James Rig & MoCap

The James rig was first created using abAutoRig by Supercrumbly but this version had to be set aside when we decided to use motion capture as an option for animating James. The reason was because MotionBuilder was not importing the rig from Maya with the correct constraints and skin weights. The alternative was to create a simplified fk rig and in MotionBuilder we were able to characterize and rig James to the motion data.

Simple fk setup for James

Here is an example of the simplfied fk rig after it has been characterized and applied to the motion data.

From here the marker/optical sets are baked to the control rig and fixing or adding animation can be achieved by using animation layers. At the moment I am testing the best options to animate, one option is to animate in MotionBuilder using the control rig or by exporting it into Maya and doing it there. We will most likely use MotionBuilder to clean up the captured data/animation but at this current stage in MotionBuilder there are no controls for facial animations and this is my main reason for trying to transfer across to Maya.