How to Retarget Motion Capture in MotionBuilder

in this video I'm going to show you how to retarget motion capture onto your character in MotionBuilder so to get started we're going to come up and file open our source character so for this example we're going to be using the character that's in our ocean capture file you can open that it's in the open options window we're going to load all elements and then we're going to discard all animation you just want to create a clean map in file I'm going to use to retarget this file that I can also save and then reuse later on if I need to map all the motion catch to this file you come down and discard all settings I'm going to turn off takes or don't import the animation just uncheck the other options and click open so this opens a motion capture file brings in our character the first thing we need to do is put our character into T stance if you come down here to characters double click our character we come into character settings we can see inputs type to stance you just tick that that Park action the T pose next thing we're gonna do is add a character to a source namespace just so that if we bring our other character in if they've got any matching names it's not going to cause any naming conflicts so select the root of our character and the character asset itself right click add/remove namespaces and we're just going to add a namespace and we'll call this source there are any other namespaces but we'll apply to the branch click OK let's now namespaced our catcher in the scene so next I'm going to do is file merge that target character in this case we're gonna be using the Jess character that we did in the previous tutorial you can open that and the merge options we're going to append our elements for use merge well that does is it doesn't actually create any new objects if there are objects in the scene with the same name so we don't like she wanted to do that we want it to create the objects in the scene and we can right click and discard all animation and then we're going to merge all settings just make sure that we've got the correct transport settings as natural takes in this file but unusual if they where we'll just make sure they're deselected and then here we'll just don't take the rest of these options click merch see we have our target character and if we control a to show the skeletons we can see we have a yellow sauce character so now we're just going to come down to characters expand that I mean a double click yes to make sure she's selected and then in here we're going to go to the character settings which is input type 2 character take the input source to source character then we're going to do next is click active when you click active you want to keep an eye on character so hopefully when you click it there shouldn't be a big jump when you actually activate the characterization so you know just there if I put it back in the stance and then turn this off change it back to character when I click this you notice is not a big jump between the two characters if you do now which is a big jump when you click activate its user because there's quite a difference between the characterization of the two characters their actual stance position so you might need to go back and check that so what I'm going to do now is create a mapping file so we're going to come up with the file save as so I'm doing here is create a mapping file that contains our source character connected to Jess character again this is version 1 so in here we're going to save all elements we're gonna discard all the animation we're going to keep our settings I'm going to save all settings to make sure you keep our transport settings and cameras we're going to turn off takes just keeping their file nice and clean you click safe by creating this mapping file it gives us a point that we can return to things go wrong later on it also gives us a file that we can use whenever we want to remap animation from the source character to adjust character we can just don't miss it we know it's a nice clean file there's no animation on it we've got a nice base to start from so now I've got our characters connected you can control the view into the schematic view and select the object so we want to import the animation on since a couple of different ways to do this we want to import it into the entire hierarchy we can control shift right click to select the entire hierarchy we can also use spacebar right click to select an object in all its children's but for this example we're just going to select the objects in the hierarchy Haley slept the hips I'm gonna come up to file motion file import and select our mocap that we want to import click open met in the import options dialog window we want to switch to make sure that it's set to merge because we don't want to create any of the objects they already exist in the scenes we're just going to merge into there I'll be except all in the scene then in here we can specify where we want to import the mocap so I'm gonna use in selected hierarchy because I've selected a single object I want to put it into their whole hierarchy they could use one of the other methods to select the objects you could use in selected models only on selected model on children or you can use in all models so we're gonna leave that as in selected hierarchy we're gonna make sure all these other options are ticked so we don't want to ignore modeled types we don't to create any and match model so if we've got all the models in the scene they should be the same we don't import scaling our degrees of freedom when import start and end from the file I'm gonna leave it as is or frame the animation up here we're going to select the mocap that we want to import and this file is only one take but if there are multiple files you could say which one you want it important and then here you can set where you want the motion capture to be imported so if you already had an existing take say with two characters and you wanted to import this milk up into the same take you can select tape one but we're actually going to import it into a new take and then you can click import so now if we control a back into the viewer so characters moved out to start the animation you can just come down here click loop playback and just hit the play button then you can also click control ages to hide a skirt and so we can see it you can watch our animation back so at this point I'm just checking to see if there's any problems of the mocap when the first thing you notice is she walks quite a long distance and we having to pan back one thing I do when I've got takes where they cover a lot of ground in the scene is I'll come down here to cameras in produce perspective we can just go into advanced settings change the focal lengths something like et that works like a real world zoom lens or it's just going to compress all that distance make it much smaller so now rather than having a tiny character having to zoom around and go back to the start animation you can see she's still quite big in the frame it just makes it a lot easier to look at files that cover bigger distances like this then we can watch that milk up again you know I'm just looking for any problems the first thing you notice these sungkyu droopy shoulders just can use the first 600 frames on this now we look in the front view and see these shoulders are really low so expect needs to be much higher in the frame that's what we can do is come back down here to our character go to Jess I'm just going to change the input type to stance so he she goes back in our T pose you can turn off active come back into the character definitions we could turn off characterization so this puts your character back in exactly the same pose that year T pose that min when it goes into stance it's exactly the same poses or use of the T pose so now in here I can go in and rotate these I'm just going to bring these up a little bit don't try setting these to zero and rotate these arms back down the same on the other side so he's back to zero so now we've adjusted the position of our arms on the character you know it's still in a T post so we can just take characterize again and hit biped come back to our character settings and change the input back to character click active you can see you got a much better shape in our shoulders now because there's a good chance that all those mocap we load on our source character and we'll get the same droop shoulder effect may come back into my map in the file open that and we're gonna come down to characters go to a Jess character I'm gonna put it in their stance pose turn that off and then turn off characterization we're going to come in here and change the shoulders in here to the same values that we used before to rotate ins up to zero let's take the arms back out do the same on the other side up to zero up down set that back to zero we know she's still them at E pose when we apply the characterisation biped change our input type back to character a source character click active file save as source character version two so in here we're going to save all elements we're going to discard all the animation we're going to keep our settings I'm going to save all settings to make sure you keep a transport settings and cameras we're going to turn off takes just keeping the file nice and clean and click safe so we'll just play that animation back again now and just see if there's any other problems you can notice I usually like to do is try and spot as many in the air problems as I can and fix them before I start changing any of those settings and then retargeting options so in here the other problem we can see as a feet that just below the floor so one way to fix that is if we control a to show a skeleton we just come back down here to our source character you can see this feet a little bit close to ground so you can do is you come down here grab these foot floor contacts you can actually raise these up I'll shift our character back up you see now our characters more on the floor we'll come back and fix up foot in a second so if we just hide that you can play our animation and see if that's corrected some of the foot floor contacts problems that we've seen you can see a contact to an effete the floor much better so coming here and fix this foot we need to do is come to our source character might be a slight twist on this foot so you can come down into F curves look at the rotation we hit our we can see I'm going to change this in the Zed you can select the Zed axis and then f curves window hit a to frame all I'm just gonna right click and select all and then if we zoom in on the foot just time to rest we click in between these two markers actually selecting both you can just rotate this round so the foots back on the floor so now when we watch this back feet an hour square on the floor I think we'll just remove some of that at the beginning there from that nice sigh we go from here just clip there's a bit of animation off so if you look at this back now we've got the feet contact with the floor is much better just check that in the right view just to make sure that rotating it doesn't affect any of the other animation you can see that stride still working so before I start changing the retargeting settings what you usually do is just start reviewing the animation from different angles and seeing what changes I need to make so the first thing I'm gonna do look in the front view you can see now we fix the feet in the shoulders this is all looking good I'll just use the first 600 frames of this and also remove everything up to the Sai 260 the next thing we'll do is well look at it in the side view so you want to be looking for here's first thing I look at is as a character standing on balance just before she starts walking so you can see here if we take a line from where it IRA's down through her hips through her legs and out through the center bare foot she looks like she's unbalanced now we'll have a look at the walk I'm just gonna hold down Jane and then left-click and drag it allows us to change the playback at the walk just by moving our mouse left and right now we can have a look at this Waukesha's so you want to be looking for here's than this sort of in this contact pose character wants to be slightly ahead if we look at where the heel and the toe are I want it to be that a weight wants to be just in the center of this so she's walking forward and then during this passing pose here she must be slightly ahead of where she is now probably a little bit and then here just on the contact so his legs still slightly bent through here perhaps wants to be a little bit further forwards so you can come down here into these offsets we can right click and drag down here just to move await slightly further forward as she's walking so if you come here now if we look during this passing pose she's a little bit further forward with a weight you can see it started to shift back over the front of the feet and then during this contact pose here weights a little bit more centered and then transfers straightaway onto this front leg because I've moved the hips forward I just need to check this rear leg we don't have any hyperextension in this rear leg when it's at its full extent here what you don't want is for this to be too far forwards and you start getting this hyperextension not pulling in the rear leg I think that's looking good the same here just moved to the end of the animation okay the skeleton again again if she comes through here it's making sure I also want to be making sure that this front leg hasn't gone too bent so we're still getting that nice straight leg and then compression as she moves her weight forwards and then the last thing we're gonna look at here is the final pose where she's standing is to make sure she's still unbalanced so we can move to the end of the animation with control end we can just make sure that she's still stood upright she's not leaning too far forwards if we can use control home making it to the first frame of the animation assuming are there see she's being a little bit far forward drop up back a little bit see a center of her hips just over the top of her just forward of a middle of a foot now go back to the end just make sure that that's still okay so that's one way I'd use these offsets down here in the retargeting settings the other one that's quite handy is if you come up to retargeting there's a setting called matched source so we go into the right view again and shaft skeleton you can see here at the end of the animation two characters are in different positions this is because sauce characters smaller than our target character ocean brother actually rescales the motion onto the larger character which means for the strides because her legs are longer he's actually taking bigger steps so she's actually moving further so what this means is when our characters are over zero in pretty much the same place as they start to move away from that you can see they start to separate so in this example this isn't really a problem because we've just got a walk in and the straight line she's not interact with any scenery objects but if she did that's where you can use much space so I'll rescale the animation on our target character to make it so that she's in exactly the same position as our source character so now if we play through you can see our source and target character in exactly the same space the one thing you do have to watch when you're using match spaces the size difference between your sauce character and your target character can have an effect on how well this match sauce works let's take this off for a sec and change this to user we put this to 100 this has the same effective as turning match sauce on you can see our characters in exactly the same place so as I increase this number this is as though we're having to scale up the motion from the source character to the target character so this a bit of case if you had a really small character and your sauce character is really big enough to scale up the animation so you can see as they start to increase that scale it starts to change this walk and you start getting this really exaggerated stride the opposite of that would be if your sauce character is really small on your target character is really big you would have to scale the animation down you can see what starts to happen here is you get these really weird little footsteps and all the floor contacts start to fall apart the feet they're over rotating so this is one of the reasons why your actor should ideally be the about the same size as a character that they're playing so that you can minimize this amount of offset so in most situations I leave the action space compensation amount set to auto then I only turn on my source if I absolutely need it so the other settings you might want to change other reach settings so this walk doesn't really demonstrate where you'd want to start changing these iCade lens settings if you go down here to previous moves we can grab the crawl forwards and merge that into the scene sit down hearing characters we're going to change Jess's input we're going to keep Jess's input type as character but change the source to character this is a situation where you want to start using the I cabling on the hands so if you look at this animation here we just time frame take you can see here where where she's crawling what you actually want is for these hands we want is for these hands to be matching the other characters hands on the floor as you can see the quite a way off now this is where you'd start introducing the iCade blend so if we turn that on you can see she starts to reach for his hands and she can't quite reach them yet that's because if you look at the position of the back Justin's backs up here and the characters back is further down here so we can start doing this changing a couple of these settings so first one we're gonna try is this lower back you can see straight away this curve matches much closer to this curve and also puts the hands back on the floor so now when we play this back you can see the hands are much closer because we've got reach I can what this is doing is pulling the hands forward so it's gonna change the rotation on these hands slightly so I need to do here is turn there I can't learn for the rotation back on so that it matches the source characters hands so now she starts moving forwards and backwards you can see it's now matching characters position and the other thing we might want to change is you can see here where he starts to reach forward you can see there's quite a bit of pollen and yes we're getting this pulling here so you could either introduce more pull on here it should start pulling that chest down even further on another option is if we're going to solving you can go into realistic shoulder solving and just start introducing bitter that so this is doing here as you can see here it's just bringing Jess's shoulder slightly forward which is what you'd expect as you raise your hand past a certain point you start sharing the rotation of the arm forwards with the shoulder so you could just bring some addition just to take some of that strain out of the arms so then you can see the hand positions of justice and matching the hand positions of the character so the other thing would look at here is because we've now rotated this spine down this heads slightly out of position so come back up here to the head and we can rotate that back forward so that's no matching position of this head so these are the kind of situations where you want the hands to be in certain positions you'd start to bring in the eye key blend as you see if we know we turn that off you'll see the hands are in the right position they don't lock to the floor they go through the floor if you turn ok blending back on don't stick to the floor and stay in position so that's why when you do this retargeting by default the feet are usually set on because in most situations you character stand them on the floor so you want the feet to be into the floor matching your characters feet what you want to do before you start changing any of these values or editing any of these things is figure out what needs changing overall and then tweak one value at a time to see how that changes the pose and the more files you edit the easier it is to start to identify what settings you need to change to give you better results with the retargeting so the final thing to do is just give the animation one last check and then we can plot it to either the skeleton or the control rig depending on whether we're going to export it straightaway I'll do some more animation afterwards so there are two places you can plot the animation first one is down here in characters yes character settings we can hit the plot character button then you just need to decide whether to plot to the skeleton if you're going to export the animation you're not going to do any editing you are going to do edit and then you're going to want to plot to the control rig or we can come up to the character control set in and use bake plot and select skeleton or control rig so for this tutorial I'm gonna plot it to the skeleton open the plot options window just quickly run through a couple but on frame sister put the keyframes on actual frame we don't want to plot all takes because we've only got one take in here I'm gonna keep the plot rate at 30 frames a second if it matches one that we use in can set our rotation filter I'm gonna use on roll constant keyword you simulate turned off this just removes any keyframes that have the same values so for instance if an object's static or doesn't move smart plot we don't really need on this this is more if you've done hand animation and you want to plot the keyframes down on our layer we're gonna make plot translation on the root only turned on so the only plots translation on the root object and we can hit plot once the plots complete you can just make sure that our characters not being driven by the source character and play our animation back and then we can just watch it from different angles just to make sure that it's all plotted correctly just to make absolutely sure we can select a joint and look at the f curves window just check that it's got key values on it and then the hips have translation and rotation values on them so now we have our motion capture map to add just character ready for the next step so to learn more about how to use motion builder start now by clicking around subscribe icon so you don't miss the next tutorial thanks for watching I'll see in the next video

Channel: mocappys

Views: 10,726

Keywords: MotionBuilder, motionbuilder 2019, motionbuilder tutorial, mobu, MoBu, motion capture, mocap, autodesk motionBuilder, animation, mocappys, motionbuilder animation tutorial, how to retarget mocap, how to retarget motion capture, retarget, match source, ik blend, import mocap

Id: fZzHwsKZsns

Length: 26min 15sec (1575 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2019