Maya - How to Ungroup animation and keep animation?

Question

There are some old animations that I want to reuse, but the old animation use different axis (For example: old: Face negative Z, Y as up; new: Face Y, Negative Z as up). So I fix this by grouping the animation and rotate the group so that it faces the right axis. But when I ungroup, it's only work for current frame (I turn Auto key on).

I have search several forums:

Grouping animated objects, Scaling, Ungrouping

Need help maintaining offset during ungroup

ungrouping but keeping animation

Grouping animated objects, Scaling, Ungrouping

But nothing works.

Answer 1

Ok, it works for the current frame when you ungroup. So to make it work for the entire animation, you can group & un-group for all the frames. Of course I won't do it by hand but I'll do it with script.

proc GetPlaybackRange(string $bone, int $outStartEndTime[])
{
    float $arrKey[] = `keyframe -q $bone`;
    $arrKeyLength=size($arrKey);

    $outStartEndTime[0] = floor($arrKey[0]);
    $outStartEndTime[1] = ceil($arrKey[$arrKeyLength-1]);
}

proc UngroupAndGroupNextFrame(int $frame, string $groupName, float $transform[])
{
    currentTime $frame ;
    ungroup;

    currentTime ($frame + 1) ;
    group -n $groupName;
    xform -worldSpace -matrix 
    $transform[0]
    $transform[1]
    $transform[2]
    $transform[3]
    $transform[4]
    $transform[5]
    $transform[6]
    $transform[7]
    $transform[8]
    $transform[9]
    $transform[10]
    $transform[11]
    $transform[12]
    $transform[13]
    $transform[14]
    $transform[15]
    $groupName;
}

proc UnGroupForAnimation()
{
    string $sel[]= `ls -sl`;
    string $groupName = $sel[0];

    float $transform[];
    $transform = `xform -q -worldSpace -matrix $groupName`;

    string $bone[] = `listRelatives -children $groupName`;

    int $startEndTime[];
    GetPlaybackRange($bone[0], $startEndTime);

    for($i = $startEndTime[0]; $i <= $startEndTime[1]; $i++)
    {
        UngroupAndGroupNextFrame($i, $groupName, $transform);
    }
    currentTime ($startEndTime[1] + 1) ;
    ungroup;
    timeSliderClearKey;

    print ($bone[0] + " range "+$startEndTime[0]+" : "+$startEndTime[1]);
}

UnGroupForAnimation();

Usage of the script:

Step 1. Select the group (the children of the group should be the bone)

Step 2. Run the script.

And that's it.