Motionbuilder questions! (LOTS!)

[Marc Beaudoin]

Hi,



1) Motionbuilder is not so hard to learn; it doesn't have the depth of Maya or Max as its features are concentrated on character animation. However, it does things that no other 3D packages do, so some tools or workflow will feel unfamiliar.



The first thing to do, set motionbuilder to Maya hotkeys in pref. menu.



I've a bunch of small tutorials with scene files which could be very useful to you - do you have a FTP site so I can upload them?



I would also suggest Chad Moore and Brad Clark's eDVD for more advanced stuff. - The Animator Toolkit for MotionBuilder http://stores.lulu.com/animatortoolkit (http://stores.lulu.com/animatortoolkit)







2) After bringing a character from Maya, Motionbuilder is normally used for applying, editing mocap, retargeting (transferring) motion, and blending/looping motion. The retargeting part is something that Mb does particularly well. (Note also that Motionbuilder is used by all the major game cies, like EA, Ubisoft, Sony, A2M...)





In a nut shell, here's the workflow;



The export from Maya to Motionbuilder is done through the FBX plugin (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=6839916 (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=6839916)).



Once in Motionbuilder, the character has to be "characterized" to be used. It's like joint labelling. Once this is done, it can read animation from any other "characterized" characters, regardless of their joints structure or from an Actor (motion capture data is map on Actor). Motionbuilder reads almost any type of motion capture data.



Also Motionbuilder give you access to layering system and powerful build-in rig to edit motion or to create animation from scratch.



The animation is brought back in Maya via FBX file once more. I would suggest that you import your FBX file, using the plugin Exclusive Merge option, into the original Maya file for a cleaner workflow.





3)Any characters animation from Max or Maya can be imported to Motionbuilder, characterized them and then retarget their motions to your characterized character. Also any type of mocap library can be used on a characterized character, there a ton of them on the net.



Rocket Box Libraries is selling biped (Max) animation library; biped characters can also be import in Motionbuilder.



AXYZ Design provides you with FBX character animation.



Note that FBX is often used by motion library providers as it is accepted by most 3D packages.



Hope this helps,



Marc

[Xenophobe]

Thank you very much for the reply, Mark! Very detailed and explanatory!

Would it be too much of a hassle to send these small tutorials and scene files? How big would be the size of everything? My FTP site will not be available for some time, so it'd be good to know if its feasible to receive these files by email or YouSendIt...

Thanks again for your reply!

[VassiliZaitsev]

I´m having troubles too with the pipeline of this program.
It seems that the workflow between biped and motionbuilder is not that straightforward as i hoped.
Do you have any tips for that matter?
Thank you very much.

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