Product Review:
MotionBuilder 2012
Part of Autodesk's Entertainment Creation Suite 2012
I received MotionBuilder as part of the Autodesk Entertainment
Creation Suite 2012, Premium Edition. This bundle includes Maya,
MotionBuilder, Softimage, Mudbox, MatchMover and Composite. This
review covers just some of the changes that have occurred in the
new Autodesk MotionBuilder 2012 as well as how they relate to some
of the changes in Maya 2012. That said, this is primarily a
MotionBuilder review, but does mention some Maya 2012 features.
Once you scroll past the EULA that's longer than this review, (No
joke, it's like 13,000+ words.) installation was easy.
For those unfamiliar with the product, MotionBuilder is a tool
centered around character animation. It boasts a real time
environment to work in, where performances playback at full speed.
It also features the HumanIK solver, which is what made
MotionBuilder so famous. With this rig, you can over-extend the
translation on a character's IK handle, and the rest of the body
will follow-through in a natural way. Character controls can also
be "pinned" in translation or rotation to not
move, when the rest of the character does. There are numerous tools
for dealing with dense motion capture data, as well as tools for
managing assets from other packages. The work flow is essentially
this:
- Import a skinned character from Maya or 3ds max.
- Setup a control rig in MotionBuilder.
- Start animating.
- Send data back to Maya/Max for production rendering.
That said, MotionBuilder takes care of almost the entire rigging
process (though not skinning) for you. Setting up a control rig on
a skinned character usually takes less than 5 minutes of work.
Sometimes, just a few seconds. After that, you'll have access to
all of MotionBuilder's dedicated animation tools on a production
quality rig.
Warning
Before we get into any of the specific new features, let me just
say this: Upgrade. There have been more features and fixes in this
year's release of MotionBuilder than in the past 2 releases
combined. As long-winded as this review is, it still doesn't cover
every new feature! Such a feat would constitute a book of a few
dozen pages. Instead, I have selected a few things to cover in the
hope that I can illustrate the direction in which MotionBuilder is
moving.
Online Docs
Help files aren't exciting news, but they did change! They're
now online, web-based documentation hosted on Autodesk's servers.
This is a Good Thingâ„¢, as the docs will always be up-to-date.
However, offline docs can still be downloaded if you're on a slow
or unreliable connection. In itself, this is hardly a feature but
still a nice change. This also means that Autodesk moved away from
Windows style help files and instead rely on a help layout inspired
by Maya. This also means the help files now get displayed in an
ordinary web browser:
Alright, enough help files. It's time for something
exciting...
UI Goes Qt
The UI changed! It now uses the same widget toolkit (and color
scheme) as Maya. (The Qt toolkit for any programmers out there. And
yes, your custom python UI's can doc with the interface!) This
means both Maya and MotionBuilder have the same visual
look-and-feel. It also means that MotionBuilder's previous floating
palette UI scheme is finally dead! (However, panels can still be
'torn-off' as desired.) By default, it's a panel based UI, Ã la
Maya. Unfortunately, this year we say goodbye to an old friend. The
surfer dude in the character controls window, surfed his lasft
wave. He's been replaced by Facing Ratio Fred. (And he's huge!)
Still, it all looks pretty slick!
Unfortunately, all is not peaches and cream. On the minor end of
things, is the character controls window, i.e. Fred. He cannot be
resized and he's huge! A far more serious complaint, however, is
the Navigator panel. If resized, you can effectively obscure parts
of the UI with no way of knowing they're hidden. For example, most
UI's will display a scroll bar when the contents of a panel doesn't
fit on screen. The Navigator in MotionBuilder doesn't do this; The
extra controls are simply missing, silently obscured below the
bottom of you screen. For new users this can be discouraging as
they may not be aware of this behavior. This is inherited from
previous versions of MotionBuilder which had the same affect, but
in floating palette form. Fortunately, there is an alternative: Use
the properties window instead. It does have a scroll bar that pops
up when there's too much content. Still, let us bear witness to the
Navigator window's failure:
Now scale the panel down a touch and we get this:
Character Setup
Rigging, even basic rigging, used to be a black art filled with
strange magic and even stranger tools. I can remember spending
countless hours writing code to try and speed up the process. Push
button rigs were like the treasure at the end of the rainbow. A
romantic thought, but hardly relaity. The characterization tool is
that pot of gold! It makes rigging easy, even for a novice.
Using the characterization tool, in combination with the Human
IK solver, you get a great rig for almost no effort. Sure, you have
to setup all the right bones and skin them in Maya or Max. Sure,
it's not going to work for extremely bizarre hierarchies needing
special attention. Sure, it doesn't solve world hunger or cure
cancer. But - it makes 90% of rigging a trivial matter. For that
alone, it's worth having.
Using it is easy. You simply need to teach the characterization
tool how your skeleton is organized; You double click a bone in the
Figure window, then selecting the corresponding bone in the
viewport. If your bones are named using a naming convention, you
can even automate the process. Once done, you simply click 'create
control rig' select whether it's an FK, IK, or both and
DING... production quality rig hot out of the oven. The
best part, however, is that MotionBuilder's characterization tool,
is the exact same tool as found in Maya 2012:
One Click Interoperability
There's been a lot of consistency integration happening with
Maya and other Autodesk products, even beyond character setup. The
HumanIK solver is now at version 4.5, the same version used by
Maya. The Character controls panes are the same too. That, and
there's a new unified F-curve editor (aka graph editor). This means
whether you tweak F-curves in Maya or MotionBuilder you'll have
access to pretty much the same tool. (It's not perfect. More on
this later.) Better still, is the ability to 'Send To
MotionBuilder', assets from Maya in a single click. Here's another
rainbow pot of gold:
- I have MotionBuilder and Maya both open.
- I'm working in Maya on some cool asset and I want it in
MotionBuilder.
- I select it, then File -> Send To MotionBuilder -> Add to
Current Scene
BAM! The MotionBuilder window automatically takes focus and my
asset is in MotionBuilder, centered in the viewport. No more
exporting to FBX from Maya and importing from the asset browser in
MotionBuilder. It's now a one-click operation. In fact, in Maya you
can add this to your shelf by clicking the menu item with
'Ctrl+Shift+LMB'. Want to go from MotionBuilder to Maya? It's the
exact same thing in MotionBuilder: 'File -> Send To Maya ->
Add to Current Scene.
You can also update changes made in Maya, and send only those
changes to MotionBuilder and vise versa. To make that process
easier, both Maya and MotionBuilder now feature an 'update' button.
You simply select an object and click 'update'. Any changes are
sent to the other program. Select a character in Maya, scale him
up, click 'update' and he's updated in MotionBuilder:
MotionBuilder has the same thing:
It's important to realize that the 'Update' button is a 'push'
model. This means if you're in Maya, changes are sent, for the
currently selected object, to MotionBuilder. This contradicts with
what most people think of as 'update'. For example when you update
your browser you're pulling changes from a web server. Perhaps the
button would have been better labeled 'upload' or 'send' or even
'push'. Fortunately, this is minor and once familiar with the
concept, it works pretty flawlessly... until you start using
Undo.
The 'send-to' mechanism basically works by writing a temporary
FBX file to disk. That file is then imported into the program that
you sent the asset to. Maya has never been able to undo an
import operation. As a result, the 'send' to's cannot be undone.
The same holds true for MotionBuilder. Sending updates plays by the
same rules, so these cannot be undone either. Arguably this isn't a
problem, as an asset can always be deleted and re-imported, but
sometimes undo would be nice. Nicer still, is that NURBS curves
from Maya are finally supported in MotionBuilder. No
longer will you export an iconic character control from Maya, only
to end up with a Null in MotionBuilder.
I don't think interoperability gets much easier than one-click.
MotionBuilder is almost starting to feel as if it was just another
Maya Panel. Even so, be aware that this is just a fancy wrapper
around an 'export/import' operation. Anything that would be lost in
the translation before, will still be lost. It's still just FBX and
as such, doesn't support everything Maya has to offer. Still, it
feels very much like the 'easy-button' to get stuff into
MotionBuilder. If nothing else, I think this and the move to Qt is
worth the upgrade. But that's not all, what else will they receive,
Bob?
Lights, Action...
They get a bran new 2012 stereo camera! MotionBuilder now has a
stereo camera very similar to Maya's. In fact, it's almost exactly
like Maya's. You can view through the stereo camera and see a
red/blue anaglyphic view. Combine this with those 3D glasses you
got in your breakfast cereal this morning, and the view is quite
eye popping. For those with an appropriate monitor/graphics card
combo, MotionBuilder even supports shutter glasses. I'm pleased to
announce this works with just about everything I tried. Models,
nulls, joints, effectors, and even effects shaders such as the
sparks seen here. Even the construction grid is displayed
correctly.
Much like your children, creating a stereo camera is easy,
getting rid of it is far more difficult. If you delete a stereo
camera in MotionBuilder, you're only deleting the center camera.
You must delete the right and left cameras as a separate process.
You must also delete the camera's aim point. This makes me grudge
every time, but isn't an Earth-shattering problem. Having a stereo
camera at all, is well worth any effort it takes to delete one.
Unified FCurve Editor
On the Maya side of things, Maya 2012 features a new item in the
graph editor's View menu. You can turn off the 'classic toolbar'.
The graph editor's toolbar is replaced by the new 'unified
toolbar'. Why should MotionBuilder users care? Because the same
holds true for MotionBuilder. The effect, is that you can now use a
graph editor (aka FCurve editor) that is almost exactly the same
between the two programs. I say 'almost', because Maya has a few
more tools to pack into the menu. For example, Maya features the
Add Keys and Insert Keys tool, whereas MotionBuilder does not. That
said, while Autodesk is trying to provide more consistency between
their product line, there's still some room for improvement.
However, having a mostly consistent graph editor is a
welcome change.
To access the new toolbar in Maya, simply turn off classic
mode
A similar process is done for MotionBuilder, access the view
menu by right clicking anywhere in the Fcurve window:
Final Thoughts
Last year's updated version was quite incremental. Sure, we got
some python integration, some performance improvements, tweaks to
the animation layers and so forth, but it was a conservative
release. There were no radical new features that the majority of
users would see big benefits from. Most of those went to Maya. This
year, I'm pleased to announce that major changes have been
made to MotionBuilder. If you've been sitting on the fence about
upgrading, now is the time to upgrade! If you're anything like me,
panel based interfaces provide sanity in an insane industry. That,
and the one-click interoperability will save you tons of time. If
nothing else, do it for your eyes!
System Requirements
Software
The 32-bit version of Autodesk MotionBuilder 2012 software is
supported on the following operating system:
- Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional operating system
(SP3)
The 64-bit version of MotionBuilder 2012 software is supported
on any of the following operating systems:
- Microsoft Windows® 7 Professional operating system
- Microsoft® Windows Vista® Business x64 Edition operating
system (SP2)
- Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (SP2)
The following web browsers are supported for MotionBuilder
2012:
- Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 7.0 internet browser or
higher
- Mozilla® Firefox® web browser
Hardware
At a minimum, the 32-bit version of MotionBuilder 2012 software
requires a system with the following hardware:
- Intel® Pentium® 4, AMD Athlon™ processor with SSE3
instruction set support (or higher)
- Qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL® 2.1 (or higher)
graphics card
- 2 GB free hard drive space. Setup requires additional temporary
disk space for your system’s temporary folder when decompressing
files during installation.
- 2 GB of RAM USB Cam for Live Video Input.
- Network adaptor with internet connection for licensing
(non-internet connected licensing is also supported)
- DVD-ROM drive
At a minimum, the 64-bit version of MotionBuilder 2012 software
requires a system with the following hardware:
- Windows: Intel® Pentium® 4 processer, AMD Athlon™ processor
with SSE3 instruction set support (or higher)
- Qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL® 2.1 (or higher)
graphics card
- 2 GB free hard drive space. Setup requires additional temporary
disk space for your system’s temporary folder when decompressing
files during installation.
- 4 GB of RAM
- USB Cam for Live Video Input.
- Network adaptor with internet connection for licensing
(non-internet connected licensing is also supported)
- DVD-ROM drive
For the latest list of qualified hardware, including graphics
cards, to run MotionBuilder 2012, refer to the MotionBuilder 2012
certification chart located at http://www.autodesk.com/motionbuilder-hardware
Autodesk
Editor's Note: Be sure to check out the following
related links:
All supporting images are copyright, and
cannot be
copied, printed, or reproduced in any manner without written
permission
Kurt Foster (Modulok) falls somewhere between
programmer and visual effects artist. When not sifting through
technical manuals, he takes on freelance roles in both programming
and visual effects, attempting to create a marriage of technical
knowledge with artistic talent. He can be seen helping out on the
Renderosity Maya forum, when time permits.
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