Who uses Motionbuilder?

Hi all,

I have an opportunity to buy a one year educational subscription for Autodesk motionbuilder at a pretty good price, and I was just wondering if many people were using it here?

Its really expensive for the full version, and would be Waaaay down my shopping list if I had one, but I'm just wondering if theres epic "must have" learning using such an animation tool, and whether it would give me a great additional skillset at the end of messing around with it for a year. Would it serve much purpose do you think?

Cheers
AaronC

 

Can someone respond to this as I too am in a similar situation.

 

I use it pretty much daily at work (at this point in our project), so I guess I can chime in. You're really only going to find it worthwhile if you've got gobs of mocap data sitting around (and/or access to a mocap studio), and someone else who knows it pretty well to teach you.

My vote would be a 'pass' in your situation - even at a discounted price it'd have limited educational benefits. Just stick with the 30 day trail and learn the basic interface - anything beyond that should be taught to you directly by someone that knows it.

 

Thanks.

We have no MoCap so I imagined we would use it with fbx files.

 

I've been using motionbuilder for production.

It's outstanding when it comes to character animation, keyframe or motioncapture, doesn't matter, motionbuilder is the tool I use all the time for character animation.

 

Uh not entirely, true it's used well for mocap, but I've setup our animators here at work to primarily animate in MB. We have max licenses for each animator but it's only used to assemble/export animations created in MB to Unreal. Our animators use it 90% of the time for keyframed animations and depending on the project import and cleanup for mocap data.

If you can afford a license, it's a very very versatile and solid app... the only issues I have with it is wrapping your head around the expressions used. But usually someone technically minded can take care of that aspect.

~t

 

It depends entirely on what you're animating. All of our animators, myself included, prefer Maya for keyframing - even Max as well. If we need to put multiple existing animations together into one sequence, or clean up some pre-existing motion - MB is the tool we reach for. If we need entirely new motion from scratch, it's off to Maya or Max. MB's playback, layers, and curve editors are amazing - but straight keying isn't its strong point.

I stand by my original recommendation. If you want to learn the basic interface and keyframing in MotionBuilder you can do that with the 30 day trial - it's only marginally different than Maya. If you want to learn all the inner workings you'll really need someone to teach it to you - cause you're not likely to learn it on your own in any useful capacity.

 

Hah trust me, if I could persuade our AD to get us licenses of Maya I would in a heartbeat. Using MB is a bridge right now that they seem to like, but getting Maya in our pipeline would eliminate any real need to use MB primarily. It's pretty tough to beat Maya on the animation front for sure.

~t

 

I do however recall (during study) Maya being quite unreliable handling mocap, this is circa Maya 6,7,8. I found it really quite bad back in the day so dont splash out on a Maya license with specifically mocap in mind- I kind of always thought Mayas poor import handling of mocap was the whole reason for having Motionbuilder in the first place.

I think I'm going to pass, its a one year education subscription for about NZ$190, but at the end of the day the actual commercial version is 1,710 for a years license, and 7,900 for a permanent license, so I think I'll go for investing time in learning animeeple instead. ( http://animeeple.com )

Thanks for your comments guys.
AaronC

 

Here's a pretty good start for motionbuilder.

http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/sv_videonav.php?fid=adb7294aebab9c32accc9859e3ca44a0

I prefer keyframe animation in motionbuilder rather than maya, so I guess it's down to what you like. No need for playblasts as MB has a realtime viewport and a massive set of controlls that you can animate how ever you'd like.

 

No, no not for Mocap, for keyframed animations. MB handles mocap heaps better, it's basically MB's foundation.

~t

 

Theese animations were motioncaptured and tuned with keyframe animation by me in motionbuilder.

http://www.kamsvag.com/animations/M16/m16.htm

You can save several takes (animation clips) in one file and copy/paste poses and mirror them how ever you'd like while working. You can create timewarps to adjust timing or put animations en sequence to see how they hook up once you put them in a game. There's a massive set of tools to use. You can also mirror entire animations by simply clicking a check box, now there's a time saver. The only part I tend to animate in maya rather than MB is blendshapes.

Once you get used to animate in MB you don't wanna go back to maya or max...

 

I find this really interesting.

I've never really known what Motion Builder was.

I mean, sure, I knew that studios that used a lot of mocap data used Motion Builder a lot. But other than that, I don't know much about it as an animation tool.

I haven't heard of many places that animate for film or TV using motion builder. But I have heard of a lot of those places using Maya. I suppose a lot of it could be Maya's extensibility, so customized animation tools could be written to do whatever animators want. Also, I don't hear about too many people using the Trax Editor in Maya, but it can be useful when working with multiple animation clips.

The intriguing part to me about Motion Builder is when you guys talk about real time previews instead of having to render a playblast. How robust is this? There have to be limits.

I've heard that Maya 2011 has some significant viewport speed improvements, but I don't know how much since I haven't used it.

So I don't mean to hijack a thread, but I'd like to hear more about Motion Builder and how it compares to Maya for animation.

 

Motionbuilder has a great rig for bipeds and quadrapeds. No need to spend days on rigging before jumping into animating. There's already a pose system for copy/paste/save poses in motionbuilder and it's powerfull. You can select what controller of the character should be pinned during a paste/mirror of a pose. Doing it this way you for example only need to pose half a walk cycle and copy the poses over mirrored for the remaning half of the cycle. There's a pinning system build into the rig, making posing way faster and easier. You can while animating break apart your rig and re-assamble it to your needs (ex. I might want the left hand's IK handle to be paranted under the prop also held by the right hand suddenly, that way following the over all motion).
Blendshapes can be animated in motionbuilder but it's not verry reliable. You're recommended animating using clusters instead for facial animations.

The FBIK in maya is an attempt to bring the MB-rig into maya but it's far from stable.

There's a massive constraint system in MB that alows you to create all kinds of different rigs for creatures that aren't standard bipeds/quadrapeds.

I've animated a scene that was 15 seconds long, populated with four characters and ploted animation on baselayer (keys on every node on every frame) and compansation layer with plenty of keys. The playbak was still smooth in the viewport in realtime. I'm so sick of having to render playblasts for animations. It's way better to have realtime viewport so you may orbit and track your animation while trying to find flaws to fix.

Conclusion, animating in maya/max? No thanks...

 

Outside of the premade rigs, I've used scripts in Maya to do pretty much everything else you mentioned.

I do also have a biped rigging script. Nothing for a quadruped though. But I'm sure there are a ton of people who have them.

Why don't I hear very much about Pixar or ILM using MB as their main animation tool?

The impression I get is that it's primarily geared towards the needs of video games or mocap. But I don't really know enough about it to be sure.

I just figure that there has to be a reason that Maya is used more in major animation studios than MB is.

 

Motionbuilder (known as filmbox back then) was used in the production of all the three Matrix movies, all feature films from Veta Digital and several of my friends working at some major game development studios use it as well (Rockstar, Starbreez, Avalanche).

It's true you can acomplish many of the features that we take for granted in MB in maya using scripts and plugins but I still haven't seen those scripts produce nearly as robust functionality as the tools in motionbuilder. I recommend you look through the tutorials in the link I provided earlier. Keep in mind those tutorials are rather dated still and motionbuilder has grown some since then. Example, it contains ragdoll physics now that you can blend with your animation in realtime.

I'd suggest you get your hands on a copy of motionbuilder and try it out.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=13581896

 

So it is useful and possible to use Motionbuilder with Unity?

 

Yes, if you want your characters animated it's a realy great tool.

 

That's because Maya + a decent TA will give you rigs that are friendlier to work with and much more flexible. You don't hear of many studios using MoBu as their main animation tool because most studios don't. The only functionality a TA can't give you is the real-time playback.

Essentially, if you're starting from a mocap base - MoBu is indispensable. That's where you see it used in production 99% of the time. It handles heavy keyframe data like no other, and it's full-body IK / pinning / layer system makes animating over that heavy data very easy.

Maya's strength is in fully customizable rigs. Squash-n-stretch, bendy arms, custom joints, tails, wings - you name it. MoBu has some really good built-in tools, but they're all tied to it's full-body IK rig. If you try and animate anything outside that strictly defined rig it's not nearly as simple.

 

Oh damn - I didn't realized, that it's for windows only -.- So I can only use MOCCA for it, right?

 

Nah. You can use it for keyframed animation as well but it's true that it was developed for dealing with motioncapture from the start. Given you've got a tallented TA he should be abel to create decent rigging solutions within MB as well. How ever I don't wanna make this into an argument of what tool is the best of the two. In the end, you can't realy depend on MB alone as it is an animation tool and nothing else while maya is the whole set of production tools needed by a 3D artist apart from photoshop or similar tools. I prefer animating in MB since it's my opinion that the realtime viewport is a life saver when it comes to animation. I've been using it for some time now (started while it was still known as filmbox) and I just don't like the whole idea of creating playblasts as soon as I've tweaked my animations to see what they look like.

 

Was this answer to me? If yes > I don't understand, what you want to tell me.

 

I'd say take it for a ride and see for your self what it's like.
http://www.todayware.com/autodesk-motionbuilder-P84007.html
To me the realtime viewport is what makes motionbuilder the obviouse choise...

 

But didn't you read what I wrote? I'm on Mac and MB is for Windows only. So it's useless for a good worklflow.

 

I know i am going to pass for a fanboy , but talking of mocap XSI does a fantastic work with both mocap and keyframing ...

 

All I need is good keyframing on OSX

So is MB soooo good, that I should use Parallels-Desktop for it? And will MB come to OSX native?

Can MB read Maya-Files directly or only via FBX?

 

FBX is motionbuilder native file format (Motionbuilder used to be Filmbox, and the FBX sufix is still used).

There's maya for OSX... I realy can't tell you what to do. Once you try motionbuilder you might not like the workflow at all (I resisted for a month before I gave in, used to be a hardcore maya animator). Try and install it on a friends windows machine and see if you like it.

 

This is my first post, so hello, nice to be here. Regarding MotionBuilder; I'm using MB all the time, for making full animation job, from start to finish (after importing models from, for example, DazStudio).
Real time engine is quite capable so no need for rendering outside. In latest incarnations, MB have physics, cloth, softbody, fluids. All in real time. Story tool is animation tool from heaven, etc... I could go like that for hours.
Here is some of my movies made completely in MB, so check it out how it looks:
http://vimeo.com/5713084
http://vimeo.com/788006
http://vimeo.com/9741624

 

Really nice - can I see the rest of the pinocchio-video anywhere?

 

Thank you very much. Pinocchios are not ready yet. Beside my Tarzan English, there is one more reason for a way I spelled last sentence: I am working on two different movies about Pinocchio, one is few days till the end and that one you saw will be finish for 2 or 3 months.
Reason for second one is that I need some advanced level of knowledge of AfterEffects for many scenes, so I am learning it.
If you will be interesting I will send you a link when ready.
About MB, if you are animator, don't hesitate, it really is a dream tool. But let me ask you, is it possible to do something like this Pinocchio or maybe, if you saw it on my page, something like "Wizard of OS" in Unity?

BTW, there is MB for Mac, version from 2008, MotionBuilder 7.5 extension2. I have all versions, but most of the time I am working in that one, it still have a best support for FBX files from DazStudio.
Rummors is that next version will be again also for Mac.

 

Anyone with MoBu experience played with animeeple?

http://animeeple.com

AC

 

I brought it the end, was $80 NZ and I figure it must be worth having a play.

http://www.trademe.co.nz/a.asp?id=287144066

Thanks for all the input here.
AaronC

 

That’s a good deal Aaron, congratulations, maybe you can share your experiences here.
I was trying to install the Learning edition mentioned before in this thread,
unfortunately whatever I tried, I did not receive an Unlock key.
Well anyway, not eve sure if I need MotionBuilder;
I might upgrade my C4D to the current version with improved animation features.

All the best,

Robert

 

give that animeeple a go robert, theres videos in the documentation. I've found it quite good so far.

$10 fbx exporter

http://animeeple.com

AaronC

 

I’m playing with it right now Aaron, curious to know i fit can do some good.
Btw…., did not see the fbx exporter for $10……… more $49,99.

All the best, Robert

 

Oh true, my apology, I was around for the first beta's and I'm sure it was $10 then. Whups!

AC