Hi my friends.
I'm trying to get my bhv capture files into motion builder.

1. I have the options whether to retarget by the skeleton definition or applying a the control rig to both the capture and the target rig and retarted those right? Which one is the better way and where are the benefits?

2. BVH or FBX? Why is bvh recommended for Motion Builder? Why not use FBX?

3. What are your experiences with retargeting in IpiSoft? Why using other software to retarget?

Thank you very much,
you're awesome!

Edit: 4. Which Rig is best for my character? Should I skin it onto the Ipi Rig or the MB Control Rig, or is it no problem to just use some custom rig? Which way is the best to not lose information in the retargeting process? Thanks

I use Motion Builder BVH. It works reliably and it's what I'm used to. To be honest though, I'm not sure it's really that different from working with FBX--importing a BVH to Motion Builder for retargeting might be a little simpler and faster but I think this may be a minor difference.

FWIW, I save my edited mocap data from MB as FBX because FBX can hold data for other items I may need to exchange (camera data, for example.)

I suggest trying both and see what works best for you.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Thank you!
Do you also know something about the first the questions above?

Thank you guys!

If I understand the question, the typical workflow is to apply a Motion Builder Actor control rig to both the imported .bvh skeleton and your character's rig. Since the control rigs are hierarchically identical, you can easily retarget the data from the .bvh to the character. Then, you want to bake the motion down to the character's rig.

After that, you can tell the character's control rig to stop using the .bvh. This frees you up to use the control rig to edit the mocap motion beneath it. Naturally, if you edit the motion, you'll need to bake it down again before exporting the data for your intended use.

If you go over to 3D Buzz, and dig deep into their free tutorials archives, you'll find some very helpful introductory videos on setting up and using Motion Builder. The videos are several years old but the workflow really hasn't changed much. (3D Buzz is a pay site but I think their old tutorials are still free there.)

Hope this helps.

G.

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Hi thank you. Hm yeah I got it that far, but I mean first of all you tell for both rigs which bone is for the right upper arm and so on (skeleton definition). After people often create the control but. But if I don't do that I also can apply my bhv rig as source to a the character without creating the control rig. So that's my question, why creating a control rig? (If I don't wanna change the animation)

And the other thing's still, is there a possibility to put everything in one hierarchy as several takes (for just doing the skeleton definition once) and use the takes on several characters at once? Would be a cool way to directly compare the takes without doing the skeleton definition for every bvh file.

Thank you very much :)