Quick Start¶
A Harmony rig, animated, running in Maya — in about ten minutes. The same steps work for Blender, and the same steps work in reverse; only the button labels change.
We'll use a .anm, because it carries the skeleton and the animation. See Pivot Files (.pvt) for when you'd want the other one.
1 — Select in Harmony¶
In the Node view or the Timeline, select the pegs you want to send. Include the camera's peg if you want the camera to travel too.
You don't have to be precise: the export list is editable, and anything you scan in can be removed again.
2 — Scan them into the export list¶
Open Octo Transform Sync from the Scripts toolbar, then go to Animation Files (.anm) → Export.
Press the + button in the list toolbar. Every selected peg appears, indented into its hierarchy.
The three buttons above the list are, left to right: find (select these rows' nodes back in the scene), add (scan the current selection in), and remove (drop the highlighted rows).
There are no checkboxes here
On an export list, membership is the selection — whatever is in the list gets exported. Checkboxes appear on the import side, where you choose which incoming items to apply.
3 — Check the Rig column¶
The Rig column proposes a grouping. In a simple one-character scene you'll see one rig plus Camera, and you can leave it alone.
If your scene holds two characters, give each root chain its own rig name — that's what makes them arrive as two separate armatures or groups instead of one tangle. See Rigs & Multi-Rig.
4 — Set the range and export¶
Set Start and End, or press Scene range to take them from the scene. Press Save As…, choose a path, then Export Animation.
Frames outside that range are not sampled at all, so keep it tight if you only need a slice.
5 — Import in Maya¶
Open OTS in Maya (the OTS shelf button), go to Animation Files (.anm) → Import, and Browse… to the file you just wrote.
The summary line tells you what OTS found — here, 3 pegs — 2 matched · 1 camera · frames 1–60. The list below shows every peg in the file and the scene object it resolved to.
The amber row has no match in this scene. That's expected for a camera peg on a fresh import: there is no joint by that name yet. See The Match Tree for the full colour and icon legend.
6 — Build it¶
Because nothing exists in the scene yet, press Create Rig. OTS creates the joints from the file's folded-in rest pose, parents them, and applies the animation — one undo step.
Then press Create Cameras to add the camera, with its FOV and clip planes, attached to the peg that animates it.
If you already had a matching skeleton, you would press Apply to Joints instead, and only the ticked rows would be touched.
That's the whole loop¶
Every other route is the same five moves: select → scan → check the Rig column → export → browse and apply.
| Read next | Why |
|---|---|
| Interface Overview | Every control in both tabs |
| The Match Tree | What amber means, and how to fix a miss |
| Cameras | Framing, FOV, clip planes, and the default camera |
| Transfer Routes | The six directions, and what to watch on each |