Mocappys

Your Guide to Capturing and Editing Motion

  • MotionBuilder Tutorials
  • Motion Capture Guides
  • Academy
  • Contact
  • About
You are here: Home / MotionBuilder Tutorials / How to Use MotionBuilder Story Tool to Create a Cut-Scene

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

By Mocappy 1 Comment

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.

Table of Contents

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
Tweet

Filed Under: MotionBuilder Tutorials

« How to T-Pose and Characterize your Character Using MotionBuilder Python
How to Write a Skeleton Definition File Using Python »

Trackbacks

  1. How to Create Complex Prop Animation using 1 Constraint - Mocappys says:
    March 4, 2022 at 18:34

    […] before we can do any of that, we’ll need to plot the animation from Story Tool onto our […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Search

Want to Animate Your Character with Motion Capture?

how_to_animate_character_with_mocap

Join my Complete Step-By-Step Course to learn everything you need to know to Animate Your Character With Motion Capture. From exporting your character into MotionBuilder, to importing the finished animation back onto your character – exactly as you would in a professional studio.

LEARN MORE>>


Hi, I’m Simon Kay

My aim for this site is to share everything I’ve learned over the last 20 years using MotionBuilder at some of the leading video game, motion capture and visual effects studios.

Top Posts:

  • Creating a Looping Animation In MotionBuilder
  • How to Characterize your character in MotionBuilder
  • How to Map Optical Mocap using MotionBuilder Actor
  • How to Rig a Character for MotionBuilder
  • How to Plan a Motion Capture Shoot | Creating a Move List
  • How to Mocap a Performer using a Vicon System
  • How to Merge Characters in MotionBuilder
  • Retargeting Animation In MotionBuilder
  • How to plan a Motion Capture Shoot – Mocap Shot List
  • How to Write a Skeleton Definition File Using Python

Follow:

  • E-mail
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Copyright © 2023 Mocappys.com