Bug and Workaround: Take length not saving correctly with .c3d data

The basics, if you import .c3d data in to MotionBuilder and then save your file, all takes will be set to the same end frame as the current take you were on when saving the file.

This is a pain but I created a workaround until it can be fixed by Autodesk.

Temporary workaround... Create a marker/junk attribute/anything that can be keyframed, and plot (with constant key reducer off) animation for all takes for just that marker.
Now save the file, your frame ranges are now saved correctly because key frames exist on each take at the proper length.

Brad

Autodesk MotionBuilder New Features ( Little something that I have been helping with)

AREA | Autodesk MotionBuilder New Features



Also check out the new Max CAT HIK workflow



Here is something that might interested people I noticed in the pres release for 2013.

Also Maya like navigation is coming as well!

3ds Max 2013 announced!: Autodesk HumanIK Interoperability with CAT

Animators can now convert 3ds Max CAT (Character Animation Toolkit) bipedal characters into characters that are compatible with the Autodesk HumanIK solver used in Autodesk Maya 2013 software and Autodesk MotionBuilder 2013 software in a single step. These portable characters enable animators to transfer existing character structure, definition, and animation between the software packages in order to take advantage of particular feature sets. Animation changes created in Maya or MotionBuilder can be updated back onto the original CAT character in 3ds Max, facilitating a round-trip workflow.

Mocappys - Motion Capture Made Easy...or easier at least!

Well, I am not sure it makes it easy but there are some good reads and tutorials on this site for working in MotionBuilder.

I like his

Quick Start Guide to Motion Capture

Stuff like that is good for animators and really the team in general to read when looking to do a capture. So much of the " mocap is the devil" attitude comes from all the poor planing, misunderstanding and overall attitude of "this will save so much time and money..bla bla.." and it does not do either of those things.

And this is a great segue for the contest Rigging Dojo is running this coming week..

Teach to win Novmber contest!
"The best way to truly understand something is to teach it. Do you have something to share, a tip or trick or a great example from your latest work you want to talk about?
We want to see it! You can post the link here on our wall, or tweet it on twitter, including the #rigTip @riggingdojo tags.
The most helpful or interesting example will win a "Personal Rig Review" or a "Half hour live QA" from one of our Mentors,the winner will be announced the following week. Open to all All skill levels.
The contest will run for this week...ending Sat. November 13th.
Good Luck everyone, have fun!"

Tip: Custom Properties in Motionbuilder

There are actually going to be a few tips for MotionBuilder based on this thread over at the Area. Custom properties are very powerful in MotionBuilder and here are some tips on working with them.

Problem: (Custom Properties range)When useing the MotionBuilder Character face the sliders that are created only go from 0 to 100.

• Fix: The Face expressions that get created are just custom properties and can be edited with the property editor (properties window->customize->custom properties). Here you can set them to be -100 to 100 or what ever value you want.
• Fix: Instead of editing the existing custom attributes (custom properties) it would be best to add your own on to an animation control where you can blend the expressions so one slider controls the opposite shape. You can also drive them with viewport based controls like Jason Osipa shows in his "Stop Staring" book useing relations constraints and control objects.

Problem: (Custom Properties Organization) While you can create custom views for objects to selectively show some properties and not others, this does not work when your trying to filter a list of custom properties. For example 100 face shape sliders would all be one long list, yuck!

• Fix: Here is a quick how-to video. (make sure you make the folder under the “character face” as I did in the video or they will not show up. The basic idea is you create a custom view for the properties and then you can add folders to the main category for the properties and then move them in to each new folder to clean up the long list.

  Click to watch: Folders in custom views for MotionBuilder Custom Properties video
  

Problem: (Custom Properties story and posing) If you have created a lot of custom rigging or useing the MotionBuilder Character Face tool you need a good way to both store them as poses and be able to have their animation load in to the Story tool to do blending, cycles, etc.

• Fix: Character Extensions allow both of those issues to be fixed. In the case of the Character Face tool, you can drag its auto created expression sliders on to the Character Extension those attributes will now work in story with the main character track.
  
• Fix: Extensions also work with the pose tool allowing the pose tool to store poses for any other objects or properties(attributes) that the character tool needs to work with.
  

Thanks to Keo Heng SCEA Bend Studio for asking the questions, glad to help.

*Solutions like this are covered in our Masterclass. When you find you need more detail or a deeper understanding of how to work with MotionBuilder check out the class DVD and 100+ pages of step by step tutorials and videos.

Tip: Synced Zooming

I am not sure how often this will be handy but I don't think it is known to very many people.
It is handy some times to be able to zoom or pan all the views you have open at the same time.

Watch the video and you can see that clicking and useing the view hotkeys like shift and ctrl on the view pane split will let you do this.

Story Loop tutorial: Up on Autodesk Area webiste

A gift for 3December

The Area Tutorial: Looping and editing with the Story tool

The first tutorial for Autodesk is up on the website The AREA, it covers how to use the story tool to take a motion capture segment, trim it, align it to go in a strait line, blend it between clips and finally do a offset pose blend to create a seamless loop that can be used for a game or in other parts of story.

The scene files are included for download so you can take a look around.. This is done in MotionBuilder 2009. (There is a free trial of it out now for download)

Feedback is very welcome. leave it here or on the Autodesk site.

Brad

MotionBuilder 2009 announced

The new MotionBuilder looks great with built in rag doll and a real python script editor now. Also all those of you who have been wanting to use some nice fancy cgfx shaders in there for better preview of final assets should be happy.

MotionBuilder 2009 release notes

Also to follow up about FBX from my last post , they just made it even a better choice for a true 3d format by including "published source code for the reader/writer that enables users to extend and adapt it for use in custom pipelines. "

Sweet!, as always, check the main fbx site often for updates, they do it often and make working between , Maya, Max and MotionBuilder so much better... now here is hoping they get layer animation supported between all 3 software now that Maya 2009 has layer anim ability as well.

Autodesk® FBX® 2009.3

great python script form Jason Parks

I just wanted to post this info that Jason Parks just cooked up. One of the big issues of dealing with Maya rigs and MotionBuilder is the SDK or Set Driven Key, and how fast it is to setup in Maya and what a slow process it is to create in MotionBuilder. (our class shows how to do this by hand in MotionBuilder on a foot rig by the way)

And so Jason posted a really nice set of scripts and tools to test out, learn from and just help all us out.

So here is a link to his post about it (Jason The-Area Post) and I am going to copy and paste the info here as well so you don't have to leave the site..

"OK,

I’m daring to release, finally.

Instructions and download here:

click on the link

I wanted to be able to transfer Maya’s unitless animCurve nodes (also node as Set Driven Keys, or more accurately Driven Keys) into an FCurve Number (%) FBBox inside of a Relation Constraint. At first glance this seems like kind of a direct port but as you can see with nearly 1000 lines of code it is not so simple.

The above link points to one of my webpages with a download link which includes the main python script, a utility mel script and a couple sample exports files. There is also simple usage instructions and my large disclaimer.

The further I got into this, the more I realized it will probably never really be ready for prime time. So I’ve realesed this to simply get the code into all of your hands so you can see some strong examples of wiring things up inside of a Relation Constraint. Though this wound up being pretty darn messy and convoluted so it may be a bit difficult to reverse engineer what I’m doing. If anything there are plenty of good examples of FBClasses with proper syntax usage.

I’ll upload it to the scripts section of The Area as soon as I can figure out how. If we manage to get it a little more robust, I guess I can release it under the Maya section of HighEnd3d someday too.

So download away. Break it quickly. Feel free to post questions and requests in this thread. Please be kind ...

File Attachments

MoBu DK Importer v0_1.zip (File Size: 20KB - Downloads: 19)

-jason"

A big thanks to Jason for posting these great tools and I hope people use and expand on the work we all have been putting out there for the users.

Brad

UPDATE: A nice tutorial was posted related to the same topic http://scottenglert.com/goodies/tut_CreateMayaSDKMB.html