Web Questions and Answers for Autodesk MotionBuilder

Between running Rigging Dojo and other things I have been trying to checking in with the questions being posted on various forums for MotionBuilder.

So here is a quick compilation of answers to issues that have been showing up.. hope it helps others as well.

• How to limit constraint effect across multiple takes?

  There is a setting under the animation/keyframe menu Take options, normal or muliti
  select the constraint. set it to 0 first. Then select the constraint only in the navigator and change the take setting form normal to multi take, so that its settings save per take.

• How can I rotate my Animation with out having to us story or other hacks?

  Use the move keys tool.
  First hit the unpin all button, rotate your character to the new direction, but instead of adding an animation layer, just select all the keyframes in the timeline and hit the move keys button. It will update the translation keys based on the rotation allowing you to redirect the character.

• How can I update geometry and skeleton in MoBu? (MotionBuilder)

  See past blog entry http://motionbuildertraining.blogspo...ting-with.html on updating with out having file referencing like Maya.

• How do I retarget prop animation or motion capture data in MotionBuilder?

  It just depends on how your trying to retarget the data, Props require a mix of custom rigging and offseting, most of the time I can just do it with basic constraints.
  http://the-area.com/tutorials/props_editing (have to log in,free) but it covers the basics, although not one of my best demo scenes:)

• MotionBuilder - Batch tool - Char has no reference ,error message?

  This is because the skeleton is missing a top node above the root, it can be a null or anything above root. Uncharacterize the "character node" then drop the new null/node in to the reference slot in the character settings and re-characterize.

• If I have a set of animation files,Is there an easy way I can characterize these animations without going in each file, and still preserving the file name?

  You only need to characterize the skeleton once.. in a Tpose then import all the non characterized animation files on to your characterized skeleton, in to takes all in one file.(each take should have the file name)
  Then do an export to one take per file, useing the take name from your file as the exported .FBX file name and that should work.

• Takes – Merging key data between takes

  The fastest way to do combine or put two animations that live in separate Takes together on one take...simple select the animated object, CTRL C to copy, switch takes and while the object is still selected, CTRL B, This will let you do a paste special and past the animation quickly.
  The other option is to select the animated object and then select the range of keyframes to then copy and paste, in the main timeline. This lets you pick only a small portion of keyframe data instead of all of it as CTRL B would do.

• Bugs found in MotionBuilder 2011-

  Take order after reordering in the navigator is not saving, no fix currently
  Macros in Relation Constraint does not correctly save/reopen if the macro is in any other node but the first constraint created. (Fixed in the 2011 advantage pack"
  Extrapolation for keyframes , doing loops etc, does not save correctly and reopen-Workaround you have to bake/plot the keys on a layer to make for easy editing/updating with changes.

Hope this helps some people out, and Fan/Like the Rigging Dojo Facebook page for future surprise question and answers live by myself or other RD guys where I will take MotionBuilder questions live and it will be free.