October 20, 2016 Workshop 8 Notes

MOTION CAPTURE CHARACTER RIGGING REVISITED

DRAFT NOTES ... IMAGES TO BE ADDED

This workshop focuses rigging a motion capture skeleton produced in Animazoo and pairing it up with a predefined skeleton and smooth skin character in Maya.

CONVERTING ANIMAZOO MOTION CAPTURE BVH FILE TO FBX FILE

Wihtin Autodesk MotionBuilder, change the file format from BVH to FBX:
Open up MotionBuilder
Click “Motion File Import” the BVH character created with Animazoo
Navigate to your file and open it
Save As (automatically set to FBX, which Maya can read)

PAIRING UP MOTION CAPTURE CHARACTER WITH PREDEFINED CHARACTER IN RHINO

Open up Maya and initiate a new scene file.
1) In Maya, go to File > Import > Your motion cpature file .fbx file

[Tip] If you don’t see you rig, try zooming out, if the camera plane blanks to grey when you zoom out go to View > Camera Attribute Editor, scroll to “Far Clip Plane”, and add a few 0’s onto the number

2) In the Animation Module, go to Skeleton > HumanIK. This will likely open up as a tab on the right side.

3) To define the motion capture skeleton for control inside Maya, select your Motion Capture FBX skeleton by the hips (entire skeleton should turn green), and click the blue human icon in the Human IK dialog box. Click Define > Skeleton. The dialog box should display“Character 1” in the “Character” pulldown menu, and “None” appearing after “Source”.

4) Next, go through the process of defining the skeleton closeup. Double click on the “head” node in your new character in the Human IK dialog box at right. This will isolate the node you’re assigning. Select the “head bone” on your motion builder skeleton (in green below).

DefineSkeletonHead

5) Keep assigning the parts of the character to the bones in your skeleton. Check the area highlighted by the large arrow [right] to make sure the bones and character parts match up. It is only necessary to go down one side of the skeleton, as the parts with parallel members on the mirrored side of the skeleton will automatically mirror (arm & leg bones). Ignore the nodes that light up orange, it will still work!

7) After you are done, your screen should look something like the image below You can add more detail to your rig if you would like by zooming in on the character (click the triangles like the four located on the chest) but this is not necessary. 8

8) Once the motion capture skeleton is defined, import your character model you wish to be driven by the motion capture skeleton. This mesh should be in a “T-Pose” stance.

[Tip] You can use a default rig in Maya by opening up your visor (Hold Spacebar > Paint Effects > Get Brush) and then clicking on HumanIK examples. Right click on the one labeled “Humanoid” and import. Attach you your FBX file from Make Human necessary.

9) Next, to tie your character model with the motion capture character, go back to the Human IK dialog box, and in the top scrolldown menu set the “Character” box to your model character's name (default humanoid model will show up as “HumanoidCharacter”).

[Tip] If you are not using a default character, you will need to go through a similar process to the one above to also define the skeleton of the new model, and then proceed to this step. Or, as we have done in the class, you can work with the predined character you may have created with Make Human. )

Next, change the scrolldown box next to “Source” to your newly defined motion builder character, which here is called Character 1.

Rigged Character

10) Once you change the source of your character, the two bodies should align. Don’t worry if the skeleton and character don’t line up perfectly, the movements should still come out clean. Give the timeline the amount of frames you need and watch your character act out your movements.