Say, I have rigged a character in Maya with all joint orients (aka houdini's 'pre rotate') set nicely and thereby I have clean rotates (all 0, 0, 0) in it's bindpose/capture pose. I export this character to FBX.
When importing into Houdini/Kinefx, adjusting the animation and exporting it back to FBX again, the joint orients (aka houdini's 'pre rotate')are zero-ed out and all joint rotation data is now raw/naked. For me this is very unwanted, I want to maintain the joint orients and apply the animation relative to them. Is there a way I can leave these joint orients intact and have the new animation atop of that?

I hope this all makes sense.
Michiel

This drove me crazy today, found the solution.

need to put the FBX import into the character export node and then the export will keep the pre rotations and not break the character.

That's... incredibly interesting! Very, very helpfull, this. I was hitting a giant wall here, and I ain't no noob regarding Houdini, Maya and Motionbuilder. It works, thanks for helping me out, Sina23!

Thank you so much for this. I was wrecking my brain about our setup this weekend as I had a feeling the lost joint orients where breaking my animation transfers in maya down the line. This fixed everything.

Have a great day,

Yannick

That's very good to know, I was wondering what the input fbx was for? Thanks Sina23.