Programming and animation

MotionBuilder’s Actor, proc and cons.

MotionBuilder’s actor, is a handy tool, but it does not have a sufficient accuracy and precision for professional use. Let me explain its proc and cons.

To retarget the animation I started with these issues and achieved some success. At the moment this technology is as internal software of the Sevastopol mocap studio and is used in transfering process for a character animation.

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Tip: Increase last recently opened files count

MotionBuilder UI, centered region

Tip, on how to centered a region. Not so long time ago I thought about this question and wish to share.
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Plugins for MotionBuilder

I’ve done a small sorting of published plugins, the result is a table of plugins. You can see it, please visit – Plugins for MotionBuilder page

SkeletonBuilder WIP

In development there is a tool to fit the skeleton \ mocap actor under a set of points, including a precise calibration using ROM file.

* ROM – range of motion

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MotionBuilder 2011 and MoCap

I have tried the trial version of the MoBu 2011, it was interesting to see, what it represents in the new feature – mocap straight to the bones. It turned out that this is a normal device plug-in, which receives from the server location and rotation of the bones and write them in the appropriate channels of the bones. The difference from the same MotionBuilder 2010 that it became possible to record data in animation channel in the global coordinate system. A new method SetBufferType (bool bGlobal) allows you to switch between global and local record. By the way this innovation can be useful in the design constraints, not just devices.

It remains now to expect updates plug-ins for the transfer of the skeleton from the mocap software into MotionBuilder.

Another thing I noticed in the OR SDK, so that presence fbmath.h – mathematical functions. I wonder in which version of MoBu they appear, because I have written my own.

MoBu device plugin for TrackingTools has updated

I have updated MotionBuilder’s device plugin for streaming data from the Tracking Tools. If anyone wants to try it, just write to me – mocap<at>neill3d<point>com

Driven constraint

Here is the beta build of driven property constraint, that will connect property of one object to a property of another object. Plugin works with non activable properties as well.

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MoBu Menu manager

The plug-in is designed to rename and customize Open Reality main menu. Supplement the menu item you can call Python scripts.

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Retarget prop MoCap animation (+ Video tutor)

Actor is rarely recorded in splendid isolation, usually in the hand he holds an object, which is called the prop. This object has its own set of markers, often three is enough, and these markers are moving close to the actor. But the difficulty begins when the actor retarget into a character who has a totally different scale and proportion. And here, if for parts of the body retarget you can do automaticly, then, for all the additional facilities will have to do everything “by hands”. Although if you look at action space property in the character settings, there appears counted on the scale of the character to an actor.

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