account the node's minimum or maximum values or any input values from other nodes. Baked curves are an approximation of the node's value over time.