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Friday, August 1, 2014

Motion Builder - How to mirror an animated FBX clip for story mode



1.Open your main character with NO animation JUST the character in t-pose, now open characterized FBX animation you are trying to mirror. In my case i'm going to mirror one of run right 90turn animations from the previs clips that come with mobtion builder 2014. I'm going mirror it into a left 90 degree turn. Drag and drop the FBX into the viewport ( or file open)

2. Select merge>(name of the animation you want top bring in)

3.Now this FBX has a character assigned to it as well as the motion. and we can see them both here.

4. Up in the character controls window your main character should be selected for the character. then select the FBX animated character clip as the source.

Immediately your character matches the movement of the animated character.

5. Now in the navigator select character>your character name and double click it to bring up character settings.

6. Now expand the characters settings and scroll down till you see "mirror animation". Select the check box.

Your character should immediately mirror the animated character we imported.


7. Now in the character settings panel  for your main character select plot character>  then bake animation from input character to "control rig".




8.Now select the FBX animated character in the navigator  that you imported for animation. Right click and select "select all branches" and delete that character. It will say it is being used choose delete anyway. We want to get rid of anything related to that previous character.


9. Then in navigator under "scene select" anything related to the animation FBX model we imported> select all branches. And delete them as well. Confirm any questions about deletion.

10. In the navigator probably a good idea to name the take to "Run_Left_90Turn" before saving your file out.

You should now have a clean version of your main character with the new mirrored animation with it.

11. Now go to file save as and save your new FBX as Run_Left_90Turn. and that's it! This clip will now drop into story mode.