How to Use MotionBuilder Story Tool to Create a Cut-Scene

Once you’ve captured all your motion and set up your characters, the next step is to combine everything and start blocking out your cut-scene using MotionBuilder’s Story tool.

MotionBuilder Story Tool

MotionBuilder’s Story Tool is a non-linear editor that lets you build a cut-scene or mocap sequence by adding animation clips on to a track along a timeline – the same as you would if you were editing video files in Premiere or Final Cut, for example.

Motion Capture Scene Assembly

The idea at the blocking or scene assembly stage is to use Story Tool to build a rough cut of our sequence using unedited motion capture and a first pass of the camera animation. This will help us check we’ve captured everything we need, and also see what will need editing, and just as importantly, what won’t because it’ll never be seen.

How to Build a Cut-Scene in MotionBuilder Story

In this video I’ll walk you through how to build the first part of the “Matrix Lobby Shoot-Out” sequence using MotionBuilder’s Story Tool. We’ll look at how to apply the motion capture to our characters and align them in scene, and how to set up and animate the cameras – including camera cuts

…PLUS all the tips and tricks I can squeeze in to make editing in Story as easy and painless as possible.

Video Bookmarks

1. 01:52 – Merge Character
2. 02:21 – Inset Character Animation Track
3. 02:29 – Insert Animation File
4. 04:41 – Create Playback Camera
5. 07:14 – Create Shot Camera
6. 12:27 – Merge Environment
7. 13:00 – Rescale Animation
8. 15:31 – Align Character and Camera
9. 20:08 – Create Camera Shot Track
10. 20:36 – Build 2nd Shot
11. 20:50 – Merge Characters
12. 21:31 – Inset Animation Files…
13. 22:07 – Align Animation using Match
14. 22:32 – Realign Animation using “Ghost”
15. 24:09 – Duplicate Shot Camera
16. 24:46 – Align Camera
17. 25:37 – Adjust Character Positions
18. 26:50 – Adjust Story Clip using Asset Settings
19. 29:28 – Animate Camera
20. 29:38 – Create Camera Cut using Shot Track
21. 30:31 – Build rest of Sequence
22. 31:03 – Story Track Passthrough Example
23. 31:45 – Using Character Addative Subtrack