Clean Skeleton Exporter

Details:

The Clean Skeleton Exporter was created to clean up messy joint hierarchies on export.  It’s an animation and skeletal mesh fbx exporter that adds/updates root bones, culls non-joint nodes within the hierarchy itself, and bypasses non-influenced joints.  It does this all on a separate joint hierarchy so that it’s non-destructive.  Here’s a quick step-by-step process of what’s going on from the backend:

1. Create a temporary namespace for all new assets created
2. Add a new joint called ‘root’ and position it at Maya origin (0, 0, 0) if it’s not already there
3. Duplicate every joint in the original joint hierarchy
4. Copy over the joint orientation values from the original joint hierarchy to the new one
5. Query the parents of all the original joints and reparent the duplicated joints together in the same way to form a clean joint hierarchy
6. Skeletal Mesh Exports:
   • – Duplicate any meshes that have skin influences from the original joint hierarchy
   • – Copy the skin weights from the original meshes to the duplicated ones
   • – Export both the duplicated meshes and the clean joint hierarchy
7. Animation Exports:
   • – Constrain the clean joints to the original joints
   • – Bake the clean joints
   • – Export the clean joints