20/03/13 & 21/03/13 - MoCap Cleanup Part 3

So I open the file this morning to have another go at it. And that arm twist that was giving me nightmares seems to have pretty much disappeared. -eye twitch-

There's still an issue with me finding the curves so i can edit the movement further and i'm still not sure why the markers are red instead of blue and whether that even makes a difference...


HOWEVER what i can do now is characterize an external rig (such as the grunt rig i'm using) which allows me to map the actors movements onto the bones in the grunt rig.

As i did the other day, i've spent the morning playing with settings and banging my head against miniature brick walls trying to figure out where things are in motion builder and what they do. The help box is only helpful if you know where the specific windows are already.

Below is the stage i've got to with applying the actors movements to the rig. Theres a fair few issues but i think i know how to fix them so i'll screencap my process while i'm fixing it.

Before i do though, the things that I think are going wrong is that the Grunt rig has a hip bone and a Root joint and when characterizing the rig the root hasn't got a noticeable box to be put in. I'm going to try adding it to the spine section or adding the hip joint to the spine boxes instead.

Also the neck is really far forward but i think this is due to the positioning of the actors head. I moved it forward to line up the markers but i think this may be a glitch so that requires me ignoring how far forward the markers are.


Step 1. Drag the Grunt FBX file fromt he asset browser into the scene --> FBX Merge --> <no animation>

Step 2: Hide the actor... He'll get in the way for now. Might need to use Ctrl + A to cycle through so the skeleton isn't visible either.

Step 3: In the asset browser go to templates and character. Drag the character option to the mesh. It should come up with an error about nodes missing.

Step 4:  Use the navigator to bring up the character definition panel.. there should be a section to add in the particular joints. Add the joints to the right places and click characterize, if you do it right then an option will come up to pick biped or quadruped etc. Rename the character set.

I'll continue this a bit later...maybe tomorrow? hopefully not tomorrow though.
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Ok it's tomorrow. I was tired after life drawing so i went home instead

Step 5: Make sure that your character is selected in the character controls box and then go to edit --> input --> Actor. If nothing happens then make sure actor input is ticked.. it should appear where stance is in the picture below.

Step 6: Head over the character settings in the navigator and makes sure actor is selected and click plot character. This i think transfers the points of the markers to the skeleton in the Grunt rig.

Step 7: I think this is how you save the animation to an fbx to move into maya gain but im not entirely sure.

Ok.. i tried this Setup fixing the problems i noted in "yesterdays" post and it worked. Lynn sent me another rig which took out the extra bone and that one seems to create problems with the arms? I'm not entirely sure why though... The rig seems to be a little messier when it comes to hierarchies but that might just be how I've exported the rig... I think i might be the problem here but i'm not sure how.

I tried to fix it by exporting differently.. It didn't work. Still has the weird arm flailing thing. I'm going back to the old rig.


So the old rig works and now i have to take the process into maya.