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Working with HumanIK Rigs in Maya

Working with HumanIK Rigs in Maya

with Adam Crespi

 


Find out how to set up the HumanIK rigging system in Autodesk Maya and start creating realistic skeletons for your 3D characters. This course shows how to build the bone structure, adjust its size, and add controls. Once the skeleton is defined, author Adam Crespi shows how to animate the rig, and retarget the animation onto other characters. The course also includes an exploration of nonlinear animation using the Trax Editor, and instructions for sending the rig to MotionBuilder to map motion capture data.
Topics include:
  • Planning the workflow
  • Creating the skeleton
  • Creating animation clips in the Trax Editor
  • Baking animation
  • Sending control rigs to MotionBuilder

show more

author
Adam Crespi
subject
3D + Animation, Animation, Character Animation, Game Design
software
Maya 2013
level
Intermediate
duration
57m 58s
released
Apr 02, 2013

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Introduction
Welcome
00:00(music playing)
00:04Hi! I'm Adam Crespi and welcome to Working with HumanIK Rigs in Maya.
00:09In this course, we'll look at creating a HumanIK Rig, and the structure of the
00:13HumanIK Rig as a flexible system for rigging an animation.
00:17I'll start by showing you how to create a skeleton and attach a control rig to
00:20it or remap a custom rig.
00:22Then I'll show you how to select parts of the rig using either full body IK
00:27that's built in or working with body parts and using FK if needed.
00:32We'll see how to create animations and edit them in the Trax Editor for
00:36mapping and retargeting onto other characters using character sets in the Character Mapper.
00:40We'll take our characters over to Autodesk Motion Builder, to look at
00:44interoperability with the HumanIK Rig in both applications.
00:47This will let you map motion capture data onto a rig, and bring it
00:51across cleaned into Maya.
00:52Now let's get started with Working with HumanIK Rigs in Maya.
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Using the exercise files
00:00If you're a premium member of the lynda.com online training library, or if
00:04you're watching this tutorial on a DVD-ROM, you have access to the exercise
00:08files used throughout this title.
00:10In this course, I'm using a Maya project for each chapter.
00:13Each movie then has its own Maya scene.
00:16Always make sure to set your project first;
00:18choosing File, and Set Project.
00:21Maya maps to the default;
00:24My Docs, Maya, Projects.
00:27I'll browse to my exercise files and into the correct chapter, and that's a Maya
00:31project with the default folders.
00:33I'll click Set, and then open the scene, and there are the start files for
00:38each movie.
00:39Each scene is self-contained.
00:41There are no textures, and no materials needed.
00:44Everything is in one Maya scene with no referenced external files.
00:48When we send to Motion Builder, Maya will automatically make a temporary FBX to
00:53send across, so we won't need to save a scene, and then bring it in.
00:56If you'd like, you can save your Motion Builder scenes as FBXs in the Scenes
01:01directory in your Maya project.
01:03If you're a monthly member or annual member of lynda.com, you don't have
01:06access to the exercise files, but you can follow along from scratch with your own assets.
01:11Let's get started with Working with HumanIK Rigs in Maya.
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1. Creating and Sizing the Rig
Planning for a HumanIK workflow
00:00The HumanIK system in Maya provides a common bipedal skeleton and control rig
00:05for use in not only animating a character but remapping or retargeting
00:09animation between different characters, and sharing between applications such
00:13as Autodesk Motion Builder.
00:15The premise is straightforward.
00:16We're often dealing with bipedal characters;
00:19folks with two legs, most often two arms and some assortment of fingers.
00:24They usually have a head, a neck, and a spine.
00:27While it sounds silly to pronounce these things, they're common to most bipeds,
00:31folks that stand upright on two feet.
00:33What HumanIK lets us do then is take a systematized skeleton with common
00:38attributes and common naming, so we can share motion data between the various joints.
00:44Let's say for example, the smiling fellow has an animation, and his brother
00:50needs the same animation.
00:51If they're rigged with a HumanIK system, we can easily transfer that motion.
00:55When we jump to Autodesk Motion Builder, we can see that it's got the same
01:00controls in the upper-right in the character controls.
01:02It's meant to transfer motion back and forth to Maya.
01:05We use Motion Builder for animating, and also for importing and cleaning
01:09motion captured data.
01:11In this way, it provides a ready pathway through HumanIK to remap that data onto
01:16a character in Maya, providing us a live link if necessary.
01:21We'll start out by creating a skeleton, nd then make a control rig.
01:25If you'd like, you can also use a custom rig.
01:28Maybe you need special controls or extra bones, although the HumanIK system is pretty full featured.
01:33We can access the HumanIK system under Skeleton in the Animation menu,
01:37and choosing HumanIK.
01:40We end up with an extra tab here, next to the Attribute Editor and Channel Box,
01:44and this gives us our basic controls for defining a character, and also defining
01:48a character set or setting the character's default pose, providing us a quick
01:54way to get back to the characterization state.
01:56When setting up a character for HumanIK, there are a couple of basic things to keep in mind.
02:01It should be around zero-zero, modelled in real scale.
02:04This fellow is about 5 feet tall.
02:06The arms should be straight out in the T pose with the arms on the X axis.
02:11Feet placed flat on the ground and hands straight out.
02:14The fingers can be spread if needed, and it depends on the character of the character.
02:19He has a classic cartoon hand with three fingers that flare out at the ends.
02:24The HumanIK system has a head bone, and will provide a place for linking say
02:28a facial rig onto.
02:30We can also add-in things like extra spine links, extra toes, twist bones for
02:34the forearms, and other things that are common to bipeds, especially ones with
02:40well, human-like conditions, such as two bones in the forearm allowing us to have
02:43twist or pronation and supination.
02:45What we'll do first then is create our rig, starting out resizing the skeleton
02:50and then adding the control rig and setting the character.
02:53From there retargeting motion is straightforward, and we can use the Maya Trax Editor as well.
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Creating the skeleton
00:00Creating a skeleton for HumanIK character is straightforward.
00:03We go to the HumanIK Tab or Character Controls located next to the Attribute
00:08Editor and Channel Box, and either click on Create Skeleton, or drop down under
00:13the blue HumanIK button to choose Create and Skeleton.
00:17When a Skeleton is created, it may not be sized to the character accurately.
00:21We have a character scale we can play with here.
00:23I'll click on the fourth tab, and open out that menu so I can see all the
00:27parts and checkboxes.
00:29We can play with the character scale to get it adjusted and we'll also scale
00:32bones to actually fit where the character's joints go.
00:36We can increase the Bone Count as we need to make sure it fits what our
00:39character should be able to do.
00:41For example, we may want more bones in the spine putting in four, and we'll
00:45see that spine shrink along with the character, but now have four bones and we
00:48can scale it back out.
00:51I'll put in a size of 3 and scale him up, and add-in just a couple of more,
00:56and get him big enough.
00:58I can scale bones from here to fit.
01:00We can also add-in things like Roll Bones;
01:02for example, on the Lower Arms.
01:05Roll Bones provide a place in here to add twist, allowing us to skin front and
01:10back here and put in pronation and supination in a character like we'd expect to see.
01:16For this one, I'm going to leave out his Roll Bones, and make sure
01:19that character sizes up.
01:26With the character roughly resized and ready for scaling, I can see if there's
01:30anything else I need to add in.
01:31For example here, he starts out with four fingers on each hand, plus a thumb.
01:35I may want to take that off, leaving him with a standard three-fingered cartoon
01:39hand, and it's an option about which fingers to remove.
01:42I'm going to take the pinky off or actually the middle and his hands
01:47will reorient correctly.
01:49I can then move these bones around and have my standard three-fingered cartoon hand.
01:54We can also play with the number of finger joints and it's important to look at
01:58the mesh when you're doing this.
02:00If I look at his mesh, he has got lines in here for three joints per finger, and
02:04we can tell this by the grouped mesh lines in the middle.
02:06I'll leave his finger joint count at 3.
02:09And if we need extra fingers, we can add them in, or extra in-hand joints if
02:13somebody has longer hands per se or floppy hands.
02:17We also have Toe Control in the same way.
02:19As this character has on shoes, one foot bone will work nicely.
02:22He will roll off with the built-in IK, and I don't need the extra Toe Control as
02:27if I had barefoot characters.
02:29When I've got this all in, I'm ready to resize this rig to fit the character.
02:34At some point, the character scale gets us pretty close, and we can start to
02:38actually scale the parts of that character to fit.
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Adjusting the size and components
00:00Once we've got the skeleton created, and it has the right number of parts here
00:04in the Skeleton Tab in the Character Controls, we can get the skeleton
00:07positioned in the mesh.
00:08And I am going to make a fix to the mesh first.
00:11The skeleton creates around zero-zero.
00:13If we look in the Top View here in a wireframe, we can see it's perfectly on that grid.
00:17For this particular character, and for many characters, it's easier to make sure
00:21that character is on the skeleton and then nudge the skeleton slightly versus
00:25taking all the bones, and pushing and pulling them back and forth.
00:27I'll go into my Channel Box and right-click on my character's layer called
00:32Geometry and choose Select Objects.
00:35It looks like the eyes need to be added on, so I'll make sure I'll catch them in
00:38the selection by holding Shift, and adding them on.
00:41Now what I'll do in the Top View is take this character, and slide it forward,
00:45making sure I press-and-hold W, left-click and hold anywhere and choose the
00:49World axis for movement.
00:52I'll pull him forward, lining him up as well as I can on zero-zero, and we
00:56can see here, because he is nicely modeled, that his arms line up on the bones, as does his spine.
01:02Now he is a rather round-fellow, and so it's okay that he is round around the
01:08pelvis and around the shoulders.
01:10His neck is roughly in the right place.
01:12His legs are well roughly in the right place, although a little wider than the
01:15skeleton, and I'm ready to get the positioning done.
01:19What I'll do while I'm at it is make sure on the Geometry layer that I
01:23right-click and add the selected objects.
01:25Now I can take this layer, and make it a template so I can't accidentally move the mesh.
01:30I'll turn off my grid and start to position the skeleton.
01:34It's a parented arrangement.
01:36The root node is right here at the pelvis, which selects the whole skeleton.
01:40I'll start from the top in apparent chain such as the hips here or the pelvis,
01:44and pull these over into the mesh.
01:46We do have mirroring controls available if you'd like, although you may have an
01:49asymmetric rig or asymmetric model, and so can't handle the mirroring.
01:54I'll get him positioned as evenly as I can, going for the center of the limbs,
01:58and making sure that the knee joints are aligned with the knee edge loops and
02:01then dealing with the feet.
02:07I'll pick his feet and look in a Side View.
02:09HumanIK is made to understand the ground.
02:12It's an IK System as the name implies and keeps the feet planted.
02:16His feet look pretty good.
02:18I like the heel bone up a little bit, and I'll take the end nub here or end of
02:23chain on the feet and pull them out through the end.
02:25He has really got kind of large paddles rather than articulate feet, because he
02:29only has shoes on, this will work well.
02:31If we need to actually fold, you can put in let's say a big toe node and end up
02:35with one extra joint on the ball.
02:39Now we'll look at his arms.
02:41In a Front View then, I'll zoom out and go in on his shoulders.
02:45First, I'll start with his spine, grabbing the spine links, and stretching them
02:49down just a little bit.
02:53Because it's a link chain, it takes all of the upper torso with it for
02:56every link I select.
02:58I'll pull those in and seat his shoulders right at the top here.
03:03I'll pull them into his shoulders and get those right through his arms.
03:07He doesn't have much by way of shoulders, not like the cantaloupe-shouldered
03:10superheroes we often see.
03:12And so, I'm not as worried about extra bones and large deformation the shoulder
03:16volume when he lowers his arms.
03:18Now we'll work on the elbows, again, positioning those arm joints right in the
03:23center of the three elbow edge loops.
03:26His wrist will follow as well, following right in the cuff on his sleeve here.
03:35You can run a mirrored rig as I've said before or you can be asymmetric.
03:39Sometimes, I prefer an asymmetric rig because it builds in a character in the
03:43character, and possibly helps you avoid even in like motions twinning.
03:47Now in the Top View I'll get his hands aligned.
03:50Pulling over to his left-hand and grabbing the fingers and placing them in.
03:54It looks like his wrist is in a pretty good place, and we're seeing the joint
03:58connections or the parenting to those fingers.
04:01I'll pull his -- well I guess we'll call it the pinky as he has a cartoon hand
04:05over, and rotate it into place.
04:07I may want to turn off my Discreet Rotate at this point, pressing and holding E,
04:11left-clicking and holding anywhere, and in the Marking menu for rotation,
04:15turning off Discreet Rotate.
04:18Now we'll go back and get his fingers in.
04:21This is a place where switching over to the Object axis of movement instead of
04:25the world may get us a better positioning.
04:28I'll make sure that I put his finger joints on those finger edge loops, and pull
04:32the end out all the way up to the end of the finger.
04:36The end for us drives the orientation of the parent.
04:38We don't actually skin to the nubs or the ends of those bones.
04:44I'll pull him back and finish out those fingers.
04:47It should be pretty quick to get these positioned.
04:49Now he has got large-flared fingers.
04:51So we'll see how this works and what kind of folding I get when I animate him.
05:01I'm almost done positioning his fingers, and I'll make sure I rotate them into place.
05:06I don't want to simply bend the joint as we may get some odd pivots when we
05:10start to move these around.
05:12Now I'll finish his other hand.
05:21I've got the skeleton placed.
05:23I'll make sure I go to the Character Controls, and under the Blue button here,
05:27I'll choose Edit>Skeleton, and Save Edits.
05:34Once I've got the skeleton saved and in place, on the Skeleton Tab, I'll click
05:39Lock and Lock the Skeleton Definition.
05:41I've defined him and positioned him, and I'm ready to get the Control Rig on.
05:45You can add other bones in.
05:47And if you'd like in the skeleton definition, you can also add in your own bones.
05:51The mapping here represents the bones that are required for HumanIK.
05:55We can scroll down and see for each node selected, it's a valid or
06:00invalid characterization;
06:01the translation, rotation, and scale, the rotation order, and the bone name.
06:06If you're bringing in a custom rig, which does happen occasionally, you need to
06:10match up your rig node such as left arm to these nodes, picking them, and then
06:15clicking on the right bone in the skeleton, or rather, the left one.
06:19Once the skeleton is in, I can work on Joint Orients, Skinning, and finally the Control Rig.
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Creating controls
00:00Once you've got the skeleton defined for a character, we can skin it.
00:04And it's easy to skin it at this stage, and then get the controls on.
00:08I'm going to use some default skinning for my character here as skinning can
00:12take up an entire course itself.
00:14We can literally spend hours skinning a character and finessing the weighting on
00:18the vertices on all the different joints and interactions, constructing motion
00:22tests and really playing with how it looks and how it deforms.
00:26I'll go to my channel box and unlock or untemplate or reference that layer.
00:32Now I'm going to bind him.
00:34What I'll do is to pick the mesh, making sure I've got all of his parts except
00:40for his eyes, and then the skeleton.
00:46His eyes later will be either parented or skinned to eye bones, we'll call them,
00:50which are parented to the head bone, so I'm going to leave them alone.
00:54You may end up putting a face rig of some kind in your character depending on
00:57how articulate they are in their face, or using blend shapes, but that's
01:00another discussion.
01:01For now though, I will choose under Skin>Bind Skin>Smooth Bind, here are the
01:06differences between them briefly.
01:08A Smooth Bind allows weighting between bones of vertices so that they can be
01:12influenced by multiple bones.
01:14A Rigid Bind then is a one-to-one, a vertex bound to a bone exactly, and an
01:20interactive skin bind gives us capsules to play with.
01:23I'll use a Smooth Bind and open up the dialog for the Options.
01:27In here, I'm going to use the Closest Distance.
01:30I'll get hopefully his feet not binding to each other.
01:34I'll bind to the joint hierarchy, and this way, it's going to bind to the whole skeleton.
01:40Finally, in my skinning method, I'm going to use Dual Quaternion.
01:43Classic linear is well, like it says, classic and has been around in Maya for ages.
01:49It's a nice way of skinning, although we may see some folding and some issues at the elbows.
01:53Dual Quaternion, through Math Magic I don't even understand all of, allows us
01:58to solve most of those issues and the way that the vertices regard the bone orientation.
02:03I'll choose Dual Quaternion.
02:05Normalizing the weights allows me to shift from one to the other.
02:09If I take 20% off one, it will add 20% onto the other bone.
02:13I'll try it with a Dropoff rate of 4, and see if that works if I get enough
02:18influence or too much.
02:19I'll click on Bind Skin and see how it looks.
02:23He is bound and we can see the skeleton is now in color.
02:26As a quick test, I will pick one of his bones and try moving it.
02:31When I rotate his arm for example, we can see his mesh deform.
02:35The Dual Quaternion is handling the elbow fairly decently, although there is
02:39some folding there, but the default is pretty good.
02:42As I've said, this is not a movie on skinning, and that can really take up a lot time.
02:47It's kind of like watching grass grow or paint dry.
02:50And so, skinning is one of those things that's better when it's done and the
02:53workings of are, well, a little on the slow side.
02:56Now that I've got him at least roughly skinned, and I'll do a quick check on any
03:00other places that are problematic, I can start to make his controls.
03:04He has got some deformation on his feet, and they are taking his feet with him.
03:09So eventually, I may want to paint some weights on those.
03:12I also see a problem here with my joints, and they need some orientating.
03:16What I'll do temporarily is to hide his mesh, and in my joints here, select
03:22them, and choose under Skeleton>Orient Joint.
03:26What this does for us is tune which axis faces up and whirled and is the
03:31primary axis of movement.
03:33I want the X for rolling for example on the feet.
03:36I'll try orienting the joints, clicking on Orient, and then switching over here
03:41into Component mode.
03:42I'll go into Component, and click on the question mark, which is going to show me
03:46the axes on the bones.
03:47It looks like I'm in pretty decent shape.
03:50Most of the axes on like-pieces are facing in the same direction.
03:53For example, the knees show the roll axis on X down here, Z in front, and Y to the side.
03:59Same with the heels;
04:01the end effecters on the toes are somewhat randomly placed, and we can play
04:04with those if we like;
04:06clicking E for rotate or going back to Skeleton, and reorienting
04:11those particular joints.
04:12I'm going to leave it alone for the moment, as again we can spend a lot of time
04:16orienting, and I'm looking mostly for consistency at the moment.
04:19The major pieces I'm concerned with are things like the spine, the hips, the
04:23elbows, and the hands, and it looks like he is in pretty good shape.
04:28Most of the orients are in the right direction in like places.
04:31So it's fairly consistent.
04:35If you need and if you're seeing more problems with your Skeleton, under
04:38Skeleton, in Orient Joint, you can start to play with the different axes, and
04:43it will even tell you what is the most important and second-most important
04:47joint direction.
04:48For example, the X here, the primary axis, specifies the joint direction will
04:52point down the bone to the next joint.
04:55And for most of my bones here, it's pretty good.
04:57For example, right here on the leg, as I've said, the X point straight down, and
05:02so this mesh is in a good place to move correctly.
05:07I'll get out of the Component mode, back into Object, and I'm ready to get the
05:11control rig on this mesh.
05:13I'll go to the Character Controls, scroll up to the top, and it's already got
05:18Character 1 selected. I can rename him if needed.
05:22Under Edit>Definition, and there is Rename, and I'll name him Fellow.
05:29Now the character is called Fellow and all of his joints are
05:32appropriately called Fellow.
05:34For example, picking this hip joint shows me Fellow, left up leg.
05:38Now with him selected again, I'll choose Create and Control rig.
05:43Before I do this though, I need to lock the skeleton.
05:45What that means is in the skeleton I need to make sure that it is locked
05:49officially that the definition is locked.
05:52Check this before you create the Control rig because going back and forth
05:54can get messy.
05:55Now I'll make my rig.
05:59What I get then is a skeleton on the skeleton.
06:02We're seeing this yellow skeleton overlaid on my Bind skeleton, and controllers
06:06on them in two ways.
06:09We've got our IK controllers in red and additional or secondary controls in blue.
06:15Our FK bones are in yellow, and these are accessible here in the modes up at the top.
06:20I can show and hide the IK and now I have an all-FK skeleton.
06:25I can turn off the FK and just have the IK controls.
06:31With both off, I don't see anything.
06:32Depending on how you'd like to animate and what you're doing, you may see one
06:36or the other in use.
06:37For example, a character placing his hand on a table was a great use of IK.
06:42The IK allows the hand to stick in place.
06:45Waving your hand up in the air might be a better place for FK as the rotation is
06:49driven from the shoulder out.
06:51The neat thing about this rig is that it's a full-body IK.
06:55Here's what this means.
06:56I'm going to grab the IK for his left wrist, and move it.
07:00And I'll turn back on his mesh so we can see him.
07:03I'll make him a reference, so I can see it but not touch it.
07:07With that IK selected, as I pull it down, his arm goes.
07:10And if I pull his arm enough, it pulls the whole body, and he starts to bend,
07:14but his feet stays stuck.
07:16I'm going to pull his hand forward and maybe up a little bit, and animate him around.
07:22He is going to reach forward, twist his head over.
07:26Now what we're seeing here is some folding, and this is because of the
07:29influence of those bones.
07:30I haven't really dealt with the skinning, and his head is well rather large, and
07:34so we're seeing it fold in.
07:37The full-body IK is pretty spectacular though because it lets us do things that
07:41would ordinarily be fairly complex in animation.
07:43I've got my control rig in place, and I'm ready to get keys going.
07:47I'm also ready to look at how to transfer this, and what else we can do with
07:51this really spectacular rig.
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Selecting using the HumanIK interface
00:00Once a character's skeleton is defined and the control is established, we can
00:04look at different ways of selecting, and animating this character.
00:07For example, the full-body IK allows us to take let's say his hand, or his wrist
00:12and pull the whole character over, bending him at the waist.
00:16When I pick this wrist for example, and let's see here at Frame 1, hit S to set a key.
00:22We see down at the bottom Result 324.
00:24What actually happened there is it keyed almost all the pieces of the skeleton.
00:29only have one thing selected, but because it's the full-body IK, everything is
00:33going to move with it.
00:34Now I'll jump over maybe 30 frames, and pull that hand down and make him
00:39lean over a little bit.
00:40I'll hit S again, and it takes the whole skeleton with it, keying 214 components.
00:46He has got a nice natural movement, and I can get into my graph editor and
00:51affect these keys very easily.
00:53Yes, his eyes are flying out of his head because I haven't put in eye bones.
00:58I'll jump to the character controls.
01:00Right now, as we can see, I've got his left wrist highlighted.
01:03If I turn that off, I can work with the whole body.
01:06What this lets us do is select from this GUI if we need character controls even
01:10if they're hidden inside the mesh.
01:12We may have a character who is large-limbed, round-limbed, wearing large shirt
01:17or maybe even armor or another way is obscured, and being able to select the
01:21controls this way is very handy.
01:24If we use the arrows here let's say on the left-hand, we actually get into
01:28our control this way.
01:30This is for the hand or each finger.
01:33When I focus in, there's that finger joint.
01:36Now I can take this finger and pull it down and even pull it back and make him
01:40curl his hand up a little bit.
01:43When I key this, it's going to key all the relevant pieces affected by it.
01:47So now, he is going to come up, and curl that finger going from flat to curl.
01:54Clicking back on the up-arrow lets me return back to the whole skeleton.
01:58What we can also do then is look at pinning, and what this lets us do then is
02:05say The motion is only affecting a certain part, for example, here at Frame 30, he is bent over.
02:12I'm going to pick let's say his pelvis and pin it, pinning in translation and rotation.
02:20Now when I scrub over maybe another 20 frames, pick that wrist again, and pull it up.
02:26His pelvis is pinned and that motion is going to occur from the pelvis up only
02:30taking his upper body with it as part of the full-body IK.
02:34I'll key that wrist, get 214 things keyed, and now get a different motion.
02:40And yes, again, his head is deforming because of the skinning.
02:42It's terrific though for animating.
02:44I can bend him down, pull his arms up and pin his parts.
02:48After this, if I want to unpin, let's say picking his pelvis again and unpinning
02:54it, moving that wrist up and keying it will get me a different motion.
02:59I'll pull him back over so his head stops deflating.
03:08Now when I scrub on the timeline, he bends over, pins from the waist at a
03:13certain point, animates in, unpins, and comes back.
03:17It's really fantastic for animating, and it lets us select using these character
03:22controls very distinctly, certain parts, pinning them is terrific.
03:27We may have a motion in a whole body, somebody is dancing around, and at some
03:31point, we need to pin so just their arms move but in a fluid manner.
03:35We can also work in body parts.
03:38Right now, up at the top, we can see I've got the full-body button checked, which
03:42gives me full-body IK.
03:44I'll switch over here to body part and pick for example his shoulder.
03:49I'll take this shoulder and rotate it down.
03:53Now it's just affecting that arm.
03:56I'll key it, and it's only keying 62 pieces.
04:00Over that animation though, he is going to come in and pull his arm down
04:05independent of deforming the rest of the body.
04:08Maybe he is doing a dance of some kind here and shaking his hips while flailing his arms.
04:13The controls are straightforward, and what it says then up here is we're
04:17deriving the source from the control rig and so we can also remap back to a
04:21stance or another character if we need.
04:24Right now though, I have the ability to simply animate him in either FK or IK
04:28using all manner of different controls and pinning the animation to different
04:32places, so that I can get fluid motion, and expressive arcs, or unique motion
04:38on certain pieces.
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2. Animating the Rig in Maya
Keying controls
00:00When I'm ready to animate, I've got a lot of options over what to animate in a skeleton.
00:05For example, I can pick the major controls using the HumanIK interface up on the side.
00:10I've also got controls for things like knees, pole vectors to affect knee swing.
00:15I can pull these around depending on how it needs to move and what I'm doing.
00:19I'm going to take off his keys, selecting the main root, and clicking on the
00:23timeline, clicking and dragging while holding shift to select those keys in
00:27here, and then right-clicking and choosing Delete.
00:30Now I'm back to one key at frame one and no movement.
00:34Let's say for example I'm going to pull his wrist around a little bit, and then
00:37make him tap his feet.
00:39I'll pick his wrist, and bend it in slightly.
00:42Then I'll pull his hand down, and ignoring the head deformation let him put his
00:47arm down a little bit.
00:49We can see I've got keys at different places here.
00:52So I need to make sure when I'm deleting keys that I'm actually looking at all of them. It's a big deal.
00:57Making sure you've got the whole skeleton selected when you're adding or removing keys.
01:07With the keys off that wrist, I've eliminated some of the motion.
01:12Now I'll scrub over here to frame 35 let's say, select that wrist, and pull it in again.
01:19I'll hit S to set the key and on 62 elements I get a key in there.
01:23I'd like to make him also tap his toes.
01:26Now what we can do in here is put on additional pivots.
01:29Right now, when I zoom in, I can see I've got a heel control and I can also
01:35select it in the GUI on the side.
01:37Rotating this makes his foot rotate reasonably, although I may want him to tap
01:42his foot from the back of his foot for example.
01:45What I can do is on that joint, right-click and choose Create Pivot Effector.
01:51I now have what looks like an extra bone, and I don't want to move it.
01:55What I'll do is hold D or enter Edit mode to move the pivot, grab it on the Z
02:00axis and pull it back and down for example.
02:03I'll check on the side view, and there's that pivot more back at the heel.
02:07He is going to tap his foot from back of the heel here.
02:10On my GUI on the side then, it gives me an extra flyout here, showing that extra pivot.
02:15I'll click on it to turn it on and use it.
02:17It's very possible to have multiple ones of these in a character added on.
02:21Now over here, let's say at frame 40, he is going to rotate this foot up
02:25from that point, and key it, and back down here, he will rotate down, keyed, and up again here.
02:35So now he is tapping his foot from the heel, based on that extra pivot, doing a little dance.
02:42If we look over in the Perspective View and zoom out, we can see him not only
02:48bending over but there's a little foot tap from the right place using that extra pivot.
02:54I can turn off that extra pivot, clicking back on the joint, and now it's
02:58pivoting back on the original pivot of that IK handle.
03:04Once I've got this going in his major motion, then I can deal with things like
03:08my pole vectors on my knees.
03:09Let's say at this point, in addition to tapping his foot, he needs to move that
03:13knee a little bit side to side.
03:16I'll pull that pole vector over a little bit, or maybe up and down, and that's
03:19going to give me that control.
03:21I can pick it and even move the pivot out.
03:23These are moderately limited depending on how you move them as most of the
03:28motion is derived from the IK.
03:29But I'll put that in and set a key.
03:32And now he has got a little knee wiggle to go with that tap.
03:36We can get an amazing range of subtlety in the animation this way, making a
03:40character bend in fluid arcs and adding in extra pivots where we need without
03:45adding in extra components to a custom rig.
03:49I can extend out the animation.
03:51The focus of this course is not necessarily on animation but more on the rig itself.
03:56But understanding where to animate it is important.
03:58This way, we can take that animation and use it and remap it to other characters
04:03if we need, or transfer it between applications.
04:06Lastly, I'm going to look at a stance pose.
04:08What I'll do is back here at frame one define his stance.
04:13I'll define a stance pose by clicking up on the blue button.
04:16But before I do, I need to get out of body part and back to the Full Body mode.
04:21I'll drop down here and choose Edit>Controls and Stance Pose with the main root node selected.
04:30I should be able to scrub forward and return him to a stance pose with the
04:33Stance Pose button on the right side of the HumanIK interface.
04:37This is very handy as it lets you take a mesh you may have moved around, and
04:41return him back to a stance pose, which doesn't necessarily have to be a T,
04:45although we may want to return him to a T to adjust the rig.
04:50Now when I scrub forward, he still has his animation.
04:52And I can take him to and from the stance pose without adding extra keys.
04:56I'm ready to keep animating, and I can adjust these keys in a graph editor just
05:00like any other animation, adjusting the timing and weight of his motions.
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Retargeting animation between characters
00:00One of the major benefits of the HumanIK system aside from the easily created
00:04skeleton and control rig is the ability to retarget animation between disparate rigs.
00:10It's a system where HumanIK skeletons share the same bone placement and links
00:16and type and controls.
00:17So it's a remapping or retargeting question on the animation, even if the
00:21skeletons are in a different size or a different position.
00:24Right now, I've got this round-headed fellow doing a lean over and toe tap.
00:28I'm going to make a new skeleton and remap this animation onto the new one.
00:35First, I'll click on the blue button and choose Create and Skeleton.
00:40I've got a new skeleton here, and its size is the default tall skeleton.
00:45Now we'll make some controls, clicking on the blue button again and
00:48choosing Create>Control Rig.
00:51Note that I only had one bone selected, but up here the Character was Character 1,
00:55my new character.
00:57So it made the rig for the whole thing.
00:59I'll pick the root of the whole skeleton down between the feet.
01:02This allows us to grab and move the whole HumanIK over as a statue, still
01:08leaving the IKs in place and not affecting where the animation is occurring.
01:13Now we'll remap it, changing his Source from Control Rig to Fellow that I've
01:18called my other rig.
01:19I'll pull him over again.
01:21What it wants to do in the remapping is put that onto his existing keys which
01:25carry translation and rotation.
01:27I'll grab his reference and move him over and now scrub on my timeline, and both
01:32skeletons share that motion.
01:35There is the toe tap and the bend over, transferred from one to the other
01:38because it's choosing the source from the existing one.
01:42It's a handy thing, to be able to grab and retarget that animation.
01:46Now that I've got this retargeting on, if I'd like to add other motion on this
01:50character, maybe an animation layer for example, it will go on top of this
01:54retargeted animation.
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Baking animation to target characters
00:00If we need, we can bake an animation into a skeleton, giving us keyframes at every frame.
00:05We'll use this often in an export.
00:07Let's say we're going out to a game engine where we want to bake the animation
00:11into the skeleton, so that we transfer across to our game engine bones, skin,
00:15and skin weights without controls.
00:20I'll select my skeleton on this second fellow here, making sure I don't grab any
00:24of the existing one.
00:25And under the blue button here, I'll choose Bake and Bake To Skeleton.
00:29I have two options here, baking to the skeleton and baking to the Control Rig.
00:34Baking to the Control Rig doesn't key the bones;
00:37it keys every key for all the control rig elements.
00:41Doing the skeleton, keys every bone in the skeleton, making the control rig not
00:46necessary, baking the animation in, suitable for transfer.
00:50I'll click on Bake Skeleton and look at the properties a little bit.
00:53What we can see here is that we have some choices in what we're choosing to bake.
00:57We can bake everything or just part of it.
01:00We can pick, simply parts in a hierarchy.
01:03Let's say for example, we're working in a game and we have different leg
01:06animations that don't affect the upper body, such as walk, run, jog, etcetera.
01:11And we want to bake out different parts to be able to blend in;
01:15these might match up with upper body animations such as grab, throw, flail and wave.
01:21I'm going to bake the whole thing and we also have options over what we're driving.
01:25Are we working from driven channels? Yes or no.
01:28If we're using set driven keys, are we adding in shapes or control points and
01:32also what range are we doing?
01:33I'm going to let it run over the Time slider of 60 frames here, and are we
01:38baking to a new animation layer or not?
01:40Right now, I don't have any animation layers going.
01:43I'm working in the Base Animation layer, but if you'd like to bake to a New layer, that's an option.
01:48I'll try a Bake, and at the default and see how this looks.
01:56The bake worked nicely.
01:58What I can see here in selecting this is that each bone has a key at every frame.
02:04And if we look at the channel box on that bone, it is keyed for translation and rotation.
02:10This is now baked in and suitable for exporting out.
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Creating animation clips in the Trax Editor
00:00In Maya for animation, we have the Trax Non-Linear Animation Editor.
00:04We can use it in conjunction with our HumanIK.
00:07What we need to do though is characterize this fellow, setting him as a
00:11character set and then we can bring him into Trax and create animation clips.
00:16The idea on that is if we make animation clips we can blend them as needed;
00:21lengthening or shortening them and copying and pasting, and retargeting between
00:25different characters.
00:26What I've done is to clean up his animation a bit, removing the keys on the rig,
00:31resetting him back to a Stance Pose and I've also pruned out the weights
00:35on his head a little bit.
00:37He was getting some folding when I raise the arm, but now for example, if I take
00:41his arm and pull it in and even up next to his head, you can see that the head
00:45weighting is flooded to the neck bone, which is provided by the HumanIK rig as
00:51the base of the head.
00:53I've also added a bit of a rig to his eyes.
00:57When I pull his shoulders around we can see eyes go with his head now.
01:00They're not really set to move or look around as I haven't added on Facial
01:04Rigging Controls and that's really something for another course to handle.
01:07But at least his head will stay in one volume when he raises his arms near it.
01:11I haven't worked over any of the skin weights and anywhere else.
01:14The Dual Quaternion Skinning is doing a decent job.
01:17Obviously, I need to go back and paint some skin weights on his shoulders,
01:21armpits, elbows, knees, all of the classic problem areas in a rig.
01:24But again, that's outside the scope of this movie.
01:26I'll return him back to the Stance Pose using the button up here in the HumanIK
01:30controls and I'm ready to designate him as a character.
01:34I'll select his root node down at the bottom of this GUI, and this root node
01:38allows us to pull him around as a statue.
01:40With that character selected, I'll choose from the Animation menus, Character,
01:45and Create Character Set.
01:48I've named this NiftyGuy, and I'm going to take all of the hierarchy below
01:52this selected node.
01:53As I've selected his root node, I want everything to go with it.
01:57I'll include all of the keyable attributes and turn off Redirection at the moment.
02:01I don't want to redirect or reorient him.
02:05I'll create a character set and now in the bottom right on my screen, in my
02:08Character Sets, I've got None, Nifty Guy and a Character Set Editor available.
02:13The Character Set Editor allows us to deal with the membership very
02:17selectively in that character.
02:19For example if there's a piece I need to remove from that Character Set, I can
02:23go in and select different parts.
02:26I'm going to make an animation layer as well to animate him on.
02:30With the character still selected, I'll jump over to the Channel Box and here
02:34are my animation layers.
02:36We start out with no animation layers.
02:39With the character selected, I'll click Create layer from Selected and it makes
02:43actually two layers, a BaseAnimation layer and Animationlayer1 (Animlayer1).
02:48What these let us do is, as the name suggests, layer in animation, starting out
02:53with let's say a walk cycle, and then curving it on a different animation layer.
02:58Animating a character on a curve path is difficult, animating a character
03:02walking in place or walking in a straight line is much easier and then curving
03:07that animation on an animation layer allows us the flexibility to not only
03:11retime but add in additional rotation for example.
03:15I'm going to work on my BaseAnimation layer and I'll click on it to make sure it's highlighted in green.
03:20Alternately, I've got a dropdown here choosing BaseAnimation or Animationlayer1.
03:23I'm going to give him a quick animation and what I'll start out by doing is
03:29moving to Body Part mode and putting his arms down to his side at Frame 1.
03:33Over in the Character Controls, I can always get back to the stance pose if I need.
03:38I'll turn on Body Part mode, pick his left arm to start with and pull it down.
03:44I'll bring it in, so more or less he is got his hands down in neutral.
03:49I'll do the same with his right-hand and I'm shooting for some asymmetry here.
03:54I'll pull it down and bring it in, then bring that arm down and he is in more or less a ready pose.
04:02At this point, I'll switch back to the full body and key it by pressing S. I've
04:08got a result of 373 keyed objects there.
04:11He's now set and if I needed to come back to a stance pose, I can.
04:15I'll scrub forward on my timeline to maybe 45 frames.
04:19I'll look in my Preferences and I'm running at 24 frames per second and viewing it in real-time.
04:25He is small enough and light enough on the mesh.
04:27I shouldn't have any issue seeing this at the true speed.
04:31At Frame 45, he's going to raise his arm a little bit.
04:35We'll say it comes out here and in Full Body IK he leans over.
04:40I'll pull it up and back in.
04:43I like to make him pull up his hand and start to wave at somebody.
04:53There's the start of a wave.
04:54Maybe he sees a friend in the distance.
04:56I'll make sure his hand doesn't clip through his head and press S to key it.
05:00Now over at Frame 50, I'll add in a little more of a wave.
05:04He's going to pull his hand down and key and up again one more time and maybe
05:11over and I'll key it.
05:14So now he raises his arm to wave at somebody in the distance.
05:18Obviously, I can put in more animation on his fingers but this will work nicely.
05:24There's his animation and he'll come back to that pose.
05:27I'll take that key at Frame 1, making sure I select everything and copy that
05:33key, right-clicking, choosing Copy.
05:35Coming over to frame, let's say 60, or maybe a few more frames.
05:39How about 72 added on the timeline?
05:43And right-clicking and pasting in.
05:47Now I've got a rough cycle.
05:49He looks up, waves at somebody, and comes back down.
05:54Now this is an animation I can take in as a clip in Trax.
05:58I'll choose Window>Animation Editors, and Trax Editor.
06:02What we can see here is it's automatically loaded, NiftyGuy, and I can
06:06create clips as I need.
06:08What I'll do is choose Create>Animation Clip.
06:12In this I can choose the Name of the clip and the Start and End Time or take it
06:16from the Time slider.
06:17You may end up wanting to do clips in a larger chunk of time.
06:21Let's say you have 600 frames and clips running in at 3-second increments or 72
06:26frames each, spacing them out with some blank frames between.
06:30In that case, you can use Start/End.
06:31For my animation, I've got 72 frames and he animates over all of them.
06:36So I'm going to work by the Time slider here.
06:38We have some choices in here as what to take, Absolute or Relative Offset, or
06:43Relative Root and are we including any Subcharacters.
06:46For the moment I have one character defined so I'm going to leave that alone.
06:50I'll create my clip and I'll call this clip, Wave.
06:55Now I have a clip in the Trax Editor.
06:57At the moment it functions at the original speed, 100%, and I can edit this,
07:02copy it, clone it, or make other clips and blend them together.
07:06I can also shorten it and even copy and paste it onto another character.
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Editing animation in the Trax Editor
00:00When you're using the HumanIK Rig in the Trax Editor, you need a little bit of
00:04set up in order to get the mapping of animation going, but once that's in,
00:08it's fairly smooth.
00:09What I've done here is to create a new skeleton in Control Rig using the
00:13HumanIK Character Controls.
00:15It's a default size skeleton with default controls and I've simply moved it off
00:19to the side by selecting its root node.
00:23I've also made a character set for this character, dropping down here and
00:26choosing TallGuy, selects him.
00:29He is got a BaseAnimation layer and I'm ready to get into Trax.
00:33What I've also done then is to add in one more animation onto Nifty Fellow.
00:38In addition to waving, he raises up his leg and puts it back down, and in the
00:43Trax Animation Editor I've made this into a clip.
00:46Now when I click on Load the Selected Characters, I'll see him.
00:51I'll make sure that I select him in here in his root node choosing Fellow and
00:56NiftyGuy in my Character sets.
00:59When I load him in there's his animation.
01:02He is got the Wave and also Wave1, which is actually a foot raise.
01:07I'll rename it here.
01:08Any of your clips you can right-click on and choose Attribute Editor and there's
01:13the attributes on this particular clip.
01:15I'll call this LegLift.
01:16What we're seeing here is that I've blended these together.
01:21I'll take out this blend arrow and right now they are just in sequence.
01:26This means he does a wave and then lifts up his leg and puts it back down.
01:30If I want to take these two and blend them, say overlapping like this, I'll lap
01:34them together in their tracks, hold Shift and pick Wave and choose Create Blend.
01:40The green denotes a blend in here.
01:43Now when I scrub on the timeline, he waves and lifts up his leg just as his hand
01:48is coming back down.
01:50I'm blending the animation and I'm going to take some of these clips and pull
01:54them across to TallGuy.
01:56First, I need to map the characters.
01:59I'll choose Character and Character Mapper.
02:02What we're seeing here is that NiftyGuy is the source and I need to make sure I
02:07select TallGuy for the target.
02:09I'll go over to my Character Controls, dropdown under Character and choose TallGuy.
02:15I can also choose in here TallGuy in my Character Sets, and then Load the Target.
02:20What we see here is the like naming from Fellow to TallGuy.
02:25I can pick each one and choose Map.
02:28I'll run through this very quickly and map his pieces on, each time it says
02:33here's the mapping from and to.
02:39What we're seeing here when I get to the hands is that some of the mapping won't stick.
02:44In this case, I've got a left index and left-hand index, but there's no middle
02:49finger on the Fellow, he's got a three-fingered cartoon hand.
02:57I'll make sure I map on his pinkies correctly.
02:59We'll see how this affects those fingers.
03:06I've mapped him across and we can see there are different parts on different places.
03:10Hopefully this won't cause too many problems.
03:12We want to make sure that we've got the same number of pieces in our skeleton,
03:16some of the motion we can remap; arms and shoulders and so forth, but where the
03:20number of fingers differ, we end up with pieces left out.
03:23Now we'll go into the Trax Editor and see how it likes copying and pasting,
03:27remapping animation.
03:30I'll choose Window>Animation Editors and Trax Editor again.
03:33Here's TallGuy and I'll take Wave, right-click and Copy the Clip.
03:39From NiftyGuy, I'll right-click and paste on TallGuy that clip.
03:44I get some errors down at the bottom.
03:45No object matches name, because it's trying to do a mapping on something not there.
03:53He's mapped on though and in the same place.
03:55He took that animation with those keys and there are both characters sharing
04:00those keys mapped on.
04:01Now I'll edit them in the Animation Editor.
04:05Again, going back to my Trax Editor ` and I'll pick TallGuy's Wave for example
04:09and stretch it out here almost 200%, actually more than so he is got a very slow wave.
04:17Although they're in the same place, we can see that NiftyGuy raises his hand
04:20much faster than TallGuy who finally raises and waves and comes back down.
04:27Between the two HumanIK rigs, I'm now sharing animation and I can lengthen or
04:32shorten it and blend with other clips, remapping that animation onto a
04:36different character.
04:38It's a powerful tool because there are a lot of animations we want to share
04:42especially so for example in a game, we have like characters or similar folks
04:47doing similar things and we preserve our continuity in animation.
04:51After this, I can bake this animation out if I'm going to export it or add on
04:55other animation layers if I need to smooth things out, maybe blending with other
04:59clips or adding in other parts like picking up props.
05:03The possibilities are endless and some careful planning and character sets along
05:08with careful mapping are really key.
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3. Transferring between Maya and MotionBuilder
Sending control rigs to MotionBuilder
00:00One of the strengths of HumanIK, aside from the readymade rig and easy intuitive
00:05controls is that it has great interoperability with other Autodesk products.
00:10We can send this rig over the MotionBuilder where we might take in motion
00:13capture data and clean it and then map it on to this rig.
00:16We can do an easy transfer back and forth to MotionBuilder in here.
00:20This is Autodesk MotionBuilder, and its software for animating and also for
00:25taking and cleaning and mapping on motion capture data.
00:29If you notice in the top right, the controls look very familiar because it's
00:33the same HumanIK rig.
00:36We have our same blue button and dropdown, creating an Actor, a skeleton and a Control Rig.
00:41The names may change slightly but the ideas are a straight across transfer.
00:45We define skeletons after we create them.
00:48We make Control Rigs.
00:50I'll create one as an example here.
00:52And what we can see is there's our readymade skeleton looking much like a posing
00:56dummy or person, but still having the same nodes and properties.
01:00Once the skeleton is locked, we can create a Control Rig.
01:04I'll define the skeleton as the default and there's our standard interface.
01:09This is our HumanIK Control Rig with the same way of choosing bones and adding
01:14controls as we see in Maya.
01:16What this means then, and being that we have the same kind of selections in
01:20bones and controls, Full Body and Body Part and pinning is we can move the
01:25animation back and forth.
01:27I'll go back to Maya, put a quick animation on my character and take him over here.
01:32Back here in Maya I've got a clean version of my character.
01:35I've taken out the animation clips in Trax temporarily, leaving me with the
01:39character in his stance again, his skin pose and ready to animate.
01:43What I'll do is keyframe maybe a step and a wave quickly and then take him
01:47over to MotionBuilder.
01:49I'm going to work with my Full Body IK for now and then Body Parts for wave.
01:54First, I'll lower his hands down to his sides.
01:56Picking one of the wrists, pressing W for move and pulling it down.
02:01This is where switching over to body parts is especially helpful.
02:05I'll return back to this stance.
02:06Turn on Body Part and pull that arm down.
02:10I'll do the same with the other arm, at least getting him down to a neutral
02:14position here, and maybe making his arms a little less straight by pulling them
02:19in and forward, giving a little bend at the elbow.
02:23With a little more work I could refine his hands as well, maybe getting him out
02:27of that spread pancake shape, but at least his arms are down to his sides now.
02:31With this selected, I'll switch back to Full Body IK and press S to set a key at frame one.
02:36Now I'll scrub forward and say at frame 30 or so he needs to pick up his foot.
02:41I'll click on his left foot and raise it up.
02:45I'll pick it up and pull it forward a little bit.
02:47Press S to set a key, and then a few frames later he will put it back down.
02:54Now at least he is got a little foot and knee roll going on.
02:58Then I'll pick up his hands a little farther along.
03:01Here is his left-hand, and at frame 50 he is going to hold it and maybe at about
03:0758, he will pick this arm up and slide it forward and up in the air to
03:13tentatively wave to a friend.
03:18With the Full Body IK on, he really turns his body to match that animation.
03:22He is going to wave, S to key and then he will put it back down.
03:28I'll take this key at 50, right-click, Copy it, and paste it over at about 63.
03:36Now he lifts his leg, waves and puts his hand back down.
03:41It's a reasonable animation at least for testing this interoperability.
03:45I'll choose File and Send to MotionBuilder, and I can send either as a New
03:49Scene, Update a Current Scene or Add to a Current Scene.
03:53Being that I have a blank scene in MotionBuilder and I'd like to have his
03:56animation isolated, I'm going to send it over as a New Scene.
04:03In MotionBuilder it says, Do you want to save what you had going on?
04:07And I'll click No, because this is just an example.
04:10It takes a minute and imports in that fellow with his rig and ready to go.
04:15If I scrub on the timeline here, we can see his animation, he's going to wave
04:18and put his hand back down.
04:20And right in the middle is a Connected to Maya button.
04:22Now I'm going to add another key on.
04:25I'll scrub forward and let's say after he puts his hand down, maybe at about
04:29frame 69, he picks his other arm up.
04:31I'll scroll down and pick that hand.
04:35I'll right-click here and key it at the time.
04:39Then I'll scrub forward a little bit more and pick this arm up.
04:42It works much the same way.
04:44We can see that the data is transferring over and even the navigation is like Maya.
04:51Pan over and he is going to wave with that hand.
04:54I'll right-click, key it and then put his arm roughly back down a little bit later.
05:04Now with those keys set, I'll update to Maya. Back here in Maya;
05:09I make it some minor errors depending on the naming.
05:12But as I scrub forward, he's going to pick one hand up and pick the other hand up.
05:16That motion has come back and forth between Maya and MotionBuilder using FBX for
05:20transferring models, Rigs, Skin Weights, and Animation.
Collapse this transcript
Updating animation
00:00When we're animating and when we're working back and forth between Maya and
00:04MotionBuilder, we can use our animation layers to affect the quality and
00:07character of an animation.
00:09I'm going to make an animation layer here in Maya and do an update over to MotionBuilder.
00:14This is definitely an iterative, interactive process where we'll refine in one or the other.
00:19Maybe we have motion capture data and we are adding to it or smoothing it out
00:23and we want to see it on both sides or add a little tweak on this side and see it over there.
00:28I'll start up by selecting the root node of the character and in my Channel Box
00:32I'll add on an animation layer.
00:34I'm going to work on Animationlayer 1 and I'm going to leave it weighted at full strength.
00:39Right now, he's got his hands down, he picks up his leg, waves a little bit and
00:43puts his arms back down.
00:45What I'll do is go back to my Character controls and let's say he also wiggles
00:50his hips just a little bit as part of that wave.
00:53There are the keys on that hip controller.
00:55What we see here is that those keys were baked as part of the transfer and then
01:00started to spread out later.
01:01I'll say at maybe about this point when he's raising his arms, I'm going to key
01:06his hips and then scrub forward and rotate them.
01:10So he's got a little bit of a lean in that way, key it and then back over he leans this way to look.
01:18Finally, he's going to put his arm down and lean over like he spotted
01:24something on the ground.
01:26I'll grab his arm and put it down and make him reach.
01:32He waves, looks over and bends down to reach for something.
01:36Obviously, we can get his other arm and his head going and all kinds of
01:39additional animation on the bones.
01:42I'll click on Update and send this over to MotionBuilder and see what it looks like.
01:47Here in MotionBuilder, now I see in the bottom my extra Animationlayer.
01:51And when I scrub forward on the timeline we'll see the step Wave1, Wave2, reach
01:58forward, and lean over for something.
02:01That animation is transferred across seamlessly.
02:04I'm going to set my Interaction mode to Maya here and adjust his animation on
02:08this side a little bit as well.
02:11I'll choose Settings and Interaction mode.
02:14One of the things that Autodesk has done is let you choose the interaction mode
02:18depending on what app you're using, native MotionBuilder or in this case, here's Maya.
02:24And I'm going to let it go for MotionBuilder only.
02:28I'll click OK and now I can Alt and left mouse to tumble around in the view.
02:33I'll zoom in and on this animation layer, Animationlayer1;
02:37I'm going to pull his hand forward a little bit more.
02:40Grabbing that wrist controller and clicking on the Move tool.
02:44I'll pull that wrist in and down a little bit.
02:48I'm going to make sure in my HumanIK because it's got the same controls that I'm using the Full Body.
02:53So as I pull him forward, he really leans into it and I'll key it here at 120,
02:57right-clicking and choosing Key at time, actually Frame 104 and Update it back to Maya.
03:07Back here in Maya, we can see that animation.
03:10He goes and reaches all the way forward, like I set him in MotionBuilder.
03:16It's a neat workflow being able to go back and forth, and there are things in
03:20MotionBuilder for scene set up that we would find in a real world set directing
03:24actors instead of characters.
03:26It's really made for a live interaction.
03:28If you'd like, you can explore in the Entertainment Content Creation Suite from
03:32Autodesk a live link between Maya and MotionBuilder, and further using the
03:36Microsoft Kinect for Windows, you can do your own motion capture, map straight
03:40into MotionBuilder on to HumanIK Rig.
Collapse this transcript
Conclusion
Next steps
00:00I hope you've enjoyed the course.
00:02If you'd like to go further, look on lynda.com.
00:05We've got courses in modeling, texturing, rigging, character animation, 3ds
00:09Max, and Maya.
00:11We can get further into Unity in the scripting and deep into Photoshop
00:14for textures.
00:15So get out there, get some reference, and get started with Working with
00:18HumanIK rigs in Maya.
Collapse this transcript


Suggested courses to watch next:

Character Rigging in Maya (4h 37m)
George Maestri

Game Character Creation in Maya (2h 58m)
Chris Reilly


Maya Essentials 5: Animation Tools (1h 20m)
George Maestri


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