Disclaimer: This guide was created by Reuben Fleming, a free-lance Animator and 3d Artist. Kinecthacks.com does not own this guide. Rather, by us sharing this in this in our website, we would like to share Reuben Fleming’s work to aid the Kinect community in better understanding the Motion Capture feature of the Kinect. Also, this move to feature his guide on our site is to give due recognition to creator of this guide. For more information about Reuben Fleming’s work, visit his website at http://www.reubenfleming.co.uk/
Tutorial 2Working with C3d data in Motionbuilder
1: Make sure your layout is set to Editing (Layout – Editing)
2: Within the Asset Browser tab select the Characters folder
3: Drag a character from the browser onto your Biped skeleton in the viewport.
4: A pop up box should appear. Select ‘Characterize’ then click ‘Ok to all’ then select ‘Biped’.
5: Drag an Actor into the viewport.
6: Import your C3d data into Motionbuilder.Your scene should look similar to the image above at this point
7: Position your Actor to match your C3d markers.You will need to use the transform, rotation and scale tools for this. Try to be as accurate as possible when positioning your Actor. Use local rotation for limbs.
8: Use the navigator window to select your Actor and click on the MarkerSet… button and then select ‘Create’ (See below)
9: Hold down Alt and drag your marker points from the viewport onto the relevant marker points on the Actor. (See below)
Tip: You might find it easier to select markers in the viewport if your display is set to XRay (Ctrl A). Double click to select marker points.
10: Once you have matched all of your C3d marker points to your Actor marker points you can tick the Active box (See above)
11: Play your animation… If the Actor behaves normally you can continue to the next step. If you have incorrectly matched your C3d marker points or have not matched enough marker points you may need to delete your Actor, create a new one and redo steps 7 – 11.
12: Under the Character Controls panel select Character from the drop down list
13: Click on the ‘Plot Character…’ button. Select Control Rig and FK/IK then select Plot. (See below)
14: Now change input type to Actor Input.
15: Select ‘Plot Character…’ again but this time plot to the skeleton.
16: Test your animation and make sure the Biped skeleton animation is the same as the Actor animation.
17: Save your work
Tip: If you want to load in another C3d file as a new take… Import a new C3d file and select merge under the import options. Now follow steps 13 – 17. You can have as many takes as you want in your scene.
