Programming and animation

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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Fixing Feet Sliding

I want to tell about quite popular issue of the MoCap animation – feet sliding effect, and how to fix it in MotionBuilder by several ways.

First of all, through the algorithm of feet stabilization and feet contact on the floor, and of course through self-editing by hand.

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OR SDK and STL string

OR SDK and STL string together generate 118 errors when compiling from error C2365: ‘operator new’: redefinition; previous definition was ‘function’

It seems that there is no reason to combine them, because in the OR SDK there is a class for the string – FBString. However, such a challenge comes when you want to connect third-party libraries or own development, often it’s all tied to the STL string and get rid of that there is no possibility.

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Labelator – rename your skeleton’s markers

Labelator – is a special helper object, which stores the names of objects around them by their spatial arrangement. 

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Some notes about constraints in ORSDK

Constraints have a very useful opportunity to update the position of objects in the evaluation thread. For example, I have a plug manipulator, which manages a set of objects in the scene. On the one hand could simply ask the object location like SetVector for each object. But first, it will be on thread in the drawing, and secondly, my plug-in performs the action in time.

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Free 2-day MotionBuilder SDK Training in San Francisco

The Autodesk Developer Network is offering a free 2-day MotionBuilder SDK training at Games Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco on March 9 and 10, 2010. This is a rare opportunity to work in a small class room environment with very knowledgeable instructors on the Media & Entertainment product of your choosing. The unique opportunity allows you to dive into the inner workings of the software, and come out with a strong fundamental knowledge of their architecture to see and understand how you can utilize and benefit from the API’s/SDK’s of these powerful software’s. For more details, go to the following links:

MotionBuilder SDK Training Description and Agenda

Register here for MotionBuilder SDK

Markers renamer script by the UIBuilder

Utility to rename a set of markers. Was used in the production for the standardization of naming a set of markers of diverse sources mocap data. In particular, if the animation shot with the same person, it is not necessary for each of them to do different MoBu Actor, it is enough to observe the unity of naming markers and can be combined animation with the scene had once trained actor.

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Build you own Actor

Small model plugin for MotionBuilder, that will gives you possibility to operate with actor’s body parts as normal objects in scene.

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Evaluation thread in a shader plugin

* Image taken from the documentation of the Autodesk MotionBuilder 7.5

When I was writing a plugin shader for a webcam, I have faced with such a contradiction: on the one hand is necessary to process each frame of a web camera with no impact on the overall performance of the MoBu scene, and with another – rule for creating plug-ins for MoBu says: Any extra threads or processes running parallel to MotionBuilder might seriously slow down performance or even prevent MotionBuilder from running at all. 

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