Building skeletons for Motionbuilder (3ds max)

Snowfly

Any tips on setting up a skeleton that's going into Motionbuilder? I haven't got access to the program see.

How the heirarchy is set up, naming conventions, axis orientations, can i use max biped, etc.

I've found a few documents online outlining some of the guidelines, and I've asked the client to send me the particulars, but I wanted to check here to see what you smart cookies have to say.

Husch

On http://www.3dbuzz.com you can find some good video tutorials about motionbuilder.
They show how to export a skeleton from Maya and charcterize it in Motionbuilder.
The tutorials deal with motionbuilder version 4, but I think it still the same process.
Basically its the same procedure from Max to Motionbuilder. I don´t know if the support of Character Studio Biped has been improved in the last 5 versions of Motionbuilder, but I can remember since motionbuilder 4 there was a CS Skeleton template which enables to work with CS and Motionbuilder. CS Bipeds will be converted to Bones after FBX export of Max.

But I would avoid mixing up a Character Studio and Motionbuilder workflow. I used 3D Max for a Max Bones Rig (no IKs, Rig facing into negative Y axis) and skinning, then exported into Motionbuilder, characterize my original Skeletton, do keyframe animation or load motioncapture data on the character, plot the animation on the skeletton, export it as FBX and load it back into Max. If you need all animations in one Max file (for export the character into your engine for example) you can also combine all animation clips in motionbuilder in a so called story mode and export them all together as one FBX.

Mark Dygert

Biped is probably the easiest way, provided you have 2008 or 09 and under structure you turn on Triangle Neck and Triangle Pelvis. If your on an older version of CS its not hard, just export to FBX reopen it in max, relink the clavicles to the neck and rexport. Also make the first frame of your animation the same as figure mode, otherwise you might get an error about the bind pose.

The biggest hang up for me was that MB heavily relies on a naming convention. For custom rigs I used the same naming convention as biped and that seemed to work ok. I think there is a renaming tutorial floating around somewhere...