Mocap Blender

by Coloremblem in Addons


Mocap Blender 1.0 Documentation

This is a full in-depth guided documentation for the Mocap Blender Addon that gives a workflow and describes in detail how it works. So if you want to dig deeper into the matter, this is your place to go. Don't be intimidated by the size of the documentation. I am going to explain every little detail and try to be as specific as possible for every chapter. If you have still have questions don't hesitate to contact me.

    1. Installation
    2. Basic Idea
    3. Target Armature
    4. Motion Capture Armatures
    5. Marking Retarget Bones
    6. Connect Target Controllers
        6.1 Root Controllers
        6.2 Pose Controllers
        6.3 Entering Pose Targets
        6.4 Controller List Operator
        6.5 Connecting Pose Targets
        6.6 Fine Tuning Retargeting
        6.7 Creating Presets
        6.8 Active Motion Capture Armature
        6.9 Adjust Pose Targets
    7. Bake Final Animation


    1. Installation

    After purchasing the addon you should be equipped with a file called "mocap-blender-1-0.rar". Inside is a "mocap-blender-1-0.py" file that is needed for blenders add on installation manager. So make sure you unzip the "mocap-blender-1-0.py" file to your desired location.
    Once done, start your blender application and make sure it is at least updated to the 4.1 version or higher to prevent any problems. I also tested it with lower versions but can not guarantee that it will work completely safe with them in any situations.

    Now click on the top left corner of your blender screen at the ">Edit" tab and select ">Preferences" in the dropdown menu. Another window should open up. Click on ">Add-ons" at the left side of the window and all activated and deactivated addons should com up in a list. Now theres a very big button that cannot be overseen at the top right corner that opens another dropdown menu with the option ">Install from Disk".


    Locate the "mocap-blender-1-0.py" file from your disk and click on "Install from Disk". 
    Congratulations! Mocap Blender 1.0 is now available in your application of blender :D

    2. Basic Idea

    To start your journey of creating stunning new motion capture animations out of existing ones, you need to know where the add on is located and what is needed to work with it. So here are some things I think are quite useful to know before we start:

    1. Make sure you have a rig with FK(Forward Kinematics) functionalites. For now the addon does not provide corverting IK to FK movements. So if your rig works with inverse kinematics, make sure it also has a slider to change these bones to an FK mode.
    2. To see any deformation errors a little better, I highly recommend to skin a character to your rig before starting with the retargeting process.
    3. Keep in mind that the addon works with all of blenders internal constraints

    Before we start I want to tell you something about the functionality of the addon itself. How it works and what method it uses to retarget bones from one rig to another in general.

    Retargeting an animation is quite a hard process. Every bone needs the very same orientation as the corresponding counterpart. There are several addons that can do this process by calculating the orientation difference and baking the animation brutally on the so called target rig (In other words, the rig that you want to have the motion capture data on)
    This makes the editing and fine tuning of motion captured data nearly impossible without a lot of work and other armatures that serve as intermediate carrier of the motion capture data. 

    BUT...
    as always there is another very useful solution to prevent this complicated way. This technique delivers unlimited possibilities for motion capture editing and that directly inside of blender.

    Empties...


    The basic idea and the heart of this addon is: Two empties that are constrained to the world space of an individual bone. One empty is called the main target and the other on the pose target. The main target is constrained to the world position of the motion capture armatures 
    pose bone and the pose target is simply parented to the main target. This looks something like this: 
       
    Now when we switch back to our target armature and create a copy rotation constraint with world space on the corresponding pose bones that refers to this motion captures pose target, voila... we have a possibility to orient the pose target, that copies the transformation of the bone and reorients our target armtaure bone. Sounds complicated? It isnt... If you don't believe me, give it a try for yourself. With this possibility you can change the influence of the motion capture animation to your target armature by simply changing the copy rotation constraints influence, or add additive rotations by simply rotating the pose target to your needs. A fully non destructable workflow! These are the basics how this addon handles retargeting. Now it's time to retarget, combine and have fun!

    3. Target Armature

    To get started you need to select your specific target armature. The target armature is the rig you want to apply all the motion capture movements to. Imagine it as your blank canvas you want to paint on.

    In Blender, open the "Properties Panel" by pressing the "N" key and expand the "Target Armtaure" tab in the addon menu. The addon itself is listed in the category "MB" for Mocap Blender. You can either use the eyedropper to select an armature or click on the input field to select an armature typed object. If no target armature is selected, the addon will not work.

    4. Motion Capture Armatures

    Now its time to import our motion capture armatures. Use any fileformat you want, that supports motion capture data. Most known formats are: bvh, fbx 
    If you want to get some motion capture files for free, mixamo.com is the most know platform for downloading free motion capture material in fbx format.
    When you downloaded your motion capture files import them into blender by clicking on ">File>Import" and selecting the corresponding file format. 
    (Note: In some cases its useful to activate Automatic Bone Orientation in the import settings to prevent some disleading behaviour)

    Now its very important that your motion capture armature looks in the same direction as your target armature, to prevent problems when the auto retarget function is used. 

    When everything is setup correctly, expand the "Motion Capture Armatures" panel in the addon window. Select your newly imported motion capture armature and enter a name for it. 
    (Important: Make sure your name does not containt the "_" underscore character. This is reserved for the addon that uses namespaces for checking for constraints, pose and main targets. The addon will give you an error if you try this anyways but its just a reminder for you)

    Now with your new name inserted, you can press the "Add Motion Capture Armature" button under the name input field.
    (Note: If you are not sure what every button does, keep in mind, that hovering over the button shows you a very detailed explanation on how it works.)

    The motion capture armature will now be renamend to the entered name. Also the addon converts it to a motion capture armature that it can work with. Including all its pose and main targets, that are stored in a collection called "Master Target Controllers" and three subcollections:

    MASTER_TARGET_CONTROLLERS 

    • POSE_TARGET_CONTROLLERS 
      (For changing the orientation of your target armatures bones later)
    • MAIN_TARGET_CONTROLLERS 
      (Just used to let the pose targets copy the position of the motion capture armatures bones)
    • ROOT_TARGET CONTROLLERS 
      (An Empty that keeps the position of your motion capture armature in place)

    everytime you are going to add an armature, the addon will generate this setup for it.

    Also after pressing the "Add Motion Capture Armature" button, you will see an entry in the underlaying box in the addon. This box will contain all motion capture armatures that are going to be converted with the addon. Imagine this box as a motion capture hive where all most important options regarding your converted motion capture armatures are stored.

    The first button switches between the rest and pose position for the motion capture armature.
    The three buttons with the eye icon, hide either all pose targets, all main targets or the armature itself.
    The last button deletes the motion capture armatures data and removes it from the hive.
    (Important: Keep in mind that the delete button only deletes the pose, main and root targets, copy rotation constraints of your target armature regarding this motion capture armature and of course all the collections created by this addon. The armature itself will not be deleted. Also do not delete the motion capture armature with blenders internal delete function before pressing this button. Otherwise you will get an error message and the addon will not run reliably anymore.)

    You can also expand the motion capture armature by clicking the little arrow before the name. It will show you a list of all the pose targets regarding this motion capture armature that you can filter by name or select by clicking the selection button next to their names.

    Also very important is the "Size" slider. It will scale all the pose targets sizes to an even number.
    Keep in mind that if you select any pose targets, the slider will only affect their size, but if you do not select any pose targets at all it will affect all pose targets sizes.
    So the best idea is, to first deselect all pose targets and scale them to an overall base and then select individual pose targets you want to scale differently from the others.

    5. Marking Retarget Bones

    Now its time to tell the addon which bones will be included in the retargeting process and which won't. This helps the addon to save ressources and not overwhelm the user by showing him unneccessary bones that are not used for retargeting anyways.

    To do this, 
    expand the "Mark Retarget Bones" panel, select your target armature and switch to pose mode by pressing "CTRL+Tab". No you can select every bone that should be retargeted later and press "Make Retarget Bones". This option is not crafted in stone, that means, if you want to remove a bone retarget property, simply select it and click "Remove Retarget Bones". This will not delete the bone, just its "This is a retarget bone" state.
    (
    Important: Removing retarget bones will also delete all copy rotation constraints created with this addon that may are on this bone)

    To make things a little clearer you can also decide if you want the addon to colorize the corresponding bones into a red color by selecting the "Colorize Bones" option. Its just a visual thing, if you dont want this, you can also click on the "Select Retarget Bones" button later to let the addon select all bones that you marked as retarget bones before. In our case I will check the "Colorize Bones" option.


    6. Connect Target Controllers

    We now have done all the things that are needed to finally connect the pose targets to our target armature. Dont be afraid, you only have to apply the pose targets once when all of your upcoming motion capture armatures bones are named the same. 
    To do the connecting stuff we have to expand the "Connect Target Controllers" panel. This is the panel where most of the editing work will be done when working with your motion capture armatures. 

    6.1 Root Controllers
    At first we will concentrate ourselves on the "Root Controllers" and "Pose Controllers" Windows. 
    The very first thing we have to do, is to expand the "Root Controllers" window by clicking the expand button
     and selecting our target armatures root bone. Either by selecting it in pose mode and pressing the eyedropper or by manually searching it in the input field. 


    The root bone is the bone that moves the complete armature. So the bone, that moves the complete bone hierarchy if you want. In my case its this little guy here:


    Now press the "Apply As Root Bone" button. After that, a window appears that lets us select the corresponding pose target of our motion capture armature.

    (Tip: To make things a little easier I would recommend to 
    hide the motion capture armature and main targets in viewport in the "Motion Capture Armatures" panel. This will help you to see the pose targets better)
     
     

    You can either select the pose target in the viewport by clicking on the eyedropper icon in the search field or by clicking into the search field an searching it manually. Another option is to use the "Auto Search"  function that is provided by the addon. Keep in mind that this option does not work everytime.

    Now press the "Add Root Constraint" button and you will see that the target armature moves just like your motion capture armature.
    Under the "Add Root Constraint" window there are now options for handling an offset 

    if your target armature may not stay directly on the ground.
    You can also change the influence of the movement by changing the influence slider 

    Keep in mind that the Root Controllers Area only affects the location values of your target armature. The rotation values can be modified in the Pose Controllers Area.

    6.2 Pose Controllers

    With that said we can collapse the "Root Controllers" window and expand the "Pose Controllers" panel. 
    This panel looks a little different from the root controllers menu. This is also going the be the area where most of the editing and connecting will be done. 
    You may have noticed three buttons at the top of the pose controllers menu. They are called "By Selected", "By Active" and "Hide Constraints" and also a funky little button with a spinning arrow as the icon.



    The first two buttons are filtering options. Beneath the buttons there are normally all bones listed that you marked as retarget bones that pass the filtering. 

    "By Selected" - 

    If active, this option shows only the selected retarget bones from your target armature that you select in pose mode

    "By Active" - 

    If active, this option shows only retarget bones with constraints that are related to the active motion capture armature. The active motion capture armature will be later explained in detail under the chapter "Active Motion Capture Armature".

    "Hide Add Constraints" - 
    Hides the "Add Retarget Constraints" menus that allow you to add retarget constraints to your retarget bones. It will be quite annoying to see if you already connected a lot of pose targets, so this button helps you to hide it.

    "Toggle Rotation Mode" - 

    Toggles between delta and animation rotation mode for pose targets rotation options. This will be later explained in detail under the chapter "Fine Tuning Retargeting".

    As already said, beneath these filtering options there are all of your marked pose bones listed that pass the filtering.
    (Important: The list will only show up if you are in pose mode of your target armature)

    If you did not already add a constraint to your respective retarget bone, a search field next to the name should let you select a pose target for this bone just like we did in the root controllers panel.


    The little arrow  next to the auto search button selects your retarget bone.

    If you click on one of the expand buttons in front of the bone name  a menu will appear that lets you connect the corresponding pose target for this bone directly  like we did in the "Root Controllers" panel. This time, the "Add Retarget Contstraint" button will add a copy rotation constraint to the corresponding bone and also auto retarget it to your target armature.

    6.3 Entering Pose Targets

    But for now we will only add the constraints to the input fields and after that, we will batch do this process with another button provided by the addon for all the pose targets at once. To do this, lets collapse the menu again and add all the pose targets that way:

    To make this applying process much easier, the addon gives you some helping options:

    • Use the "Auto Search" button :
      (Note: Using the auto search function does not work everytime but the addon does its best to find the corresponding pose target for your selected retarget bone)

    • Using the "Auto Mirror Pose Target Entries" button :
      (Note: The auto mirror function works perfect if your pose bones and retarget bones are somehow labeled with some kind of prefix or suffix that marks each side. It will try to apply all counterpart input fields that are not already filled with pose targets. Make sure to enter first one side of your pose targets and use this function to let the addon handle the rest)

    • Using the "Check Pose Target" button :
      (Note: If you already entered a pose target to your pose bone you may notice, that the auto search button is replaced with this button . When you press it, you will notice that blender highlights the pose target that you entered. A good idea is to first use the "auto search" button , then check the pose target by using the "check pose target" button  and finally click on the "select retarget bone" button  to see if the match fits. Also I highly recommend to change your motion capture armatures position to rest pose, to make the recognition of the pose targets easier. Remember, you can do this with this button here in the "Motion Capture Armatures" panel)

    So now lets enter all pose targets. If some pose targets are labelled for left and right we can just do one side and I will show you in the next step how to use the "Auto Mirror" function.

    6.4 Controller List Operator

    Once you have entered all of your pose targets, lets take a look at the "Auto Mirror Pose Target Entries" button. 
    For this, we have to expand another subpanel which is called "Controller List Operator".

    This panel is used to apply functions to a lot of pose targets at once, like connecting them to their retarget bones or removing all constraints from the target armature regarding a motion capture armature or even auto applying all pose targets that are not entered already and have a pre or suffixed counterpart. Like in this example:

    Lets just click on the  button and as if by magic all the missing parts got entered.

    6.5 Connecting Pose Targets

    Now lets do what we have waited for all the time now! Connecting our pose targets
    In the "Controller List Operator" panel under the caption "Batch Edit Constraints" there is a checkbox called "Auto Retarget
    I highly recommend that you leave this box checked. It will calculate the orientations of the pose targets automatically everytime you connect a pose target. If you uncheck this, you have to manually reorient your pose targets after connecting.

    With that in mind, we can now press the "Batch Add Constraint" button which will connect all the pose targets to their corresponding retarget bones and auto retargt them correctly.
    (Important: Remember that your target armature has to look in the same direction as your motion capture armature otherwise the auto retargeting process will be incorrect)

    Now your target armature should be reoriented and ready to go for editing

    Keep in mind that this process is completely non-destructive which means, you can easily click on the "Batch Remove Constraints" button and all retarget constraints created by this addon will be deleted for all retarget bones that are shown in the "Pose Controllers List". If you want, you can of course add them again later.

    6.6 Fine Tuning Retargeting

    Even if the auto retarget works normally completely fine, there are may some rotations you want to fine tune for your character. For example the character wears some kind of high shoes or there are intersections that need to be fixed. To do this we can enter the world of rotation modes for pose targets.

    Before we start I want to give you a little insight on how the retarget reorientation is stored in the pose targets.
    If you dont know already about delta rotations, I will give you a quick explanation on it. Otherwise you can just skip this section:

    A quick guide on delta rotations:

    Blender handles rotations for objects, explicitely for animation purposes, in two modes. For example, if you create an arrow that points upwards to the sky, you can rotate it in any direction that you want, but when you reset the rotation, the arrow will point back to the sky. So far so good, but lets say you want it to point to the ground, so in the opposite direction, when you reset its rotation. Thats where delta rotations enter the game. Delta rotations are kind of additional rotations that are, when changed from zero to any value, the objects new base rotations. So lets say we change the delta rotations from our arrow in a way, that it looks to the ground, we could animate it and set its rotation values back to zero and blender would not let him point to the sky but to the ground as we specified it in the deltas. When we reset the delta rotations, then blender would change the pointing position back to the sky again (Thats the advantage over simply applying the rotation). That are delta rotations in a nutshell and they are very important when it comes to this addon, so keep this in mind. 

    If we now take a closer look at the "Pose Controllers" list we can see that something has changed.

    As you can see, there are now several new options for our retarget bones and pose targets. You can either change the influence the pose target has on the bone by using the blue influence slider , or you can add a keyframe for the pose targets rotation by using the keyframe button  and switch between the frames by using the left  and right buttons  next to it (If there are no keyframes, these buttons will be greyed out).
    Also you can use the very powerful "Adjust Pose Target" button  I will explain later in detail.

    For now lets expand the corresponding retarget bone menu by clicking on the expand button before the bone name  . You will notice that there is now a box that is called just like the pose target:

    We can expand this menu again and adjust the X,Y and Z rotation values from the pose target. Keep in mind, that these values only change the animatable rotation values you can reset. When you want to change the retargeting delta rotation values you have to click on this button here at the very right next to the rotation value field. 

    This button is a toggle switch which lets us toggle between the animatable rotations and the delta rotations of the corresponding pose target. That means, rotating the deltas will change our retargeting orientation of the bone. 
    To prevent you from accidentally changing these values, first, the value fields are named with "Delta (Axis)" at the beginning and the toggle switch is highlighted blue to inform you, that you are currently changing the delta rotations for this pose target.

    So if you change these values you should notice a difference in your target armature bones rotation. Adjust these values to your needs and you will be good to go. Dont forget to switch the rotation mode toggle from delta rotation mode  to animatable rotation mode  afterwards by clicking on it.

    If you now change the animatable rotations of your pose target and reset them back to zero, the offset you made in the deltas should be preserved.

    6.7 Creating Presets

    Now that we added all the constraints to our target armature and corrected some delta rotations, its time to create a preset for all upcoming motion capture armatures we want to blend. Of course it would be a massive pain to do all the entering of our pose targets again everytime we add a new motion capture armature. Mocap Blender provides you with a function to save all the retarget bones, their corresponding pose targets and even their delta rotations. 

    To create a preset we have to switch to the "Presets" subpanel of our "Connect Target Controllers" panel:

    Now lets enter a name for our preset in the text input field. I will call my preset mixamo, so I know later that the root bone, all the pose target names and also delta rotation values I created, fit to mixamo motion captures. If you got your motion capture data from anywhere else, simply enter another name. You can create as many presets as you want which will be, once created, available by usign the dropdown menu beneath the text input field.
    (Important: Make sure you added all of your pose targets and connected them before creating a preset. When adding a preset it will save the target armatures root bone name, root pose target name,  location values of the pose targets, retarget bone names, their corresponding pose target names and of course the delta values that are currently on the pose targets. If you did not connect them before creating the preset it will not add the data to the preset!)

    After we entered a name for the preset and clicked on the "Add Preset" button  next to the input field, the preset will be selectable in the dropdown menu beneath our input field
     

    Now the preset appends the corresponding pose targets into the pose target input fields of our corresponding retarget bones everytime when clicking on the "Apply Preset" button .
    It will  append the delta rotations to our already connected pose targets by clicking the "Apply Deltas From Preset" button   and also update the preset if we made some changes to our pose targets or delta rotations by using the "Update Preset" button .

    If we want to delete our preset from the target armature, we can simply use the "Delete Preset" button  which should be self explanatory. 

    You can create as many presets as you want. Any preset will be saved as a custom property on your target armature so no need to save the data externally. If you want to do this anyways, you can simply select your target armature in object mode, switch to your object properties and copy the corresponding string.

    6.8 Active Motion Capture Armature

    Now we have laid the foundation we need, to mix several motion capture armatures together and work with them on a professional level. Another very important thing to know regarding this addon, is the active motion capture armature. It will be fundamental if you load in more than one motion capture armature.

    To set an active motion capture armature, we first need to import a second motion capture file to our project. You can do it like we already did with the first one explained in the chapter "Motion Capture Armatures".
    After you pressed the "Add Motion Capture Armature" button in the "Motion Capture Armatures" panel, your new mocap data should appear in the "Motion Capture Armatures" box under the first one. Also a new "MASTER_TARGET_CONTROLLERS" collection with all the needed pose targets should be available in your outliner.

    Adjust your pose target sizes as you want and then switch to the "Connect Target Controllers" panel again. Now we will take a closer look at the very first section. The "Modify Retargeting" panel:

    Here you can manage the stack order of every motion capture armature and also the influence it has on you target armatures retarget bones. Also a blue checkbox with a white dot  is now available before the name of your newly added motion capture armature. This button defines the active motion capture armature.

    The active motion capture armature is used for the addon to define the active mocap armature you are working with.
    The pose target input fields will only show the pose targets of your active armature and when you want to connect or work with the buttons in general, they will always point to the motion capture armature that is marked as active.

    Another thing you may noticed is the little ghost icon  in front of your newly created motion capture armature. It shows that you havent already added any constraints to your retarget bones regarding this motion capture armature.
    The influence value 
    will affect all the selected pose bone constraint influences regarding the respective motion capture armature. This is needed to blend the different motion capture armatures together.
    In case there aren't any constraints added for the motion capture armature, it will simply show you an error until you add the corresponding ones

    To prevent this, lets just add some constraints for our newly created motion capture armature with the help of our mixamo preset we added recently.

    First make sure that your new armature is marked as active with the blue dot:

    To see the input fields for our retarget bones regarding the active motion capture, we can open up the "Pose Controllers" subpanel again and take a look at our retarget bones. By default the list shows the first constraint that is on each bone and all other constraints below it when you expand the menu. To see the input fields for our active motion capture, where we can insert the pose targets, we have to click on the "By Active Constraints" filter option.


    This will show us all the input fields for the active motion captures pose targets.
    (Note: In case the active motion capture armature has already added constraints to the retarget bones, clicking on the "By Active Constraints" filter, will show us only the constraints regarding the active motion capture armature)

    Now go to the "Presets" submenu and select the mixamo preset.

    Now click on the "Apply Preset" button  and as if by magic, all correct pose targets will be added to the pose target input fields of your pose bones. 
    (Important: Check twice that the addon also added the root bone to the root controllers input field!)

    With that, we can now run our "Batch Add Constraint" button under the "Controller List Operator" subpanel and all the constraints will be added like before.

    And voilà a new motion capture armature has been connected successfully to our target armature.
    You can do this with as many motion capture files as you want, select different pose bones from your target armature and use the influence buttons 
    in the "Modify Retargeting" section to blend them together.

    Another important thing to know is the stack order. It defines, which  motion capture armature is the one visible and which ones are beneath them in the hierarchy. All in all this depends on the constraint hierarchy of every indivdual pose bones "Retarget Constraints" created for the pose targets. The "Move Down and "Move Up buttons will only appear, when at least two motion capture armatures with connected pose targets are available in the scene. 

    They will move every single "Retarget Constraint" of every retarget bone to their corresponding position including the "Root Constraints" so that the hierarchy works correctly. The numbers on the very left (on the image above marked with a red circle) show you the stack order. The smallest number is the motion capture data that will be on top of the others and the lowest number will be the last in the hierarchy. Its the same order like in the modifier or the constraint stack.

    6.9 Adjust Pose Targets 

    There are still some functions which are useful to know and which you will need to get the most out of this addon. To have full control over your pose targets and their movement behaviour you can use a monumental function called the "Adjust Pose Target" operator . This button is a gamechanger for the complete addon and very powerful when it comes to animate and edit your motion capture animations. This button is a so called "Modal Operator" and when you use it, blender will temporarily enter a mode that allows you to make several changes to corresponding pose target, that will be explained now:

    To use the "Adjust Pose Target" operator, go to your "Pose Controllers" subpanel and make sure there are retarget bones available in the "Pose Controllers" list. Now click on the "Adjust Pose Target" button next to the name of your retarget bone and blender will switch to the "Pose Target Mode".


    Basically the operator will rotate your pose targets animatable rotations in a trackball rotation manner without the need to select it first. The pose target that is connected via the constraint for the specific retarget bone will be rotated.
    (Note: Of course you will not see the bone rotating in the viewport if the pose targets constraint is not visible through the hierarchy, the influence is turned down or it is in anyway not noticable when playing back your timeline. Be aware that it will still be rotated when using this operator)

    When the "Adjust Pose Target" operator is active you will notice a description on how it works at the bottom of the 3d view:

    Pressing SPACE - This will reset the animatable rotations of the pose target to zero (For example if you are not satisfied with the rotations you made or the rotations that are already on the pose target)

    Pressing X
     - This will switch the rotation from the z axis to the y axis of your view rotation plane
    (Tip: Switching the rotation from z to y will also work when you already rotated your pose targets in a specific direction. So you can rotate your pose target on y then switch the rotation axis to z rotate, your pose target further and switch to y again without losing your modifications)

    Pressing P - This will turn the "Parent Mode" on and off. The parent mode moves the complete hierarchy of your pose targets from the one on that belongs to the button. I would highly recommend it for hands where the finger pose targets should move with the hand instead of the hand rotating freely without the fingers. The parent mode is by default turned on. 
    (Important: When the parent mode is turned on, all animatable rotation values of the pose targets that it affects will be changed. Keep this in mind if the childrens pose targets have already keyframes on their rotation values. Also switching the parent mode while rotating the pose target is not recommended and result in a shift of your already made rotation.)

    Pressing I - This will keyframe the animatable rotations of all the pose targets that are moving when the parent mode is active. So the complete hierarchy from the pose target on that you used this "Adjust Pose Target" button. 

    Pressing ALT + I - This will remove all the keyframes from the animatable rotations of all the pose targets that are moving when the parent mode is active. So the complete hierarchy from the pose target  on that you used this "Adjust Pose Target" button.

    Pressing LEFT MOUSE BUTTON - This will apply the operator and adopt all the changes you made to the animatable rotation values of the respective pose targets.

    Pressing ESC/ RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON - This will simply end the operator and return the pose targets to their rotations, that were on them, before using this operator.

    Some other operators regarding the adjustation of your pose targets are found under the controller list operators:

    Here are some quick explanations on them although they are very well described when hovering over them.

    Batch Reset Rotation:
    This operator will batch reset the animatable rotations of every pose target regarding the bones you select on your target armature. So if you for example messed up some rotations on the pose targets, select the bones they belong to, click this button and they will be resetted to their default.
    (Important: Take care that you have selected the correct active motion capture)

    Batch Rotation Add To Deltas:
    Using this operator is very straight forward. If you made some corrections on your pose targets on the animatable rotations and want to apply them to the deltas, just select the corresponding bones, check that you selected the correct active armature and press this button. All the animatable rotations will be added to the deltas and the animatable rotations will be zeroed out again. Basically it applies the animatable rotations from the pose targets to the deltas.

    Add  All Keyframes:
    If you want to create keyframes on the current frame without using the keyframe button for every single pose target individually, you will be good to go with this button. It will set a keyframe for all pose targets animatable rotations regarding the active motion capture and the selected corresponding retarget bones of your target armature.
    In short, select some bones of your target armature, rotate their pose targets, click the button and all of their animatable rotations will be keyframed.

    Delete All Keyframes:
    Basically the inverse of the "Add All Keyframes" button.It removes the keyframes on the current frame for the selected bones pose targets instead of adding them. If there aren't any keyframes for them on the current frame it will do nothing.

    Clear All Keyframes:
    Mainly just like the "Delete All Keyframes" button, with the difference, that it deletes not only the keyframes of the current frame but all of them for the selected retarget bones pose targets that belong to the active motion capture armature.


    7 Bake Final Animation

    Finally it's time to bake our self crafted motion capture data to a complete new motion capture animation, that you can import into game engines, other 3d software or whereever you want. 
    Baking is the process of converting the overall motion of our target armature into keyframes. You can use it then as an action or for export. Be aware that you will not be able to modifiy the animation after you baked it.

    To do this, we will take a look at the last panel. It's very easy to understand and straight forward, so this chapter will not take too long.

    Open up the "Bake Animation" panel:

    The "Start Frame" property defines the beginning of the bake and the "End Frame" property its end.

    The "Steps" property will define how many frames will be skipped when baking. Here are some examples:

    Steps 0:

    Steps 2:

    Steps 10:

    Maybe you can say it's kind of the resolution of your bake.

    And finally the "Delete Constraints" checkbox. With this guy checked, Mocap Blender will delete all constraints that are currently on the target armature.
    (Important: When you leave this checkbox unchecked, you will experience the full power of double transformation. Which means your animation will look totally messed up, because the constraints will of course still affect your target armature on top of the keyframes the addon bakes. Anyways, you will keep your retargeting setup on your target armature)

    Finally the "Bake" button  will execute the bake and your new motion capture armature will be ready to go for further exciting projects you have planned! Or perhaps it will be a new motion capture armature you will use for blending? Who knows...

    Respect in case you have read the full documentation. Now you should be equipped with the knowledge to master motion capture data like a pro!

     

    Happy blending and god bless!

    Dev Fund Contributor
    Published 23 days ago
    Blender Version 4.2, 4.1
    Extension Type Legacy Add-on
    License Royalty Free
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