Bake Bullet Rigid Body Simulations

Bullet rigid bodies support Maya's standard baking workflow by using Edit > Keys > Bake Simulation.

You can also use Alembic caches to render a simulation. See Render a Bullet simulation with Alembic.

Note: Maya standard baking only supports Bullet Rigid Body Shapes. It does not support Bullet rigid sets or soft bodies.

The following workflow creates the least number of animation curves:

1. Select the rigid body(s) to bake.
2. Select all the Translate and Rotate attributes in the Maya Channel Box.
3. Select Edit > Keys > Bake Animation > . The Bake Simulation Options window appears.
4. In the Bake Simulation Options window, select From Channel Box.
5. Click Bake.

The baking process creates an animation curve for each attribute and connects them to the corresponding pairBlend input attribute. An additional animation curve is also created to notify the rigid body when to use the simulation or key-framed result.

Note: You must animate the Rigid Body object only after it is set as a rigid body; any animation on an object prior to rigid body creation is lost once the Rigid Body is created.