Animating Characters

When you have brought a character model into MotionBuilder and set it up for animation, there are three different types of motion sources you can use to animate the character: A Control rig, an Actor connected to motion data, or another character.

The overall workflow for animating characters in MotionBuilder can be summarized as follows:

1. Create a character model in your 3D package of choice and save it using the .fbx file format. (To do this, you need to have the appropriate FBX plug-in installed.)
2. Load your character model in MotionBuilder.
3. Complete the Character mapping process and characterize the character model.

   See Character mapping and Characterizing.

4. Select the type of source you want to drive the character model. The motion source can be a Control rig, another character, or motion data attached to an Actor asset.

   See Selecting a motion source.

5. Edit the animation by creating a Control rig and plotting the animation from the motion source to the Control rig.

   See Creating a Control rig and Plotting animation to a Control rig.

   You can also use the Control rig alone to create poses and set keyframes to animate it.

6. Refine your animation data with editing and filtering.

   See Refining Animation.

7. Plot animation from the Control rig to your model’s skeleton to prepare it for export.

   See Plotting animation to a character’s skeleton.

8. Save the animated character model as an .fbx file.