Autodesk MotionBuilder

Motion capturing technology has been around for quite some time now and it has evolved a great deal in past few years. The hardware and software used in this domain have become more and more accessible for amateur use, while personal computers are now powerful enough to handle basic 3D modeling and simple motion simulations.

Autodesk MotionBuilder is a fully-featured software utility designed to help you create and simulate 3D character animations from scratch, as well as use motion capturing techniques to control the way your actor reacts in the virtual environment. Thus, you can start off by creating a basic actor or control rig, which can then be customized and adjusted to fit your preferences.

You can also define and edit a skeleton simulation, which can be used as a placeholder for the human bones inside your 3D character. Every available bone can be manually assigned to a specific body part, such as the leg, shoulder or spine and they basically define the range of motions that can be achieved by the simulated actor inside the application.

Poses represent a certain arrangement of your model's anatomy, which can be used to quickly change between various body positions. Thus, the character does not have to be manually repositioned each time you want to bring it to its default state and you can even create your very own poses from scratch, in order to save them inside the project.

The animation triggers, on the other hand, can be organized and stored into groups, depending on their purpose. These triggers can be controlled in a variety of ways, as well as by using keyboard or joystick shortcuts. Hence, you can set up your character to perform a certain action whenever a key is pressed on the keyboard, as well as choose the desired motion clips from your computer.

Autodesk MotionBuilder provides you with everything you might need in order to create 3D motion animations, using your own FBX files. It also supports motion capturing devices from the get-go, making it very simple to integrate it with your studio and simulate movement using your already existing 3D models.