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Exporter Guide

Animation Clips

Use the Animation Clips panel to create, rename, delete, and organize Time Editor clips before you export. You can also define clip ranges directly in the panel and feed them straight into the exporter without using the Time Editor at all.

Open Exporter Overview Install the Plug-in View Supported Features

Opening the Panel

Go to glTF2.0 → Animation Clips in the Maya menu bar. The panel is dockable and can also be used as a floating window.

How Clips Relate to the Export

When you export with the Time Editor Clips animation mode, the exporter reads clip definitions and turns each one into a separate glTF animation. There are two sources the exporter can use:

Source When it is used
Time Editor clips in the active Maya composition Default — the exporter discovers clips from the Time Editor and samples them
Direct clip definitions from this panel When Use Direct Clip Definitions for Export is enabled in the panel

Both paths go through the same sampling logic. The difference is only where the clip names and frame ranges come from.

Panel Layout

The panel has three fixed areas:

  1. Composition selector — chooses which Maya Time Editor composition is active.
  2. Define Clips to Create (top resizable pane) — a table where you define clip names and frame ranges, plus controls to create or clear them.
  3. Clips List (bottom resizable pane) — lists the actual Time Editor clips that already exist in the selected composition.

Composition Selector

The dropdown at the top shows every Time Editor composition present in the scene. Changing the selection updates both the Clips List and determines which composition new clips are created in.

When you import a glTF or GLB file that contains multiple animations, the importer creates one composition per file. Choose the composition that corresponds to the asset you are working on.

Define Clips to Create

Use this pane to batch-create Time Editor clips from a simple Name / Start / End table.

Table columns

Column Description
Name Clip name. Must be a valid Maya name — invalid characters are replaced with underscores automatically as you type. Duplicate names in the table are rejected.
Start Start frame (float).
End End frame (float). Must be greater than Start.

Controls

Control Effect
+ (add row) Inserts a new empty row at the bottom of the table.
− (remove row) Removes the currently selected row.
Clear Removes all rows after a confirmation prompt.
Create Clips Validates all rows and creates Time Editor clips in the active composition for each valid row. Existing clips with the same name are not overwritten — the operation skips them and reports any failures.
Use Direct Clip Definitions for Export When checked, the exporter reads the Name / Start / End rows from this table directly instead of reading Time Editor clips from the composition. The frame rate used is the current Maya scene frame rate.

Persisted across sessions

The rows you define and the state of the Use Direct Clip Definitions for Export checkbox are saved as Maya optionVar values and restored the next time you open Maya.

Clips List

This pane shows the Time Editor clips that currently exist in the selected composition.

Per-clip controls

Control Effect
▶ / ■ play button Plays or stops the clip. During playback the clip is isolated in the Time Editor so only that clip runs.
Double-click clip name Opens inline rename. Press Enter or click away to commit. The new name is written to the Time Editor.
✕ delete button Removes the clip from the Time Editor after a confirmation prompt.

Export Source Highlight

The panel uses a background color tint and a bold colored label to show at a glance which pane is the active export source and whether it is ready.

State Pane highlighted Color
Use Direct Clip Definitions ON and the table has rows Define Clips to Create (top pane) Green tint — ready to export
Use Direct Clip Definitions ON but the table is empty Define Clips to Create (top pane) Amber tint — active source but nothing defined yet
Use Direct Clip Definitions OFF and the Clips List has clips Clips List (bottom pane) Green tint — ready to export
Use Direct Clip Definitions OFF and the Clips List is empty Clips List (bottom pane) Amber tint — active source but no clips found

The inactive pane always resets to a transparent background so the distinction is clear at a glance. The section heading label of the active pane changes to a matching bold green or amber color. Toggling the Use Direct Clip Definitions for Export checkbox or adding/removing rows and clips updates the highlight immediately.

Bake to Scene

The Bake to Scene button at the bottom of the panel consolidates all Time Editor clips onto a single track and bakes the resulting motion as plain scene keyframes. Use this when you want to:

  • Work freely on the timeline without the Time Editor constraint structure.
  • Hand the scene off to someone who does not use the glTF plug-in.
  • Create new custom clips after the original import structure is no longer needed.

Warning

Baking replaces the Time Editor structure with flat keyframes. This cannot be undone in a single step. Save the scene before baking if you want to preserve the clip structure.

Authoring Workflow

Working with imported clips

  1. Import a glTF or GLB file. The importer creates a Time Editor composition and populates it with one clip per glTF animation.
  2. Open the Animation Clips panel. Select the composition in the dropdown — the Clips List shows the imported clips.
  3. Play any clip to verify its range and content.
  4. Rename clips by double-clicking their names if the original names need adjusting.
  5. Delete clips you do not want to re-export.
  6. Export with animation mode set to Time Editor Clips — each remaining clip becomes one glTF animation.

Creating new clips manually

  1. Open the Animation Clips panel.
  2. In the Define Clips to Create table, add rows for each animation segment you want:
  3. Enter a name (e.g. walk, run, jump).
  4. Enter the start frame and end frame for that segment.
  5. Click Create Clips. The exporter creates the corresponding Time Editor clips in the selected composition.
  6. Verify the results in the Clips List pane.
  7. Export with Time Editor Clips mode.

Exporting clip ranges directly without the Time Editor

If you prefer not to create Time Editor clips in the scene at all:

  1. Fill in the Define Clips to Create table.
  2. Check Use Direct Clip Definitions for Export.
  3. Export with Time Editor Clips mode — the exporter reads the table rows directly and samples each range as a separate glTF animation. No Time Editor clips are created or required.

How the Exporter Samples Clips

When Time Editor Clips mode is active, the exporter:

  1. Collects all clip definitions (from the Time Editor or from the direct definitions table).
  2. For each clip, isolates the clip in the Time Editor and evaluates the scene at every frame within the clip's range.
  3. Writes the sampled data as one glTF animation entry whose name matches the clip name.

Transform channels that are constant across the entire clip are still written when the clip comes from the Time Editor. This ensures objects placed by the Time Editor offset appear at their correct positions even if the glTF viewer does not have a scene-default pose that matches.

Visibility animation is encoded using KHR_node_visibility via KHR_animation_pointer. Light intensity animation is encoded via KHR_animation_pointer targeting KHR_lights_punctual. These are the only two KHR_animation_pointer pointer paths currently supported — general-purpose attribute targeting is not available.

Tips and Limitations

  • Clip names are sanitized to valid Maya names on creation. The table's Name column shows the cleaned result immediately.
  • Two clips with the same name (case-insensitive) in the same table are rejected at validation time.
  • Clips in the Clips List reflect the actual Time Editor state. If you modify clips directly in the Time Editor, close and reopen the panel or switch compositions to refresh the list.
  • The composition must exist in Maya before you can create clips into it. If no compositions are listed in the dropdown, import a glTF file first or create a composition manually in the Maya Time Editor.
  • The Direct Clip Definitions export path uses the current scene frame rate to compute start and end times in seconds. Verify that the scene's frame rate matches your intended output before exporting.