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Motion Builder Characterization and Retargeting Tutorial

MotionBuilderIndustrialRetargeting

Practical walkthrough of MotionBuilder HumanIK characterization and full-body mocap retargeting, covering biped joint mapping, HIK solve settings, and baking animation onto custom character skeletons.

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Abstract

This MotionBuilder tutorial demonstrates how to characterize a custom biped character (the Volund rig from the Unity Blacksmith demo) so it can receive motion capture data through HumanIK. It covers dragging the character template onto correctly named bones, defining the biped, renaming the definition, and switching the source between none, stance, and an FK/IK control rig with selection, body-part, and full-body IK modes. The workflow then imports a circle-run mocap take, cleans out unneeded marker and solver nodes, characterizes the mocap skeleton, sets it as the character source for retargeting, and bakes (plots) the animation onto the control rig for editing via animation layers. Finally it shows baking the rig animation back down to the skeleton for export to engines like Unity, Unreal, or Maya.

How to read this

Category: Production talk / tutorial (MotionBuilder HumanIK retargeting)
Contributions: Walks through characterizing a custom biped rig (Volund) so it can receive mocap via HumanIK
Shows switching the source between stance, FK/IK control rig, and full-body IK modes, then importing and cleaning a mocap take
Demonstrates baking (plotting) animation onto the control rig and back onto the skeleton for export to Unity, Unreal, or Maya
Context: Applies the motion-retargeting principle established by Gleicher (1998) inside the production HumanIK workflow of MotionBuilder.Builds on: Retargeting Motion to New Characters
Correctness: Studio/tool practice, not peer-reviewed; the workflow is production-proven but specific to MotionBuilder's HumanIK and assumes correctly named, properly posed bones.
Clarity: Accessible hands-on tutorial; a single watch-through conveys the workflow, with replay value at the characterization and baking steps.
How to read it: Follow along in MotionBuilder rather than reading passively; focus on the characterization (bone mapping) and the plot/bake steps, which are where mistakes propagate.

Builds on

Retargeting Motion to New Characters 1998

Built upon by

Nothing yet.

Related work

MotionBuilder: Essentials Characterization, Retargeting and Baking Animations 2022 / MotionBuilder
How to Retarget Motion Capture in MotionBuilder 2019 / MotionBuilder
Meet MotionMaker: New AI Animation Tool In Maya 2025 / Maya
Autodesk MotionBuilder 2022 2021 / MotionBuilder

Keywords

motionbuilder humanik characterization retargeting biped control rig fk/ik rig mocap skeleton mapping roll bones bake plot animation layers fbx unity blacksmith demo

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