How to Plot and Export Motion Capture from MotionBuilder

hello and welcome to another video today we're gonna look at how to get the motion capture out of motion builder and untick character in Maya if we can exploit your animation from MotionBuilder you need to make sure everything's been plotted to the joint single character so if you've been editing on the control rig the animation will only exist on the control rig so although this character looks like it's animated with keyframes if we stop this and select one of the joints and a character will come down into the F curve we know we can see there's no key frames on the annum layer 1 or on the base layer this means if we export this file now without plotting any animation onto the joints the animation won't be applied to your character when you import it into max or Maya so the first thing we need to do is plot this animation from the control rig on for a character when you plot from the controller to the character keyframes are applied to all the joints that are listed down here in your character so if you look in a map in list column any of these joints in here this is where the animation is going to get plotted so if you didn't set up this characterization you can check where the animation is going to be plotted by looking in here so there are two ways to plot animation from the control rig first one is down here using plot character and just hit skeleton to bring up the plot options window just cancel that second one is appear in the character controls you can come down here to bake plot bake plot to skeleton we'll just bring up the plot options window plot them frame make sure the data is plotted to exact frames this is going to resample the animation at the selected frame rate and set a keyframe on each frame of the animation that old takes we'll plot the data for every taking is seen we're gonna leave this turned off for now so only plots of data to the current take so do need to be careful when using plot old tapes especially if you've been editing on the control rig like I have here because MotionBuilder is going to use the same settings that you've got in your current take to plot the animation to the rest of the takes so for example if I have this animation on a skeleton we just copy that into new tank if I then go back to our original take plot the animation to a control rig you can see in this take animation works fine but if we switch to a tailor we just copy the animation too because there's an animation on the control rig this couch is gonna be static so if we then use plot all takes when we come back to this take it's because of control rig stationary is overwritten the original animation with the stationary animation from the control rig so though our original file does work is the animation was on the control rig the other take that didn't have animation plotted to the control rig is completely static I was working on this file had imported some other animation under this character and then plotted all takes with the control rig still active without having the animation plotted the control rig that would have just over it and all that animation and I'd have to import the take again so you do have to be careful when you use in plot all takes like I say we're gonna leave plot takes turn off it's the next option is plot rate so this lets you specify what frame rate to use when your plot in the animation your character so normally the plot rate is the same as your frames per second down here in the transport controls actually displayed the side here so you leave this at 30 frames a second so if you're editing raw mocap data that was captured at a higher frame rate you can use the plot rate to down sample animation so for example if this was captured at 120 frames a second you could use a plot rate to resample it back down to 30 frames a second one thing to be aware of when you're doing this though is ideally you should be resampling the data the frame rate as a multiple of the original capture frame rate so for example if you captured it and then 20 frames a second you could resample at 24 30 60 but not 25 because that's wouldn't give you a full frame so the reason that this is if we look at the keys on this character if you resampled a different frame rate rather than getting one of the captured frames which we'll pretend this was captured 30 frames a second rather than getting one of these captured frames but you'll get as a point along this F curve which rather than mean captured by the system it sort of estimated or interpolated between two points on the F curve this becomes really important if you want to slow the data down especially on something like a fight or a fall where you want to see all the impact and all the shake and judder if you're getting an interpolation along this F curve is gonna really smooth that action out you don't get a full sense of the impact so we're gonna leave this at 30 frames a second it's the next one to look at our rotation filters this file doesn't really show that off but I can come down here into asset browser and previous moves if we just grab this jumping back kick let's open this so in here we got this animation this character this to open up turning around and kick ins if we just quickly plot this to a control rig we now plot this back to the skeleton I can show you what these different rotation filters do so if I apply an on plot that back if we select the hips on the character come down into the F curves window and rotations frame all you see on a Zed rotation is this big jump this is caused by gimbal lock or gimbal flip so you can see here when you play through it frame by frame it looks fine if we take snap on frames off and look at this here you'll see there's a crazy spin between these two frames if we go back to our control rig and turn it back on so if we now plot this and use gimbal killer so a gimbal killer will do is I'll try to compensate for that gimbal flip or a lot that you could see in the keyframes there by adding extra keyframes to the rotation in the f curves to try and stop the wobble and the spin if we now go back into the F curves and look at that same section of animation we can see here you've now got extra keyframes between the main keyframes so now have these keyframes at a sub keyframe level so it's giving us all these extra keyframes but it does so how'd that wobble that we were seeing Aelia any problem is we now have a lot of extra keyframes that we don't really want and also if we shift right click a joint in the character select all the joints and then we just select all the animation I'm just going to right click and select all if I scale this out now so if you wanted to read time this you wanted to do some kind of matrix style slow-mo kick we deselect that we play this animation back now you can start to see on the fetus as he jumps that wobble still exists you see a little wobble there so though it gets rid of it while you're playing back at 30 frames a second if you had to rescale animation you see it still has that wobble in it we're also left with all these extra additional keyframes that we don't really want so final option we just reapply our animation paint up to the skeleton is the unroll filter so the unrolled filter will trial unroll the Euler rotations to remove the flips and wobbles that we've just seen so it doesn't actually create any additional keyframes this time what it tries to do is smooth the curves out to one continuous F curve so if we plot that down now make more sense when you see it you can go back into our F curves window so now if we look at that curve you can see now all makes sense it's not messed up any of the other channels have you know got a keyframe I just put snap-on frames back on see it's not generating any extra keyframes and we've lost that strange wobble that we were getting earlier and then the same as before the control shift right click the skeleton slept all the joints and select all the translation and rotation channels right click select all I mean rescale the animation again we now come in and look at those feet as it does the spin again you can see as it comes up it doesn't have that wobble that we had using the gimbal killer so the animation still looks fine so next option is constant key reducer so constant key reduce to reduce the number keyframes on an object by deleting keyframes that have the same value so this can be useful for reducing file sizes so for example if I plot this now without key reducer turned on and then we look at the values on this elbow we can see in the rotation channels it's got keyframes on there X Y and Zed channels even though that X and the y channels don't actually change they stay at 0 but if you were to exploit this you actually exporting keyframes that you don't really need which could make your file size as bigger so we can do is if we turn a control rig back on and then plot character this time we set constant key reducer on I'll come back to keep at least one keyframe in a minute if we put constant key reducer on and then plot that back to the skeleton and this time when we look at the elbows because they're only rotating in one axis there's no keyframes on the X or Y channels then I only on Lizette Channel so now I've been data on these two channels can help reduce a file size as you can see now and any joint that rotates only in one axis so like the other elbow see down here because this keys not because this K is not read means it doesn't have any keyframes so you can see here there's no keyframes those channels and the same with the knees this K isn't read so there's no keyframes on them you can see there's just keyframes on the z channels so that'll save as two channels of data per limb on four limbs that can help make your file sizes smaller we also need to be careful when you using constant queue reducer so for example in this animation there's an animation on the fingers on this so if I leave constant key reduce it turned on and then plot that to the skeleton we now look in the F curves we slip these finger joints now you can see they have no animation on them at all so it's deleted all of the keyframes because they had don't have any animation on them so that's where I keep at least one keyframe comes in so what this does is it leaves one keyframe on the object when the constant key reduce is used the keyframe is usually set on the first framing animation so if we just plot this back now and then we have a look at the F curves on those fingers now you can see there's a keyframe on frame 0 this gives you much more reliable results when your important animation also avoids the joints accidently been reset if you have to put your character natee pose so for instance if I put chess into a stands pose you can see the fingers go straight if I turn this off you see the fingers go back to the relaxed hand pose but if I was to turn off keep at least one keyframe plot this back to the character but now had to reset my character back into Stan's pose for whatever reason because there's no like keyframes on the fingers when I reset this you can see we lose that relaxed hand post from the animation so the next option smart plot this will let your plot animation without adding extra keyframes so smart plot you only really need to use if you've actually hand keyed something and you just want to keep the same number of keyframes when you plot the animation down so you're not really done this this is all motion capture so there's a keyframe on every frame so we can leave that turned off and the final one is plot translation on route only so there's pretty much does exactly what it says on the label so make sure translations only plotted at hips of the character and all the rest of joints will just be rotation so if we set this now to plot on a frame 30 frames a second using the unroll filter constant keyword used to turn on we're going to keep at least one keyframe and make sure we plot translation on the route own now if we plot that down we select the route object and come into FK as you can see it has translation values and rotation values there's no weird gimbal flips or anything so if we select another joint and the character you can see this doesn't have any translation values just rotation values so once the animations finish being plotted MotionBuilder will automatically turn off the character so now it's just the animation on the joint data moving our character so you can just scrub this through and make sure it's plotting correctly so if they're objects and your character the weren't part of characterization but do need to be plotted before you export them you can just come into control W into the schematic view frame all and then just come across to a Jess character so for this example we're going to pretend the animation wasn't plotted to rolled right in their leg so to plot this animation we're going to come down into F curves and we're going to select their properties what you want plot in so in this case it's translation and rotation we're going to come to animation and do plot selected so so plot any objects you have selected and then the selected properties which you've just selected in the f curves and now a plot that's going to bring up our plots like two properties window so in here we've already got these options set so here plot I'll go through and plot the translation and rotation values onto that object this kind of plotting is also handy if you've got custom properties you need to plot so we look on here we have a custom property so we can select that come back across here do plot selected selected properties plot again there's no actual animation on here but if there was it would actually plot the animation onto that custom property so if your character has custom properties that need plotting before they go back into Maya this is a great way to do that so now we're sure we have all our animation plotted and control W back into the perspective view and we can get our file ready to export before we make any changes to this we're gonna file save as so just add edit to this name this will just give it a point we can return to if the import doesn't work so in here we're going to save all elements I'm gonna save all animation I'm gonna save all settings I'm gonna make sure it takes us saved just hit save so now we can start getting the file ready for exporting first thing we're gonna do is get rid of source character so this we can use Shift N and then we're going to select everything in the source name space so into source come on and then a star such as going to select everything in this source name space click OK now to delete this you can't just hit delete on the keyboard because it doesn't actually delete all the objects so we're going to come down here into our scene browser and then find the objects that selected which is a root and a right-click that and do delete and confirm and then just okay delete character yes to all so it's going to delete everything in that source name space so they said when you're setting your characters up it is always good to use a name space so the next thing we're going to do is delete our control rig so you can select that and just do a detach control rig and then delete so that just leaves us with our character this is a flaw playing the light I put in for a rendering so you can get rid of those so it just leaves us with our character in here now we can just check our animation still works that character still moving so we can control W it into this schematic view so if you rescale your character when you brought it into the motion builder this is where you have to rescale it back to the original size so if you select the reference joint and s-two going to scale this character wasn't scaled but if it was the first thing you need to do is go into the F curves window and make sure there no keyframes on the scale value if there are if you scale your character down as soon as you play that animation back it's going to pop back up to its original size you need to make sure there are no keyframes on the reference so you can come up into animation clear selected all properties and she's going to clear the animation and anything you've got selected so now you can see there's no pop on that and if we scale that character back down it stays at that size so then if we were scaling the character down we can hit a to frame the character and just have a look and make sure that animation still plays back correctly I don't actually want to scale that character down so I'm gonna put it back to one and hit a to frame all again animation still works so last thing we'll need to do is change the name of our take so that it makes sense at the moment this is still set to female so you come down here to takes double click that and then in here we can just double click the tape name and then change this to Jess so that we know this is on our Jess character type of action is well this you got a prop and then the final thing we can do is come up here and we can do file save as and then we'll take this edit version and change the name and we'll call this processed so we know this is the final processed file so we have our edit if we need to go back and change anything this is going to be our process file that we're going to import into Maya and we can hit save we're gonna save all elements save all animation save all settings save the takes and hit save now so we can jump back across to our character opened in wire and we can file import and then go to our exported files this is our processed file and then here we can change our file type to FBX and then here we can set our import options similar to before we can set this to Autodesk MotionBuilder and this will change most of settings that we need this I'm going to changes file content we want to update animation so if you use add this will bring in the character and add it to the scene add an update will add any objects that the importer can't find and update the animation on objects that it can find update the animation just updates the animation on the objects so we're going to select that and then in animation we make sure animations turned on we make sure you've got a correct take set we've only got one taken out file so that's fine you turn on filled timelines this will just make sure that the timeline set to the correct range that you want you don't to bake any animation layers we're not putting up to call markers we're going to leave returning an interpolation mode we're going to leave as Euler we are no driven keys we're not bringing any deforming models in and we can turn off cameras because you don't know your cameras from the scene don't know any of the lights from the scene then we can hit import that's going to import animation into Maya you can see our timeline is now change to fit the animation my characters jumped into the first position we have a warning here which we can ignore so now we can play the file back and just make sure everything's imported correctly so there you have it a complete end-to-end workflow showing you how to get your character from Maya into motion builder characterize it applies a motion capture to it and then get it back into Maya I'll leave a link to the full playlist in the description below hope you found this series useful if you have don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe if you want to see what tutorials come next

Channel: mocappys

Views: 5,286

Keywords: MotionBuilder, motionbuilder, motionbuilder tutorial, motionbuilder tutorials, motionbuilder 2019, motionbuilder 2019 tutorial, mobu, MoBu, motion capture, mocap, autodesk motionBuilder, animation, mocappys, plot, plot options, constant key reducer, keep at least one key frame, smart plot, gimbal killer, unroll filer, plot on frame, plot all takes, plot selected, clear selected, find model by name, motionbuilder export, maya import, motionbuilder maya

Id: XgwpcQ--0hE

Length: 19min 57sec (1197 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2019