Casually Hardcore devlog

The Devil’s Puppetry

I’m looking at using motion capture-based animation for the supehero for the simple fact that I can stick (presumably) any animation cycle I find on the web onto it as necessary. Ideally all animation cycles will be tweaked to match the “animation style” of the superhero. The reality is that using mocap data is painful and I’ll explain why.

Here is my workflow:

1. Build Hero model with default mocap friendly rig (bone hierarchy – no constraints – no IK)
2. Install Maya-based BVH importer
3. Create new empty Maya scene
4. Import BVH into scene – creates bone hierarchy and applies animation
5. Import hero model in scene – character in T-pose with bone hierarchy
6. Transfer animation from mocap bone hierarchy to superhero bone hierarchy!

The last step has not worked at all even with two rigs (hero + mocap) having similar but different hierarchies and due to the suckiness of Maya Trax transferring animation has been a nightmare.

So I’m toying with the idea of using MotionBuilder. There is a FREE Learning Edition that works but does not export FBX files for you to use in your 3D app and is for non-commercial purposes (i.e learning!)

MotionBuilder has it’s own idea of what a rig should be. It wants a bones named in a certain way or you will have to manually map your bones to their bones.

This requires a few extra steps so the workflow to get mocap animation into a Maya-based character is as follows:

1. Export Maya character as FBX (bones + geometry)
2. Import FBX into MotionBuilder
3. Create character definition for Maya rig – maps maya bones to MotionBuilder bones
4. Import BVH/AMC (mocap data) into MotionBuilder
5. Create character definition for mocap rig – maps mocap bones to MotionBuilder bones
6. Transfer animation from mocap to Maya rig (pretty easy)
7. Export animation into FBX
8. Import FBX into Maya and onto the character

The hard part is still transferring the animation because of differences in the rig. Sometimes re-targeting is necessary, but if you have to do it… MotionBuilder seems to be one of the best tools for that task.

Add comment May 31st, 2008