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Houdini <-> Motion Builder workflow


enquel

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Welcome,

surprisingly there is not too much information on the cooperation between Houdini and Motion Builder. Could you share your knowledge? I have a character modeled in ZBrush, I just started auto rigging it in Houdini, but... how do I export the rig (skeleton at least) to Motion Builder? Or should I build skeleton in an other app? Or maybe should I import the model to Motion Builder first? And how about skinning then? Will the skeleton from MB read to Houdini for the weights to be painted? I am really lost here. Thank you in advance,

Artur

Edited by enquel
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I would not use auto rigging if you are intending to work with MB, it is a very sophisticated rig that will no doubt be problematic.

 

You will be better of using as a guide the "simple-toon" rig you can find in Orbolt as starting point and pass the bones to MB via FBX.

 

You may animate in MB or put some mocap data on it to later send it back to Houdini using FBX although this may require a few tests before you can propely add just animation on your "simple-toon" rig.

 

I must confess I have not done it this way but I am sure you can find it pretty easily. 

 

Regarding weights FBX does transfer them so I would expect to go through.. editing weights in Houdini is really really powerful so I would suggest you try your best to keep it there.

 

Hope it makes sense.

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Thank you very much. I eventually went for auto rig system and try to animate inside Houdini (I made a rig from scratch in Houdini and then exported as FBX to MB, but MB simply doesn't read it properly, so I decided to use auto rig, besides I use muscles, which as far as I know is not possible in MB).

I have found three issues so far:

1) There are errors in auto-rig network, but these can be amended pretty easily (bad mirroring setup).

2) It may be just me, but... the rig works fine, yet somehow my jaw translate is not remembered - somebody encountered that?

3)  Is it a good idea to incorporate eyelashes (low poly models) with the rest of the model? I can hide them pretty easyli if need be, but... suppose I want to exchange the already weighted model for another one, how to I transfer weights without fuss? I tried to copy-paste the node for captuing weights, but since the poly count and vertex order of the two tested models is different, it wouln't work. I guess I need to bake weights to texture of point cloud somehow, and then reimport.

 

Thank you in advance!

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