Fcurve Boxes And Mayas Driven Keys

[mike-waterworth]

Hi there,
I was wondering if anyone knows where I can find more information on Motion Builder 7s Relation constraints FCurve Number (%) and FCurve number (Time) boxes?
Basically, Im very interested to see if I can use these tools to replicate a basic driven keys set-up I have on a rig in Maya.
My imported rig uses different types of constraint and these import into Motion Builder okay. But I have some joints powered by driven key data in Maya and obviously this isnt being imported.
Im interested to see if Motion Builder has any internal tools that I can use to control the rotation/translation of a bone using the movement of another bone, but using an Fcurve to look up its new movement values. Therefore, I have been looking at Relation constraints and its Fcurve boxes.
Does anyone know how the values in these Fcurve boxes work or, indeed, have managed to simulate a driven key set-up using another method inside of Motion Builder.
~;o*

[jason-parks]

mik3,

You can use an FCurve Number (%) box in a Relation Constraint to duplicate the functionality of a Driven Key in Maya.

You'll have to wire all these up manually right now, however. This is because at this time MoBu's Python can create the Sender, Receiver, and Converter boxes, but cannot create the FCurve Number boxes (let alone manipulate the keys within it) via Python.

However a little bird told me that these might be be available sometime in the near future. So hopefully soon we'll be able to create the equivalent of a driven key completely w/ Python. Which then means we'll be able to build some simple tools around that to make it easily usable by the average user.

Keep your eyes and ears open for an update. I'll post here if I find out anything more.

-jason

[mike-waterworth]

Thanks very much Jason,
very good to know that I can do Driven joints this way if I need to.
very excited to know that there could be python support for elements in Relative constraints coming along soon. oh yes. very excited!!! please do keep me informed of any news.

cheers
Mik3