Motionbuilder 6 review

[RobPowers]

Thanks for sharing this. The review was pretty nice but when he states, "The product lacks features such as lattice-, spline- and wrap-deformations, and finaling tools, such as hair and cloth simulations, not to mention a film-quality renderer needed to propel a compelling character performance from mere believability into total realism.”, It seems that he doesn't appreciate the intended pipeline for motionbuilder by it's designers. All of that functionality is provided in the "parent" 3D application. Because Motionbuilder only exports the bone position and rotation information for it's characterized skeleton, it allows for any additional "embellishments" to be added in the "parent" 3D application including lattice deformers, extra "hold" bones, etc... Essentially, to a certain point it doesn't really matter if the mesh deforms perfectly in Motionbuilder but only how it deforms in your "parent" application. In addition all of the hair, cloth simulations, or dynamics would be done in the "parent' application as well. The reviewer made it sound as if he wanted to see all of that functionality duplicated in Motionbuilder which would really make it a stand alone application. So far that isn't what it was intended for. Also, the really great thing about this workflow is that it allows the artist to continue to do most of the tasks in their favorite application that they know really well. So, they don't have to re-learn things like weighting, skeleton creation, hair, cloth, rendering, etc... That is one thing I really enjoy when working with Motionbuilder.

[Sammer]

Thanks for the heads up bonsai cheif.
I agree RobPowers-
I think there are alot of users/demo'rs who don't understand either. It's not like Alias (and formerly Kaydara) are hiding the intended workflow, it's in the press releases (it's in the manual too but who knows how few people have read that) so you would think that they would have at least glossed over the PR's and gotten a clue! Ah well...

[_mg_]

Absolutely, Try pushing 8-12 fully skinned and animated characters around in Maya or Max! MB's focus purely on motion is it's biggest strength.

[RobPowers]

Agreed, Try doing that in most any other application and see what you get. MB does what it does very well!

[Jimstein]

On the other hand you can ask yourself what you got for the money spent on MB. It has a large pricetag. It costs more than Lightwave. and still it dont even supports a tablet :shrug: and the interface is not as functional as you could want it to be.

[RobPowers]

Jimstein

I feel pretty good about what I got for $250. Also, only the full professional version is more expensive than Lightwave unless Alias has raised the price. Upgrades for major releases are also $200 to $250 depending on when you buy it. I agree that the interface could be enhanced but you could say that about almost every program in one way or another. Overall, I am amazed at everything that Motionbuilder does do. For me it has a good value.

[Zendorf]

and still it dont even supports a tablet

Have youe even tried using a tablet with it? I am using MB 5.5 and my tablet works perfectly on it. I use the Maya keyboard config, and there is one strange aspect and that is that dolly works by pressing right mouse button and moving up/down. Usually in Maya or C4d I hit right button and move from side to side to dolly in and out. But this is unrelated to the tablet function.
In fact I use every one of my apps from music to graphics with a tablet ,and they all function fine (mine is a graphire 3) . The only app I ever had trouble with was Wings3d and that was replaced with Silo a while back....

[Jimstein]

http://www.alias.com/eng/products-services/motionbuilder/pricing.shtml

MotionBuilder Standard nodelocked U.S. $995.00

MotionBuilder Pro nodelocked U.S. $4195.00

White an intous 1 this app (version 6) will spin and tumble way fast, way to sensitive response

[bonsaichef]

MotionBuilder Standard nodelocked U.S. $995.00 in 2003 Kaydara sold MB 5 as a Personal Edition for 100 $ i think. kind of a fully working demo for 1 year.
after that period you could upgrade to a permanent licence for just 200 $.

i guess i am not the only one who started using MB because of that offer.

[benwatt]

Yeah that's how I got into MotionBuilder too, but with MotionBuilder 4. I've since upgraded to both the versions that followed.

in 2003 Kaydara sold MB 5 as a Personal Edition for 100 $ i think. kind of a fully working demo for 1 year.
after that period you could upgrade to a permanent licence for just 200 $.

i guess i am not the only one who started using MB because of that offer.

[stompbox]

Yeah that's how I got into MotionBuilder too, but with MotionBuilder 4. I've since upgraded to both the versions that followed.

Me too, but haven't made the jump from MB5 to MB6. Is it worth it? MB5 is pretty cool, does 6 have enough new features to be worth the upgrade? It sounds like things might be more streamlined, is it like MB4 to MB5 where things got a little tidier and more straightforward and they added the story window?

[benwatt]

Me too, but haven't made the jump from MB5 to MB6. Is it worth it? MB5 is pretty cool, does 6 have enough new features to be worth the upgrade? It sounds like things might be more streamlined, is it like MB4 to MB5 where things got a little tidier and more straightforward and they added the story window?

I've found it most certainly worth it. On paper it doesn't look like a big upgrade, but when you get down to actually using the new features they really shine through. My two favourites are the handles and the visible trajectories. The first let you group several elements together of your character and move them easily with one handle. You can make that handle look exactly as you want and have as many as you need to make your rig even simpler to use.

The visible trajectories are great too. Coupled with the Dynamic Editor you can adjust individual keys interpolation and see the trajectory update giving you an accurate idea of what exactly you've just altered and the affect it will have on your animation.

There's no one huge feature like the story window, there's several smaller (but very powerful) features which when brought together make it a very worthwhile upgrade :)

[stompbox]

Thanks for the info :)

[donShole]

... Because Motionbuilder only exports the bone position and rotation information for it's characterized skeleton...

Strictly speaking that is not accurate. You can infact import/export fully skinned and animated characters to and from MB. The trouble is that getting the fully skinned and animated characters back to your parent app is an acrobatics act at best and frustrating at worst.

[bonsaichef]

getting the fully skinned and animated characters back to your parent app is an acrobatics act at best and frustrating at worst.i can open the FBX file in Cinema 4D without any troubles. but why should i do that? apart from the animation i already have everything in the original file including all the features that MB does not support.

[RobPowers]

Agreed. I should have said "in my workflow (MB to Lightwave)" this is the practical limitation. But, yes in theory the FBX format is supposed to support full export of assets. However many users report reliable results only when using a workflow that "exports the bone position and rotation information for it's characterized skeleton." and using the merge feature.

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