Plotting (Baking) the Mocap and Keyframe Data

 
 
 

You will notice that there are no visible keys or fcurves for the mocap. This is because mocap is in a live retargeting mode until you bake it (plot it) into fcurves. This lets you first make the adjustments to the mocap data before committing it to fcurves.

When you are at a point where you no longer need the retargeting tools, or you just need fcurves to remove irregularities in the animation or make other adjustments, you can plot/bake the mocap into keyframes (fcurves) which you can then edit. Plotting create composite fcurves that contain the mocap and any animation (offsets) that you keyed into the animation controls. These fcurves are applied to the face's animation controls.

When you plot the motion capture data, the resulting fcurves often have many keys, usually one per frame. A high-density fcurve is difficult to edit because if you change even a few keys, you have to adjust many other keys to retain the overall shape of the curve. Because editing these fcurves is not always easy, there are tools in the animation editor that can help you work with them — see Cleaning Up Mocap Data (High-density Fcurves) [Character Animation] for more information.

To plot the mocap data and keyframe animation

  1. On the Act panel, choose Library Tools Plot to open the Plot dialog box.

  2. In the box, set the Interval Size, which is the interval of keyframes set on the fcurves. For example, if you specify 2 as the frame step, a keyframe is created on every other frame on the fcurve.

  3. Set the Start and End Frames to specify the frame range that you want to plot. By default, the timeline range is used, so the whole animation will be plotted if you don't change these frame values.

  4. Select the Plot to Action Clip option if you want to directly create an action clip of the plotted animation in the animation mixer.

  5. Select the Split Tracks option to create separate action clips on tracks for the lips, jaw, and tongue controls. The clip for the lips is a compound clip that contains separate action clips for the upper lips and lower lips.

    Splitting the animation data is especially useful if you're working with lip-sync animation and you want to work with each of these mouth controls' animation data separately, such as soloing the jaw animation to check its animation without the effects of the lips or tongue.

  6. Click OK to start plotting.

    The plotting process removes the mocap data and retargeting data from the controls, then bakes that into fcurves along with any keys that are on the controls. The fcurves of the plotted animation are then applied to the animation controls after the fcurves are fitted.

  7. If you want to edit these fcurves, select the controls you want and open the animation editor.

    If you selected the Plot to Action Clip option, you can open the animation mixer to see the clip on the track. You can then manipulate this clip as any other action clip in the mixer.

Using the fr_PlotRetargetedFace Command Line Argument

Instead of using the Library Tools Plot command on the Act panel, you can plot using this command line argument to bypass the Plot property page:

fr_PlotRetargetedFace([start frame], [end frame], [interval size]);

The following example plots between frame 100 and frame 200, setting one key every 10 frames.

fr_PlotRetargetedFace(100, 200, 10); 

If you specify a null for any of the arguments, an interval of 0, or an end frame that's less than or equal to the start frame, the Plot property page appears.