Creating a Character Template or Characterizing in Motion Builder Tutorial

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After you have named every bone the way that Motion Builder expects, Make sure your skeleton is facing the positive Z axis and its on a full TPose (fig6).



Fig 6.

Go to the Asset Browser window, under the Templates folder from the Characters section drag the character icon to any joint of your model and select characterize from the popup option that appears (fig 7).



Fig 7.

Motion Builder will ask you if you want to characterize the rig as a biped, or a quadruped, since we are using a human model for this tutorial click on the biped button.

A Characters section appears under the navigator window, open it up and rename Character to MocapDudeCharacter (Fig 8).



Fig 8.

Fit the contact planes of the character by placing the green and purple boxes around the feet and hands to the appropriate places. Heel, Ball and Toe for the feet and Wrist, Finger Base and Finger End for the hands (Fig 9). Contact planes are a great help for foot roll motion and preventing floor sliding as you will be able to see in the Transferring Optical Data to Joints tutorial.


Fig9.


Double click on MocapDudeCharacter under the Character section of the navigator tab to load its properties on the navigator window. Under the Character Definition tab on the control rig section click on create (Fig10).


Fig 10.


Select FK/IK from the Create Control Rig window that pops. This creates controls to drive your bones using forward kinematics or inverse kinematics so you can animate your character from the ground up or uselayer animation on top of motion capture. Under the Character Controls widow check the Ctrl Rig In to activate the Control Rig (Fig 11). Now you can click on the different spheres of the window to select the rig controllers to pose and animate your character.


 

Fig 11.


As you will also see in the Transferring Optical Data to Joints tutorial you can use the edit drop down menu to transfer motion capture data to your model and even animation from previously characterized skeletons.

 

 
     
 
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