What it is everybody?  Recently I came across an issue in Maya where I needed to take a mesh that I imported that was UVed in Headus and transfer that UV over to my original, non-UVed mesh.

“But Dantrell, that’s easy!  Select your UVed mesh and shift-select the original, go to Mesh>Transfer Attributes option box from the polygon menu, and transfer only the UV sets.  After that’s done, delete the mesh that you imported.”

In another situation, random armchair Maya buff, you’d be right on the money.  You’d just have to remember to delete the history of the original mesh before deleting the other.  But here’s the thing: my original mesh contains animations on it.

“So what’s the dealie?”

Here’s the dealie!  Deleting the history also deletes the animation on the mesh.  The rig is still remains with the animations intact, though.  Wait, before you ask…

“Just reskin the mesh with the rig!”

Dammit!  Remember what happens once you skin your rig?

“It…can…animate?”

Correct!  Now remember what happens once you play the animation?

“Ewwwwww!  It’s all blobbity-blobbity!”

And why’s that, Mr. Armchair Maya Buff?

“Oh right.  The problem is that you’d have to go through the trouble of repainting the weights again, even though they were already painted correctly before the UV transferal?”

Bingo!  Here’s how you can get around that and save you lots of time.
This tip assumes that you have a scene where upon opening, all you’d need to do is transfer the UVs and your original mesh contains animations.  After applying all of the steps mentioned above, save your scene and rename it something easily identifiable, then import the original scene.  Now, and this is gonna blow your mind, select the imported mesh and then shift select the original.  Then at the Animations menu, go to Skin>Edit Smooth Skin>Copy Skin Weights.  Now just clean your scene up by deleting all of the components that you imported from your outliner and don’t forget to save.  This should solve everything!

Fellow ITGM majors, as always, feel free to share this info to anyone that needs it.

Keep gaming!