If you ever wondered what the “decomposeMatrix” plugin in your Maya installation does:
it decomposes a matrix. Say what?
You input a matrix and get the proper translate, rotate, scale and shear values.
Why the hell would I do this?

Here a nice scenario I encountered. I had a camera movement and wanted to add a layer of animation. It would be easier to animate if I “baked” the movement of the first camera and used a second camera with additional movement.

So I’ve created a group for all objects (except the camera) connected the inverseMatrix of the first camera to a decompose node and connected these transformation to the group.
Now I “baked” the camera movement and was able to create a second camera which I animated around the group. The first camera can be changed without affecting the second one. Neat stuff I wanted to share.

If you need an example tell me.

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