Motionbuilder Facial Capture

[Sammer]

Hey Thomas,

Since the blendshapes and posemixer sliders made it in on import the lack of animation could be because of how it was plotted (or exported depending on where it came from). It could also be that there were constraints used for some part of the facial animation... constraint setups often won't transfer.

Also devices like 'voice' (in MB) will drive the character face but using plot animation doesn't work.

Is this a scene that you originally set up in Cinema or is it from another app.? As I'm sure your aware, while .fbx is a more universal format it only works between apps if the characters are set up in a pretty specific way. If it's an option you might want to recheck the set-up and/or exporting from the original app.

Or are you trying to use facial mocap from an unrelated source by using the 'cluster of animated points' to control your characters face in Cinema? If that's the case, which might be doable, you may find you spend more time on linking the mocap points (markers or nulls?) and getting the results your after than if you set up the face and did the animation by hand.

It would be interesting to know a little more about what your set-up is.

Good luck

Edit: Just saw that you posted in the MB forum on how to export facial animation from MB to C4D that answers many of my questions. In that case, definitely check the set-up and how your plotting it. If your exporting out of MB as Kadara fbx you might want to check if the non-skeletal info gets saved.

[tmas73]

Im a beginner comes to MB I understand the basic principle but have troubled in the applications usage. Attached is the sample character with the cluster points. If you could take a look at it and see if it is possible would be great.

Thanks

Link (http://www.invisiblefilms.com/CGTalk/surfer_face_moving.fbx.zip)

[Sammer]

Yep Thomas that's it.

In both the character face and actor face panes (where it has the slliders for the face shapes you've set up) there is a button at the top of the pane that says 'plot animation'.

I didn't check to see if for some reason the 'plot all' under the main Animation menu for some reason doesn't plot facial animation. After you use the plot animation in the character face pane click on one of the attributes in the list and you should see key on every frame in the timeline.

Something I did find, and I would be interested if you have the same problem, is that once I plot facial animation and try to open or merge that file into C4D R10 I go into 'spinning beachball of death mode'. If I open the same file in R9.5 it opens quick and as it should. I can then save that file and open it in R10 no problem. I know there've posts about some problems with R10 and fbx I can't remember if that was one (a quick search didn't reveal anything but sometimes that doesn't mean it's not therre)

With that it should work fine for you now. Post back if you have any other problems... and let me know if you have the file opening problem too.

Have fun

Sam

[tmas73]

Worked perfect thanks for your help.

Thomas

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