Hi, I’ve picked up Motion Builder recently and I’m trying to integrate it into a pipeline at my office that uses Max Biped and Max for rigging. We’ve got a bunch of animations in Max already, and would like to get them into Motion Builder and start using MB as our primary animation tool.

Here’s my scenario:

I’ve got our rig from Max exported into MB, all set up with a control rig and everything. I’ve also got a bunch of .bip files and animations in max. I export an animation from Max using FBX, then open it up in MB. I then clean up the file so that it’s a bare skeleton with animation data and keyframes. I add a ‘Character’ to the scene and give him the same definitions as the main rig, and then plot this animation to a control rig. Now to see my main character rig play this same animation.. right?

I open the main rig, which has a control rig and the same naming template and character definitions as my animation skeleton. I’ve tried 80 different ways to tell the main rig to play the animation from this bare skeleton. Import, Save/Load animation, change control inputs to the animated rig, and other varieties of these methods. Every time the main rig character gets completely screwed up looking. The legs and arms get all distorted, half of the body faces -Z, half faces +Z. Please someone tell me if I’m not doing something incorrect here.

The thing that baffles me.. is that I have 2 exact skeletons, with the same character definitions and control rigs based off those defs, yet the one control rig can’t mimic the other without issues. Any ideas?

-Horse

Do you have the character in T-Pose in frame 0 (or in any frame I guess) facing z+ BEFORE exporting from Max?

That’s crucial to correctly characterize your character in MB, even using the Biped Template.

eks

Well… no because that would mean having a T pose built into every animation, which is not the current setup.

I guess my question is, what would be the ideal way to apply animations from max to a control rig in MB?

Horse 11 December 2007 09:22 PM

I guess my question is, what would be the ideal way to apply animations from max to a control rig in MB?

You can try to have ONE character setup in tpose exported in FBX from Max, imported into Motion Builder and correctly characterized. Then, with all the other animations, export from Max in FBX and import just the animation in Motion Builder, without the need to make each of them in TPose.

You need the T just for characterizing a character in Motion Builder. The animation data by itself does not need a tpose. And with a characterized character you can import other animations over it.

But Im guessing, never done that. :)

If it works then please post it here.

eks
PS: btw, if you want an animation ploted FROM the skeleton TO the control rig, you need to change Input Type to Control Rig Output (Under Character Settings).

Horse, forget about having back animation from MB to biped. It’s not doable. You have to choose, biped or MB and max bones.

To have animation from biped you need to properly characterize skeleton as ekso wrote. And then you can import animations on this characterized skeleton.

Edit: Disclailer: I didn’t test with newest versions of max. Max 8 was last one I tried. I worked 2 years using biped and I hate it. I really do. :-)

I’m still not having any luck with this. My main character has a working CR, and is in a T-pose facing the right direction and is properly characterized.

When I tried your suggestion ekso, but it still doesn’t work. I set my Main CR to Control Rig Input, and my Anim CR to Control Rig Output. Then in the Main CR I choose Anim CR as the Input Source.

It asks me the following questions:
Reset the Control Rig’s Rotation DOF settings? (Yes/No)
Reset the Control Rig’s Hierarchy? (Yes/No)

This results in the Main CR left static in a T-pose, forcing the character into the Anim CR, distorting his body and breaking his limbs. How do I get it so that the Main CR is animated? Now that I think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Main CR move out of a T-pose, it always forces the bones of the character to do something else and break. Any suggestions?

Some further testing..

If I set the Anim CR to Control Rig Input, and have the Input Source be Main CR, the main CR does what I want it to do. However, none of the main character’s bones move, they remain in a T-pose. So it’s a bit closer to what I need but how do you get it to not detach the Main CR from the character?

Er.... Your post was a bit confusing, but it seems you are trying to move the animation between characters with both inside Motion Builder at the same time. I never tried that, but it might work indeed. You have to try over those input output stuff, but in this case you would probably need both characters correctly characterized. Which means you would need every file with a TPose. You could try to use the actor stuff, I never messed with that because I did mocap recording/retargeting, but it might not need a tpose.

My suggestion is to merge the animation from the skeleton without fully loading it into Motion Builder. You do that by using File/Merge. On that window it shows up, right click on any item of both collums and you have Load Animation/Discard Animation. Plus you can load it up on another Take (just rename it to something else, but you might only need this if you need the tpose on a different take).

IF the skeleton you have inside Motion Builder is the same as on the file you are trying to merge (i.e., mostly bone names and hierarchy, etc), it should not give any problems.  If there are differences you can try to solve them editing either file before trying to merge.

You just need to have the TPosed character in Motion Builder charaterized before importing the animation. To see it you need to have Input Type as Control Rig Output, which gives the control of the animation to the skeleton, rather than the control rig.

eks
PS: I just found out that the Load Character Animation under File inside the Character Controls window you have lots of options for loading just the animation, including one to plot it to the control rig. :)

just a follow up, I did a test today of adding a T-pose 15 frames before my animation in Max, then exported it.. and it works with no problem when loading it on to my character in MB.

Plot Animation to Control Rig must require the proper T-pose in order for it to work I guess.. I’m not sure how I feel about it, but at least I’ve stopped pulling my hair out.

Thanks for the help guys