Technical Artist Bootcamp: Hacking MotionBuilder: 10 Things You Aren't Doing but Should Be! #GDC Vault

Update: 2018

Entire video set, scripts and extra tips are now available as a free online course.

 

https://ondemand.riggingdojo.com/store/vLpV26La

Grateful:

Here are the slides from my talk at GDC. None of it could have happened, the talk or me using Filmbox years ago and more with out the man, the legend the mega awesome Jason Parks. Thanks for all the work and effort wrangling us all together for the bootcamp and fitting me in to the packed schedule of great speakers.

And I wouldn't have physically been there without  everyone at Rigging Dojo for taking care of the trip, thanks Josh and Chad and our great community of mentors and students.

On with the Show!..er..um..Slides:

  You can download the PDF here from the GDC Vault.

Note: Due to the difficulty of live demo during the time I had to present, I recorded detail videos walking through the tips on each slide. To get the videos you can contact me with Vault access proof (screen shot of you logged in to my talk,) and I will send you a download link.

Brad making sure everything would work...and then it didn't!

What people are saying about the presentation (super big cookies for that)!

"Just watched your talk on the vault. Packed with invaluable information! A+"

"... this was very useful for me as an animator who has to work with mocap regularly."

"... I have been using it for years and pretty much every single one of his tips were new to me....will save me countless hours in production."

@twitter -  #hackmobu






GDC Slides with 
Speaker notes:  click the gear and choose speaker notes to see more details and step by steps

Session Name	Technical Artist Bootcamp: Hacking MotionBuilder: 10 Things You Aren't Doing but Should Be!
Speaker(s)	Brad Clark
Company Name(s)	Rigging Dojo
Track / Format	Programming
Overview	MotionBuilder, love it or hate it, if you work with motion capture or animation it is in your pipeline. This is a short session jam-packed with Brads best hacks to save you days of work per motion edit. In this session, you will learn to love it more or hate it less with hacks like effortless animation mixing, motion mirroring, quick squash and stretch, faster foot rigs, must-have scripts and efficient custom rig re-use. Techniques learned in this session, while focused on MotionBuilder, can be applied to the HIK rig in Maya as well. #animtip #rigtip #Maya3d #MotionBuilder #

   

Maya 2014 HIK menu bug FK add to selection fix

This is a very silly bug I found today but it is annoying and thankfuly the fix is easy.

Trying to select the FK nodes for a character from the menu





Errors saying " hikSelectRigFKNodes" does not exist.
You get this error because the global variable for this procure should have an uppercase K. Instead we have a script that has a lower case k in the word Fk

The fix:
Open
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2014\scripts\others\hikControlRigUI.mel
line 560 the Fk should be FK since that is what the menu FK button is looking for.

change this lower case k

global proc hikSelectRigFkNodes(string $pCharacter, int $includeRefNode) 

to an upper case K

global proc hikSelectRigFKNodes(string $pCharacter, int $includeRefNode)

now you can click the add to selection FK button and have it work.

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.