How To Use Maya Attributes In Mb

[webglue]

I imported a character from Maya to MotionBuilder that has a "Fist" attribute on a hand control with min and max values of 0 and 100. Now in MB if I try to change the Fist property value, it doesn't animate (the joints fingers are supposed to rotate to form a fist). In Maya it all works fine. Anyone knows how to do this? Thanks in advance!

[jason-parks]

Dude,

You probably have the HandControl.Fist attribute rotating the joints via a Set Driven Key. Set Driven Keys do not yet directly translate over to MotionBuilder. You are going to have to re-setup the relationship between the channel and the joints. You'll probably have to do this via a 'Relations-Constraint' until MotionBuilder has Set Driven Keys implemented.

Check out the documentation on a 'Relations-Constraint'.

[chad-moore--2]

Here is a nice trick in regards to setting up finger controls and being able to reuse them in Motion Builder from character to character.

Characterize and create a control rig.

Make extra attributes on the control rigs hand controls, like you might in Maya.

Work your relations magic - Relations aren't too well documented, I'll get more on this later so stay tuned.

Have the control attr's drive the relations, and pump the result into the control rig nodes that control the fingers.

Select all the relations, and the entire control rig, and save that out by itself (Save Selection).

You can now open any characterized character, import this "rig file" and simply drag and drop the control rig over the character in the navigator. Answer yes to the dialogs, and BAM, you've got a customized reusable rig!

-Chad

[justins21]

As stated above, driven keys aren't supported in Motionbuilder yet. If you want to successfully save time within motionbuilder you should rig things with the intent to move from Maya to Motionbuilder (and possibly back to Maya after animating)... which means setting up a simple, directly animatable skeletons within maya that you might further adjust for animation within motionbuilder. Although motionbuilder has a number of frustrating limitations, its potential is remarkable when used effectively. In your case I'd try breaking away from driven channel style animation controls like those we're all used to in Maya, and start taking advantage of Motionbuilders pose storage capabilities... once you get used to using poses you've saved, copied, or pasted you'll find old driven channels (at least the simpler ones like a slider to form a fist) are no longer of any use to an animator since its pretty easy to set up a reuseable pose folder for not just whole body poses, but specific part poses as well. I've been using motionbuilder for keyframe animation for about six months now after using Maya and 3D Max for a few years. The transition can be a little slow, but in the end motionbuilder animators are like lightning!