Thanks everyone!
@autodidact - I followed your approach and it worked! I think selecting everything and exporting sends a lot of junk data because of which the import in CC4 fails.
With your approach its a smaller file but imports correctly.
However, some considerations I noted with my other models,
- CC4 would occasional mis-label the assets, i.e a clothing asset would be labeled as hair, so important to correct this
- If a model is exported with accessories that haven't been linked to the models skeleton with "transfer skin weights" then they will be linked to the root bone and the model with accessories will fail on import. (still trying to confirm this)
@victor.soupday - The model comes into maya fully rigged with skin. Not too sure about vertex weights, but the mesh is weighted to the skeleton. I did notice that it was possible to move vertices around while weight painting which I shouldn't be able to do without errors, then again it doesn't cause any problems on import
@animagic - changing bone names certainly will cause a crash, as will adding meshes to the model in maya and sending it back. I'm thinking this is caused because of the data in fbx key.
If I deleted some accessories on the maya side, the model on import with give an error, "
None mesh entity detected "
Going through all this, the correct workflow for CC4 -> maya -> CC4 is,
- Ready model in CC4 for export to maya
- Best not to include any accessories that haven't been linked ot the model using "transfer skin weights"
- Delete control rig curve group before export from maya
- Use export all, disable lights, camera, embed media, constraints
- Import in CC4
- Check if all the meshes are labeled correctly by CC4 (clothing, shoe, glove, hair.etc)
I'll keep checking if I run into any more issues, thank you helping resolve this!