Simple Character Animation: Creating Loop Animation from Motion Capture

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Nikola in a parish and I am character animator and motion capture artists from Serbia. I'm working again and gaming in the suite, but I also have a lot of experience working on cinematics and animated series. Today, I'm going to be teaching you how to edit simple motion capture file in motion builder. So in this class, I will be teaching you how to choose right take and create loop animation from motion capture. Broken up the lessons into easy steps. So it's easier to follow along. Mole cap made animation infinitely simpler and far quicker. So I will focus on motion capture in the future classes as well. I'm excited to get started, so let's dive in. 2. Setting up MotionBuilder: Hello everyone, Welcome to the first video. In this one, we will set up our motion builder scene. We will create custom layouts. So when you close your emotion builder and open it, again, you will have your screen set it up. So if you got two monitors, just put everything with the second one. So your main scream is much bigger and you'll have much better perspective on what you're doing. So move everything aside and go into Layout. Create, Custom, and name. It's like you want. So because I'm filming now, I will go back and choose Layout and editing mode. So you can see everything on screen, what I am doing in what I'm working on. And also what I'm gonna show you. If you are more comfortable in Maya shortcuts, you can change it in settings, interaction mode and trues here, Maia, and press. Okay, But I'm more comfortable in motion builder, so I will stay on motion builder shortcuts. So that's it for this video. And I think everything is clear so we can move onto the next one. 3. Import File: We can now import our file. We go to File Open and this beg euro file I prepared. We can go here just open. And here is our character. She is a pose and you can see from all perspectives, motion capture file is plotted on her oral already. So Let's see our motion capture movement. As you can see, there's multiple takes in one file that is totally normal for mockups show tanks will always feel more few versions. So on one take, then we choose the best one and edit that one. So this is editing phase. And in editing phase, you choose the best steak and you edit that one. You can see there is like, Yeah, this is another version. Then the other, as you can see, he goes from the idle pose, do movement and go back to idle pose. This is the last one. Yeah. We will choose the best steak and added that. See you in the next video. 4. Story Mode Choosing the Right Range: First thing we're going to do is plot our character to control rig. This blue tint, big plot to control rig. On control rig, we got all the controls that moves our character. As you can see, everything moves perfectly. Every animation we do video on control Rig. Skeleton is just skeleton and control rig is regretted. Controls where we animate everything. So everything is fine. And we can go back now to skeleton. Also blue thing, bake plot. Skeleton. Now we're going to Story Mode. Right-click, insert character animation track and we choose our character. And right-click insert current desc. Cool animation will be now in this story mode, what we're going to do with this, I will show you right now. Of course, we need to enable Story Mode. So this button We will enable here, yeah, and must be blue. So you know, it's enabled. As we already said, our animation has multiple ticks inside and we said that we choose the best one and we will edit that best ones. So we will choose which stake we want to edit now. And we will watch our animation again. We can choose which stake we want to edit. As you can see, it's pretty long. But watch everything. Now you can see which takes you want to choose. This is the last one. That's the whole animation. All of 66 be captured on that shooting. I think I will take this one. Yeah. Yeah. I will cut this now. First frame where I will cut, it's one frame before movement starts, which is, I think here I could cut it with this eraser tool. Yeah. At the end, it's first frame after the movement is done. So I think that's right here. Again, razor and I will, I will delete everything before and after are take, we want to edit and I will press here 0. So our animation will start from the beginning, from 0 frame. And I will go right-click frames start, and our timeline is now on. Frames we want to edit and I will go right-click Plot seem to current dq. And I will change here FPS to 30 because plotted and because our scene is 30 FPS. So you need to look at that before you plot. It's really important. I can now turn off Story Mode and big plot to control the rig, everything. Yeah. As you can see, our character isn't a positions. Position really well. So I will go back. Plot irritable skeleton, open Story Mode again, double-click on this and I will press zeros, zeros 0 to center it, to center our character. Yeah, that's it. And I will go now again, plot Holstein tocar take to save all the changes I made. And I can now turn off story mode, and that's it for now. 5. Creating Pose: First thing we're going to do is plot everything to control rig. And as you can see, our character, it's a little bit down, so we will move it up. I will make a new layer and on new layer I will make changes. So I will just push him up a little bit. This doesn't need to be perfect. Just I think this is fine. Yeah. Totally fine. And as you can see, I selected hips and right and left ankle. So I press a key on full body and our character now is 0. I will bake everything to skeleton against to save the changes and then bake everything to control. Rig again. As you can see, I'm now in full body mode. This is selection part mode. When I choose this mode, selection and body part and full body. When I Yemen selection mode, I move just the selected part. When I'm in full body, my whole body moves. And when I am in body part, only the part of the body that is selected moves. So I hope this is clear. Selection, only selected body part, only part of the body that I selected and full body. My legs are pinned. So this is the reason they don't move. But if you unpin them, they will move to the whole body. So now we will make pose first and last bows. So we can make loop animation. First thing I'm going to do are the fingers. I will go in this schematic view to see every joint. Skin is pretty messed up here. The skinning is get a strophic fingers you do with rotation. But now I will try to make it like this with translation. I hope this is gonna work. This is usual problem. We have many times we got the character that is not skin very well, but that's it. We need to deal with that. I will try to make it to look. I guess I will leave it like that and I will move move to another Hand to try that. This moves much better. Yeah, I like it much better than this other one. I'll try it. There's not much I can do. I will take this hand that I like. I will press a key on body. We'll make a pose. I will select the fingers and make the pose impulse controls. Just plus, and the pose will appear. And I will mirror that. I made that fingers. On the other hand because I didn't like the the first fingers they meet, so I will mirror the second. Yeah, that's it. I hope this is clear. You can make both in both controls plus and you just select the the joints you want to make pose off. I just mirrored other hand. Fingers are now now the same on both hands. I will go big plot to skeleton, everything. Don't forget to press key and then plot skeleton. I will go back to control rig and make pose of the whole car character, full body pose. 6. Creating Loop and Placing Pose: So when we made a full pose on the beginning of the deque, we will place that pose at the end. I will turn off this translation rotation and mirror, and select Full body. Double-click on full posts and key the end posts. So in this way, week make loop animation. So our animation, when I turn this off, we'll loop and loop again. And the point is that we don't have any glitches, which we don't have here. So this is like perfect day, the easiest to do. You don't have to fix anything. It's perfect just when you place the pose. So I will be averaging two skeleton and then again on control rig to save our changes. And just just check this neck control and curves. Curves. You check curves when you go back to base layer. Know everything looks fine to me. I would not I wouldn't change anything here. I think she's, the moment is 0, ER, smooth. Just like it has to be. This is the way you place the pose. Just select the hips, full body, and double-click on pause V made and press key to make key. And don't forget to plug, plug back to skeleton and then again to control rig so everything gets baked and saved. I will just save this. Forget to save every step you are working on. 7. Choosing the Right Ranges for Every Take: In this video, I'm gonna show you how to choose right Rangers for every single take. V of course are doing that in story mode. Insert character animation, track, character, insert current. And here are all the x. I will show you where I would cut every single take. Actually, I'm helping you now for your class project, but I will tell about that later. Something for this first. Yeah, I think I will cut it here. Of course we did, we do this with this razor tool. So this is the first one. Next one, as I said before, one frame before it begins, and von frame after eight, and something like that. But frame before the first movement. This is the second one. We're going yeah, That's when we did before, but I will cut it again. Yeah, right here. Of course you need to enable story mode. I will delete all the things that we don't need. I will left here just the takes for editing. Let's move to the next one. Here. Here's starts next one. I will delete this. This is the last one, so I will cut it here. Delete this here, and click and delete this. So all of the six stakes and we have in this file, we are now ready for editing phase. Don't forget that practice makes everything perfect. So I will save this. Your project will be to do every single day to make globe of every single thick. Here. 8. Layers and Poses Explanation: When we finish choosing the right Rangers for dx, I will delete everything again. Let the first one, just put it on 0 and frame start tend, plot whole scene to current day. And I will position it in zeros, zeros, zeros. Make it on center. And of course plot whole scene to current desc. And turn off the story mode and then plot my character to control rig. Big plot control rig. Why am I doing this? So your class project will be to do all the ticks. And now I will quickly repeat the whole process of editing. I will do it differently a little bit now so you can get more comfortable with taking poses. As you know, I'm in this file, I saved our full body posts so you don't have to make your posts all the time. You can do it. Once. I will open this file and going PostController, find our full body pose and fingers pose. And I will go file save as Peggy pose or I will just name it blows and save. Now I will disable all elements, and here I will uncheck that and disable all settings. And I will just save poses. So we can go now save. In our new Take that we want to edit. We will just go and take this poses file. So how we're going to do that? We're going to File Merge poses open and we will disable everything, discard all elements, discard all animations, discard all settings. And here live as these, we will check that and find poses and merge only poses. So when we go in PostController, now, our poor poses are here. This night is character extension. We don't need that now so we can delete it, but we only need our poses. So we can now go to the first frame and actually 0 frame and plot out our character to control rig, select Full body and select hips. And apply. Of course, turn off the translation rotation and double-click on full pose so you can see our poses now applied Press Key two, make key and debts. And at the end, we will again press the full pose and make it and press key. So this is our new desc edited. I will go on body part and press here 0 and press 0 on the neck. Old saw. This 0 key is taking, taking position from the base layer VI, do everything on layer one. But when you press the 0 on layer one, you just take all the positions and rotations from base layer, base animation. So this is our base animation. When I turn off layer one. When I turn on layer one, this is our animation. You can see fingers are now or gay. Position. Character is positioned right. You can see the difference. When I turn on layer. There's only smooth transition. Our loop is smooth and nice and clean. As I said, practice make everything perfect. So this is real. This is going to be your project to do. Every single week. I will go File, Save As, and save this new take. Don't forget to, when you save your file, save all elements, not just poses, you need to save everything. 9. Summary and Class Project: So guys, this is how it looks like at the Yan, this is our week. And now it's time for your class project. I would like you to do exactly this. So I will open now Peggy Rowe file there are open there is our motion capture file, which older decks and your project is to cut all the ticks and edited. So if you ask me, I would like you to do all six days, but if you do just one or two, I will be happy to see your projects. So I will now open this beg euro cut just to show you. The first step is to install remote, to choose the Take you want, and to cut it. If you don't know where to cut, you always can go on this story mode video and see the Rangers where I cut it. So if you, if something is unclear, you can always go back and watch everything. I explained the whole process. And this is the first stake we did. And the second deck I did is the first one, so I hope you like it. Yeah. Of course, if you choose this one, you just press 0. Frames are ten, and that's it. I will go again on this file. So I want give you that cut that file. I will give you this just row file. So you will need to insert advertising in Story Mode plot everything. Cut where you think you should cut. So please take a look at everything. If you don't know something common down below and don't forget that practice make everything perfect. So this is for beginners, this is first step in your motion capture animating process. Thank you so much for watching. And please reach out if you have something to ask me. Thank you so much. See you guys can't wait to see your projects. Bye-bye. 10. Final Thoughts: You did it. Congratulations on completing the course. We have done everything from setting up motion builder, choosing right wages, creating poses, and finally creating loop animation. You can learn that a lot of the work goes into pre editing process. Beyond this course, I would love to see you bring your own takes to life. If you've been following along and created your own loops, be sure to upload your work to the project gallery. Thank you very much for taking this class. I can't wait to see what you created.