This is an LScript for transferring animation data from LightWave to After Effects. It is done by exporting the position and rotation of the selected item in LW into a .ma file (ASCII Maya file). At the same time, After Effects is either launched or brought to front and told to open that specific file. This makes it feel like you have a direct connection between the two applications.
It always exports it as a camera so that AE does not create a whole bunch of solids for the models inside the .ma file. Think of it as exporting a null that just so happens to look like a camera 
What do you think, should the script also export scale as well, or is it not needed?
Something weird happens with the sound in the end. I might re-record it, but it works for now:
Looks Great! Have you looked at the ATS utilities? http://www.ats-3d.com/POIcam/POIcam_AEpro/AE_standard.html
Can the position of objects be away from world center with your plugin? Your script looks simple and straightforward.
could your script export a null as a position placement for a light in After Effects.
Thanks for the LScript!
Also, I think it would be nice to have the script take scale into account. Could be useful for objects.
I have seen, but not used the ATS utilities. I haven’t tried exporting a null yet, but it should work as long as it has more than one keyframe. At the moment it cant export items with only one keyframe. I will fix that and I will add support for scaling too, but right now I am working on a similar script to export straight from AE back to LW.
I have no idea how to add this lscript and get it to work. I downloaded added through add plug ins and scrolled to it under “additional” and nothing happened. didn’t do a thing
Hi Nathan, open the script in a text editor and check that the path to After Effects is correct. Also take a look next to your LWS file to see if there is a .ma file exported at least.
Petter,
Can the object in Lightwave be off the zero axis and come into AE correctly?
Hi Gary, yes it can and it does. Check the coordinates in AE and see that it displays the same value but in pixels. 1.7m in LW == 170px in AE. I just tested on a model that moves around in LW, and its values are transferred correctly into AE.
Have you tried it?
Hi Petter, does the script still assume the scene is 640×480@24fps?
For people who encounter view and motion mismatches: be sure to adjust your camera option according to the imported .ma one. Also see if you have to stretch it to make it fit to your fps (this .ma comes in as 24fp right now and thus needs to be adjusted to fit an e.g. 25fps pipeline).
Download it again, it has been updated to handle camera resolution, fps (but only 24, 25 and 30 due to limitation in the .ma format), and lens focal length.
Like the plugin!
Seems to work but I would like to export the rotation and position of an object that is parented to a different object. Position and Rotation comes from a Null, but I would like the position an rotation of the parented object. Is that a possibillity?
Try it and see what happens
It should work, as it “bakes” the global position and rotation on export.
Petter,
Great script, although it looks like the rotation transforms coming from NULL objects in lightwave are somehow backwards when they get into AE. I have a NULL that is rotating the wrong way in AE form what LW makes it look like. Should the NULL have world coordinates enabled?
-mark
The script always reads out world position and world rotation from an animated item, so that should not have any effect. I do some axis reversal ( * -1 on rotation and * -100 on position ) to get the desired results in AE, and that is done to nulls as well as cameras, models or any other item. Please feel free to poke at it in the script, lines 92-97, I might have gotten something wrong there.
Can we get some stuff for fusion?
Hmmmm, it could have been my scene. I will do some more testing. Do exported items still need 2 keyframes?
-mark
This is a bit confusing, The 3D axis system between LW and AE is exactly the same except for the Y axis which is reversed. Interesting. I am going to see what happens if nothing is axis reversed just for giggles.
-mark
Actually, I removed all the axis removal and just negative multiplied the Y POS by -100; I am going to see what this does.
-mark
Petter,
Do you have a direct email, I would like to send you this LW scene and AE project and see what you think.
-mark
send it to me via petter at mentalfish dot com
@kat , how does FBX from LW to Fusion work out?
Thanx for the killer tool. I’ll give it a go tomorrow at work!
Did A quick test and it seems to work great…big thanx!
Wow. It certainly works. Lots of possibilities I never thought of.
Oh! And thanks loads. How do I register?
No need to register, just download it (link under video). Or were you thinking of something else?
Hi
I have just downloaded the script and test it
It does an excellent job for simple camera motions and for objects too
BUT when i tried to rotate the camera to the bank axe everything went very wrong…DO you have any ideas??
And another thing, i have used ATS plugin and your workflow it is much much easier
Tomorrow i ll try it again to see if i can understand what really happens
Thank you
Hi Petter!! awesome script!! been waiting for this since i use lightwave!! only one thing and maybe it’s because i did it wrong, but i rendered a movie of my sequence in lightwave witch was a simple board and the camera moving from right to left, when in after effect i see that the camera seems to make the good move, and when i add text wich should be on the board and moving according to the camera movement but it seems to move with a little offset and seems to be moving on the board… so if you can anwser.. sorry for the english i’m french canadian and not always comfortable with english!! thanks in Advance
Michel
Nice lscript!
For the life of me, I cannot seem to get this right. I am (hopefully) following your video correctly, but it seems as though I am doing something wrong. Is it too much to ask for you to post an example LW scene file and AE file to look at?
Thanks!
Figured it out! Just a case of RTFM.
Once again, great lscript!
Great stuff – looking forward to seeing how far you can push this script. You’ve achieved what the LW development team have failed to do in 20 years of coding! well done.
Hehe, thanks, at least NewTek has enabled the possibility of making scripts such as this. I’d rather have them work on the foundation so that it is as painless as possible to write such scripts. Having high hopes for scripting in CORE. I have one minor feature request that is outside of my scripting reach, and that is script access to FBX and Collada export.
this script looks great!
I think scale should definitely be taken into account, maybe even Alpha (though it would be easier to do alpha in AE if you were working with this setup from the start).
Whoever doesn’t need those properties can simply not link them.
It would also be nice to have a script in after effects that links allt he required properties.
Great Work!
Just used it and it works… fantastic, thanks! Although it looks as if I have to set FOV/zoom/backplate size manually? It came in with totally different values than what my LW camera is set to. Or is that dependent on aspect/resolution in LW?
SOOOOOOO cool, im gona test it and thank you after…
I am definately looking forward to your plugin from AE to Lightwave. This would mean I could do the cameratracking in AE and create all the good stuff in LW
How is that plugin coming?
Pardon my late reply Charly, I just wanted to tell you that you can use this script for AE to export your comp as LightWave scene: http://aenhancers.com/viewtopic.php?t=991
In the video, what is the anchorpoint,trans,scale of the logo.png in AE at the start? How is it matched to lightwave scene logo? Would it be possible to post the sample AE and lw file to follow the tutorial? Thanks.
we have a Lightwave 7.5 und Script seems not to working there… Is any workaround?
I don’t think so, I believe many of the features I am using in LScript is requiring a later version of LightWave, but I’ll take a look.