Oops sorry those images came out a bit big.

yeah.
Do try the export to fbx, import and use that as base rig, then add the captured data in motion mixer. This way you let FBX do its thing and zero out that scale issue.

That seems to have worked. Thanks for your help.

I use LightWave with iPi Mocap Studio. I don't know if this will work for you but here's my workflow:

Normally, I only have the fully shaded/uv mapped version of the character inside a LightWave 'master' .lws file, and I use Load From Scene to bring this shaded version into a new Lightwave scene from this 'master' file.

For FBX files exported from other programs, I don't bother with shading or uv maps. After re-targeting the motion capture data exporting the animated rig to an FBX file, I use the Merge Only Motion Envelope option in LightWave to transfer only the motion data from the FBX to the fully shaded version of the rig inside the LightWave scene.

Since I render my 3D animation only from LightWave, that's the only place where I need a shaded version of the model. In most other programs, I work with an un-shaded version because I don't really need to see the shading there and the lack of shading in other programs allows them to run more efficiently.

In general, I try to leave out anything unnecessary at any stage because I want to move through the process as quickly as possible.

Hope this helps.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Yes, I originally tried this idea and for the life of me could not work out why it would not work. I wanted to keep my LW master to use. I would import the fbx file animation from ipi into LW save the scene. Load a new scene and add items from scene (my master file) then load items from scene again (choosing the fbx animated scene) and load envelopes only and the master rig would just collapse in on itself. I must be missing something because if it works for you it should work for me. Still scratching my head over this one. The only way I've managed to get it to work is a more long winded way using the fbx file and adding the missing uv map.

Maybe you can spot an error I'm making

1. Load model with biped mocap rig into LWscene
2.export model as fbx file
3 import fbx file to ipi and create animation
4 export fbx file from ipi
5 open LW and import fbx from ipi and save scene
6 load original LW scene and then click load items from scene and choose the previous scen imported from ipi to LW. Click on load motion envelopes only.

Is this the procedure you use or have I missed something??
Thanks for sharing BTW.

I use another program in-between iPi Mocap Studio and Lightwave but, yeah, it really should work similarly going directly from iPi to LW. This assumes the naming and hierarchy of the relevant bones are the same and the FBX version used is compatible. Also, LightWave doesn't like FBX files with more than one layer, so you need to strip out any extra data. I don't think that should be a problem with files coming from iPi but...well, read below.

Here's what I've done in the past and what I'm trying to do now:

Previously, I would transfer rigs/motion from iPi Mocap Studio to Motion Builder (for editing) and then importing the envelopes to LightWave (for final anim and rendering) via FBX with the MOME option. This has been my workflow for many years for both personal and professional projects.

More recently, I dropped Motion Builder and switched to iClone 7 with 3DXchange (editing) with the intention of importing the envelopes to LW via FBX (with MOME enabled) but I haven't carried this new workflow that far yet. ATM, I'm still learning iClone. If I'm able to make time this week, I'll try carrying a simple test setup on through to LightWave, and report what I learn in this forum. (This might take a while--last week I got my workstation running again but I'm still in the middle of re-installing all my software.)

But I know you're looking for a simpler solution so, before I do that, I'll test going directly from iPi Mocap Studio to LightWave. I had luck with this workflow a long time ago but haven't tried with the latest versions of iPi Mocap Studio and LightWave 2020. I know LightWave's FBX interchange saw significant changes recently so maybe something got broken? TBD

BTW, I'm happy to see fellow LightWavers here! :)

Which version of LightWave are you using? I'm still mainly using 2015 for established projects (at home and work) and gradually moving into 2020 for newer projects.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

Oh, I just remembered: this may or may not be important in your setup but, depending on whether you're using a bones- or joints-based rig in LightWave, there is a difference in how weight maps are applied. In fact, it's another reason why I use a separate master rig inside LightWave. This is too much to go into right now but I'll explain after I'm sure the interchange between iPi Mocap Studio and LightWave is still working with the current releases.

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

LWs weights are automatically normalized when exporting to FBX. easy way if you want to translate LW weights to something more game friendly. I've done that plenty of times as I find LWs weights nice to use (just one weight map for an entire torso etc)
What about motion mixer?
If you use motion mixer you can with the right rig setup transfer to a control rig (or controls) instead of the actual joints, making it easy to work on your master rig and just load in the actual animation file as you need it.

Thanks all. That's all sounding a bit technical but I will keep working on ipi to lightwave. I'm currently using LW2020.01

This is probably a non-issue for most LW users today.

If I recall correctly, the problem I'm describing has to do LightWave Joints and how the weight map assignment is offset to the previous bone compared to other programs like Maya and MB, making the FBX file less compatible. What this means is, after importing an FBX from another program, you were required to manually reassign the weight maps to the correct bones for LightWave. But when you import only the motion envelopes, the offset weight map was not a problem because the hierarchy/names in the rig remained consistent.

The frustrating thing about this issue was that, during beta testing (way back in LW 9.6 - LW 10 days,) the weight map assignments for Joints matched the rig in Maya and MB assignments by default. I still don't understand why they changed that for the final release.

But...if you're using Bones, this shouldn't be a problem, so I would stick with that. Sadly, there are a lot of nice advantages when editing rigs using Joints in LightWave, but I pretty much abandoned them for Bones at this point.

That said, I still think it's better to use two different rigs, one for final shading in LightWave and one optimized for quick previews and interactivity in other programs. So long as they share the same rig, importing only the motions from the FBX is all you need to do.

(FYI, this is still an issue for the 'Brudders' project which I'm still working on. The rigs used in this project were set up using Joints, and it is just too much trouble to change that now.)

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

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!