Hello,
I have been using Motionbuilder / Maya now for about 8 months now and I have gotten pretty good creating and importing FBX files between Motionbuilder and Maya. Now I want to uses another third party software called Face Gen. It’s a very good software that creates 3D human faces what I really like about the program is that It creates blendshape for Maya. Now with that said, my problem is that I cannot get the animated blendshapes out of Motionbuilder (FBX) and import them back into Maya. In motionbuilder ,and even in Maya all of the blendshapes work, once I set the character up I can make him talk get mad get happy, what ever I need him to do. But when I try and import the FBX back into Maya I lose the blendshapes. In fact I get an error message saying that the FCurves must be set to 1.0 to work.

Note: I notice that before I plot the animation FCurves sliders move back and forth as the character is talking, but seem to lock up when I plot the animation, and they will not move again.

Has any one had the this type of problem before?

It looks like you’re one step ahead of me. Our team currently uses 3ds Max, Maya, and MotionBuilder, and are evaluating FaceGen 3.2. It looks like a great product, but before we buy it, I’d like to know more about the process of taking the FaceGen character data (e.g. .3ds, .ma files), getting it into MotionBuilder, and generating speaking character animations from an audio file. I’ve been trying to do that with the “John” face that FaceGen has on their Download page and it’s not clear what the best approach is. I talked to FaceGen support and they said they don’t have any MB expertise. It sounds like you’ve figured most of it out. From your experience, what’s the best way to get that done? Have you found any good documentation? Any assistance that you can provide will be greatly appreciated.

Before plotting your FACEGEN model blendshapes animations in motion builder you have follow these steps to the letter. In your voice device make sure that LIVE and RECORDING are both checked if you are doing recorded audio animations. Then select your voice device in NAVIGATOR, turn on the LIVE and RECORDING options and choose your MICROPHONE (AUDIO CARD) as your SOURCE. Also check the ACTIVE box if not already checked. IN THE TRANSPORT PANEL, hit the record button (red button, (overwrite current take) then hit the play button to start recording. Record your voice or audio at this point. This will start recording the animation from the audio input. Stop the recording when done. Now this is a very important step, UNCHECK the LIVE and RECORDING in your voice device to turn it off before plotting the animation. Also make sure that in your DEVICES tab in NAVIGATOR the ONLINE box of VOICE is checked, If not checked you cannot plot your animations. Now go to the character face definition and check ACTIVE if not already checked. Next go to CHARACTER FACE ANIMATION then plot the animation checking PLOT ON FRAME or PLOT ALL TAKES if you wish to import to MAYA. This will transfer the animation recorded from the voice device to your shapes. Now to check if you have plotted correctly go to Constraints in NAVIGATOR and uncheck ACTIVE in RELATIONS. Then play the Animation in the TRANSPORT PANEL. Your character will animate if it plotted correctly and even if it is not constrained to the voice device. That means that your character is no longer dependent on the voice device but already has its own keyframes that Maya can read. Then save your project as Fbx. Now open MAYA and import the fbx project.

A Very Important Note!: You must plot your animation RIGHT AFTER recording your audio or you will have problems with plotting the animation later! I mean RIGHT AWAY! before doing any other adjustments. In my experience I was not able to plot my animations if I use pre-recorded audio. My experience was the same as what was described earlier like being able to only plot 1 frame of the whole animation. So the PROCEDURE here is to PLOT YOUR ANIMATION RIGHT AFTER RECORDING YOUR AUDIO!