motionbuilder to maya, animation

#1

hi everyone, was just wondering if anyone could shine a light on putting mb animations back into maya.

so far ive been trying two ways; firstly just opening the .fbx mb file in maya and deleting the control rig to be left with character with animation (wooooo) but lately it keeps coming in unbound for no reason that i can see…

secondly ive been importing the animation only fbx export from motionbuilder onto the original maya character, only for it to massively distort the mesh.

the only thing that i imagine might be messing up is that our modeller kindly left a whole load of uv history on the original model which is now perfectly rigged and we dont have time to weight again…however i managed to get round this and have just randomly started having these problems.

any insight would be much appriciated

thanks

#2

I often experience skinning issues when going between MB and Maya too. The solution I’ve come to use, is quite simple though:

  1. Create the model/rig/everything in maya.
  2. Export the character with the rig + skin/textures only.
  3. Apply whatever motion you would like to this rig.
  4. After you’re done with everything in MB, remember to plot your keyframes back to the skeleton.
  5. Save as FBX animation only.
  6. When importing back to Maya, choose exclusive merge.

Point no. 6 basically discards all your imported geometry, and merges your animation frames onto the existing rig.

Cheers

#3

hey gozzer, that seems to be the best method, but am i being blind (or have an old fbx importer version) i can’t seem to find the option for merging…

thanks for your help :slight_smile:

#4

Here’s a screenshot of my default FBX import dialog. Hope it helps :slight_smile:

#5

thanks alot gozzer :smiley: that was uber helpful. i was running the 2009 version importer which doesn’t have the option. main character in the engine now, only three to go…

thanks again!

#6

Great news! Have fun with the remainder :wink:

#7

Hey gosser, is there a way to do this process when the character originates from Motionbuilder? If I wanted to bring in one of the stock characters that MB comes with (the gremlin, humanoid, etc)… how would I be able to get them into Maya and then import animations on them?
Also, do you know of a way to export out the actual actor from Motionbuilder in Maya?
Thanks!

cW

[edit]
Nevermind, figured it out… just import the character into the software. Worked like a charm.

#8

… and for the ‘Actor in Maya’ situation, as far as I know this will not be possible. The Actor is just a mathematical calculation using some built-in geometry in MB. I doubt that any other .fbx capable program is able to figure out what on earth an Actor is :slight_smile:

#9

This is a small thing, but don’t forget that you can just drag and drop the .fbx into Maya.

#10

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