basic rig from Soft to Maya?

[Hirazi Blue]

Is there any way to get a rigged character (with the basic rig setup Softimage creates) into Maya to do the animating there?

[Mathaeus]

So that's academic question, or what.
If I'm correct, complexity level that works in almost all 3d app, game engines, for long time, this is close to 'shadow rig' in SI. That is, exclusive FK hierarchy, vertex assignments and weights for envelope operator. In best case, SI 'skeleton-women/man-basic'.
Constraints, expressions, fancy spine operators, this doesn't works in same way, for rest of the world. IK (or exactly, recognizing the IK relationship between elements) - maybe this is possible through FBX - but personally don't know how this is reliable, to which level (what's about direction of Up vector, for example).
So, generally yes it's possible to animate the 'shadow rig' in another 3d app, but only FK - things like swimming or diving character, astronaut flying through space, anything that don't walk or don't have precise interaction with something else.
For anything more, some sort of emulation is only way, I'm afraid. SI has specific bone chain structure, always having 'chain root' element. Expression in SI seems to be closer to node in Maya ( limited but fast). Expression in Maya looks more like SCOP in SI (more options but slower). Evaluation and behavior of constraints, I think this is different, too (don't know to which level).

[EricTRocks]

In 2014 you should be able to FBX out a rig with SIMPLE constraints. Control objects that are curve should go over as well. Not sure how the bone chains will react.

[Hirazi Blue]

So that's academic question, or what.

Thanks for diplomatically avoiding the word "stupid"!

[Draise]

I'm curious as to how this would work, I'd love to animate in Si then run rigs in game engines. Does anyone have videos for workflows to Unreal or Cryengine or Unity or something from SI? Wait.. I'm in the wrong thread, this is for Maya.. ah...

[Nick3d]

I'm curious as to how this would work, I'd love to animate in Si then run rigs in game engines. Does anyone have videos for workflows to Unreal or Cryengine or Unity or something from SI? Wait.. I'm in the wrong thread, this is for Maya.. ah...

Check out my YouTube channels, I made some tutorials regarding UDK/UE4 and Unity workflow using Species plugin ;)

https://www.youtube.com/user/Nick3d/videos