   working with game artists
  Hello,I was wondering if anyone here is experienced in the process of importing an artists work into your game.  Specifically, my friend has taken a Computer Animation course that was focused on Maya, and we would like to work on a game together.  I was curious as to how much input the artist has over the visuals.  For example, I know that character/environment models and textures can be imported into a game.  But how about rigging/animation sequences?  Can things like lighting and shadowing and special effects also be done by the artist an simply imported?  I'm not sure about these things because Maya has it's own rendering methods, but in the game, things like lighting and special effects will be dependent on the game's graphic engine.  Hope that this question makes some sense to somebody... thx!   
  You can use things like the sets mel comand to logically group items for your game. Any node can have custom attributes added to it, which is sometimes used to specify extra data that doea not exist on the default maya node. You may need custom plugin nodes for shaders, game specific data (ie, collision meshes, object placements, AI paths, etc) - this would have to be done in the API. All of this data can be exported in the API or mel (though the API is preffered since it's faster).Anything in maya can be exported, it comes down to whether you have an export pipeline for that data, and whether you can use and/or interpret that data for your engine. Occasionally the answer is no, in which case you can use the API or mel to add new functionality via custom nodes, tools and exporters. In general you can get most useful character data via FBX or collada. It's common however, for people to export their own formats from maya via the API, since no plugin nodes or custom markup are supported by those formats. 