MotionBuilder 7, the latest upgrade to Alias’ character animation solution, offers a straightforward, basic workflow and handles animation elegantly. © 2005 Alias Systems Corp. All rights reserved.

MotionBuilder 7 is the latest upgrade to Alias’ character animation solution. Unlike its competitors, MotionBuilder 7 is a standalone product that plays well with others. Out of the box MotionBuilder supports Maya, 3ds Max, SOFTIMAGE|XSI and LightWave 3D. Through the use of the increasingly popular .fbx format, MotionBuilder may be also used with an even wider variety of applications.

The basic workflow in MotionBuilder is quite straightforward. Characters are created in your 3D modeling app of choice, including mapping and rigging. Once the character is prepared, you import into MotionBuilder. The next step in the process is called Characterizing; a bit of made-up terminology to hang on MotionBuilder’s unique character control scheme. Characterizing is simply connecting MotionBuilder’s built-in control rig with your character skeleton. This can be accomplished with as few as 15 bones. The drag and drop interface is intuitive and easy to follow. Once you’ve got your control rig set up you set up floor collisions for both hands and feet. This is another simple process that is flexible enough to allow for some specialized characters.

Characterizing is simply connecting MotionBuilder’s built-in control rig with your character skeleton using the intuitive drag and drop interface. All screencaptures by Fred Galpern.

Once these preliminary rigging and set up steps are complete, it’s the animators turn. Animation in MotionBuilder is handled elegantly. One of the unique features of MotionBuilder is the Character Controls panel. This panel depicts a human character with large dots placed strategic at key areas of interest, mostly joints. The dots are the main selection method for animators. After a character is set up in MotionBuilder, an animator need only click the dot representative of the limb they intend to move. Once selected the dot highlights, along with the associated bone in the main viewport. This approach is unique in that it is visual, not text driven, like so much software. While there is ongoing debate about which approach is more intuitive (text vs. icon), Alias has integrated both, and, in this case, to great success. The limb selection is instantly intuitive. In fact, MotionBuilder as a whole requires surprisingly little ramp up time. Animators can expect to be producing meaningful, production-ready animation sequences within an hour or two of using the program.

The basic workflow is flexible and follows a pose-to-pose approach. Animators save poses and then load them onto the character via the Pose Controls panel. Walk cycles are made simple by using the mirror functionality. Once a walk is mirrored to the opposite limbs, animators need only tweak the result to get a unique, balanced walk cycle. Poses can be saved in .fbx format and reloaded at any time, on any character, regardless of whether or not that character has a matching skeleton. This is quite possibly the most attractive feature, especially when you consider that not just poses but entire animation sequences can be saved and retargeted to new characters. Imagine creating a walk cycle for an average human female character, then with minimal effort (actually just a save and reload) having that animation function correctly on a human male character. This may not be overly impressive, and is certainly possible with other software. Now, place the animation onto a T-Rex, tail and all. In MotionBuilder, the resulting T-Rex looks really good right away. For budget work, no tweaks necessary, just ship it. If you’re doing more quality work, tweaks are easily made and then saved for future use.