Why does my animation in the X file look different than the animation in the preview window?
The preview window is not animating in the strictest sense of the matter. It is not playing animation but instead is synchronizing to the most current state of Maya’s scene. When animation is exported the matrices at each transform are decomposed into scale, rotation (quaternion), and translation components (often referred to as SRTs). SRTs are more desirable than matrices because they interpolate well, provide a more compact form of the data, and can be compressed independently. Not all matrices can break down into SRTs. If they cannot decompose, the resulting SRTs will be unknown, so small errors in animation may be detected. The two features in Maya that most often cause problems during decomposition are shears and off-center rotations or scales. If you are encountering this problem, because you are using off-center rotations or scales, consider adding additional transforms increasing your level of hierarchy.
