Setting the Units of an Export

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‌Setting the Units of an Export

SynthEyes uses generic units: a value of 10 might mean 10 feet, 10 meters, 10 miles, 10 parsecs—whatever you want. It does not matter to SynthEyes. This works because match-moving never depends on the overall scale of the scene.

SynthEyes generally tries to export the same way as well—sending its numbers directly as-is to the selected animation or compositing package.

However, some software packages use an absolute measurement system where, for instance, Lightwave requires that coordinates in a scene file always be in meters. If you want a different unit inside Lightwave, it will automatically convert the values.

For such software, SynthEyes needs to know what units you consider yourself to be using within SynthEyes. It doesn’t care, but it needs to tell the downstream package the right thing, or pre-scale the values to match your intention.

To set the SynthEyes units selection, use the Units setting on the SynthEyes preferences panel. Changing this setting will not change any numbers within SynthEyes; it will only affect certain exports.

The exports affected by the units setting are currently these:

- After Effects (3-D)

- Hash Animation Master

- Lightwave

- 3ds max

- Maya

- Poser

Before exporting to one of these packages, you should verify your units setting.

Alternatively, if you observe that your imported scene has different values than in SynthEyes, you should check the units setting in SynthEyes.

Hint : if you will be exporting to a compositing package, they often measure everything, including 3-D coordinates, in terms of pixels, not inches, meters, etc. Be sure to pick sizes for the scene that will work well in pixels. While you might scale a scene for an actor 2m tall, if you export to a compositor and the actor is two pixels tall, that will rarely make sense.

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