This tutorial guides you through the procedures necessary to import to MotionBuilder a character created in 3ds Max and then to export your work back to 3ds Max as a fully-editable animated character.
The tutorial covers the following three kinds of animatable skeletons that originate in 3ds Max and shows you how to bring these skeletons into MotionBuilder for animation using the FBX format.
You can single out the single-step interoperability procedure that addresses your needs or complete the whole tutorial to get a well-rounded view of the interaction between MotionBuilder and 3ds Max.
This set of tutorials shows you how to:
Autodesk MotionBuilder’s default setting in the Time Format menu is 24 frames per second (fps), where the default in 3ds Max is 30 fps. You can change the frame rate for your output at any time, outputting the correct number of frames to maintain the correct playback speed for your animation.
For example, if you create a 90-frame animation for video, using an NTSC frame rate of 30 frames per second, the result will be three seconds of animation. If you later discover you need to output to PAL video (at 25 frames per second), you can switch to the PAL frame rate. The 90 frames are automatically converted to 75, producing the same total animation time with a different number of frames. You can later switch back to NTSC frame rate to restore the original 90 frames of animation.
You can switch back and forth between frame rates at any time without losing animation data. However, Autodesk MotionBuilder retains the last session’s settings. Remember to revert back to 24 fps at the end of this tutorial if you want to continue with any of the other tutorials.
