CGTalk - rigging for motionbuilder anim transfer

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Soulcialism

01-11-2008, 10:12 PM

hey everyone,
i tried to do a search to see if this question has come up before but search is being all wonky, so i'm just going to post about it anyway.

i'm trying to build a rig in maya that allows animators to animate in motionbuilder, transfer to maya to render, and have a maya control rig for any final render tweaks. the way i'm doing it is by having my controller heirarchy have an extra node in it for motionbuilder data, one step above the controller node. that way the controller is driven by motionbuilder data (which drives the joints in maya), and you can still use the controllers to animate in maya.

the problem i'm having though, is that the translate values for the joint heirarchy in motionbuilder is copying over as animation data, and giving me double transforms. has anyone ever dealt with this issue before? what was your workaround?

thanks

underearth

01-12-2008, 06:41 AM

i haven't done anything with motion builder maya combo...

but try switching off inherit transform attr over transform node where ur getting double transformation..

refract

01-12-2008, 08:47 AM

From what i remember.........
Set up your rig, add everything, only export the bones that have no expressions on them, or set driven keys,.. and export as .fbx.
Import to Motionbuilder and edit and export back to Maya. .. as fbx....
Then import into Maya. It should remember, by name the bones it is coming in at, and bring in the motion data. Then in Maya you should be able to play it and see the mocap or whatever.
{albeit, .... there will be a few dialogue boxes asking for scale, rotation.. etc.. but I don't remember all of them now.. its late.. adjust them as necessary}

"the way i'm doing it is by having my controller heirarchy have an extra node in it for motionbuilder data, one step above the controller node."....
this is the part you need to not export to Motion builder... when you export it back from Motion builder back to the rig on the base bones, ur extra node should work. I hope.. :)

Soulcialism

01-12-2008, 01:53 PM

i'll have to check into what i can choose to export from motionbuilder, i haven't done that. i renamed the joints in motionbuilder to be that of the group that i want the animation data to come in on (one group above the ctrl). that's how the double transforms are coming in... say the joint in maya is 2.5 units on x from its parent. in motionbuilder that joint is named to come back into maya as a group node, but it maintains that 2.5 unit relationship from its parent. so basically when it comes back into maya, the joint is 2.5 units from its parent and the group is also getting a 2.5 unit transform because of the renaming.

i'll have to try the inherit transform thing, i didn't think to do that.

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