Motionbuilder Basics

Interaction:

• Settings/Interaction Mode - Maya
• ALT+LMB - tumble, ALT+MMB- pan, RMB- truck/dolly
• Q, W, E, R shortcuts, X+drag in Q mode for adding to various settings and Navigator, ALT+Enter for full screen mode
• CTRL+A for hiding "helper" objects, ie skeletons and nulls
• Window/Asset Browser (what's available) and Navigator (what's in the scene)
• Resource Path in Asset Browser (right click in the left side of the panel)
• Layout/Editing

Elements (LMB drag and drop into the scene from Resources/ Asset Browser tab in the lower right corner)

• Primitives, nulls, cameras, lights
• Hierarchy, parenting and alignment of objects in 3d space

Devices - stream motion for tracking or recording

• Vicon
• Faceware
• Kinect
• Leap
• Phasespace
• and more

To record motion drag and drop a device with LMB into the viewport. In Navigator check Online, Live and Record:

Then in Transport Controls press record and play:

To check your recording uncheck Live and Recording on the device. Then playback your recording.

Animation

• Transport Controls
• Key Controls, Working with Keyframes
• Animation Layers
• FCurves Editor, manipulating keyframes and tangents
• Filters: Butterworth, Keys on Frame, Reduce

Constraints - used to attach an element or an animation property to the motion stream

• Basic constraints: parent, position, rotate, scale
• Complex constraints: Referential, Relation

Shading Elements

• Material
• Texture
• Shaders: Live Shadow, Flat (for setting up alpha channel transparency), Reflection
• Particle Shader

Sending/exporting recorded data from Motionbuilder:

• Into Maya: Select the Reference (top) node of your hierarchy (s), then File/Send to Maya or save as fbx and then File/Import in Maya.
• If image based textures are used on the model you may need to reconnect them.