File I/O Support

This release uses the FBX SDK 7.0 as the mechanism to handle file I/O, thus allowing optimum compatibility with other Autodesk 3D software products such as Autodesk® Maya® and Autodesk® 3ds Max®. The following summarizes the changes to the file I/O:

• You can save (export) .fbx files created in MotionBuilder 2011 to an earlier version of FBX by choosing from the main menu Python Tools > FBX
• Export > FBX 2010. Saving MotionBuilder 2011 to FBX version 2010 ensures compatibility with Autodesk version 2010 applications.
• You can now choose File > Open to open or import any .fbx file. As a result, the File menu options “FBX Plug-in Import” and “Import” have been removed.
• You can now choose File > Merge to merge any.fbx file. As a result, the File menu option “FBX Plug-in Merge” has been removed.
• You now import motion capture files via File > Motion File Import. As a result, the File menu option “Import” has been removed.
• You now export motion capture files via File > Motion File Export. As a result, the File menu option “Export” has been removed.

Animation Layers Enhancements
The new Animation Layer editor replaces the Layer pane in the FCurves window. The Animation Layer editor lets you create, select, and merge layers of animation. The Animation Layer editor lets you manage layer order, and parent, mute, solo, and lock layers. It also lets you select various layer blending modes, such as Additive and Override, and layer accumulation modes. Each layer has a Weight value that can be changed and animated to determine how much of its animation plays in the result animation.

Animation Layers Naming Convention
The default layer naming convention for layers in the Animation Layer editor has been updated to ensure proper interoperability between the MotionBuilder and Maya software. As a result, the “Base Layer” is now named “BaseAnimation”, the “Layer 1” is now named “AnimLayer1”, and layers you create are now named “AnimLayer2” and so on.

Materials and Textures Enhancements
The material, texture, and shader assets are now organized differently in the Asset browser. To create a material, you now drag it from the Shading Elements folder in the Asset browser.

Materials
The Material settings include new properties and settings. The new properties are Displacement, Bump Map, and Normal Map. The new settings include the Intensity (or Factor) settings and the Texture list and button. The Intensity settings let you adjust and animate each property's influence on the material result. The Texture list and button let you attach and detach textures to each property.

The Material settings can be sorted into two categories: basic and advanced settings. The advanced settings require a corresponding shader to display the result in the Viewer. For example, to see the result of a texture attached to the Bump Map property, a Bump Map or Dynamic Lighting shader needs to be applied to the model. Some advanced settings, such as Specularity textures or Reflectivity RGB, need custom shaders created using the Open Reality SDK to display the result in the Viewer. You can use the Advanced Mode option to disable or activate the advanced settings.

When a model has more than one material (such as a Multi/Sub-Object material) applied to it when you import it from a 3D modeling software, such as Autodesk 3ds Max, these materials are now listed in the Scene browser and are attached to the model. MotionBuilder includes all the materials imported with the model, and assumes that material has a corresponding polygon region (also called material IDs) on the model. You can modify, replace, or delete materials applied to regions. However these regions are set in the 3D modeling software and cannot be altered using MotionBuilder.
 

Textures
The material, texture, and shader assets are now organized differently in the Asset browser. In addition, textures are now sorted under two categories: textures to be used with materials, and Global Lighting textures.In previous versions of MotionBuilder, the Texture asset was attached directly to the model. Now, textures, meant to add color and detail to a model's appearance, are attached to a material property, such as the Diffuse and Bump Map properties.

Materials and Textures Handling
The handling of materials and textures has been updated to support the FBX geometry model and provide better interoperability with Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max, and to improve shader performance. The texture / material model now allows transport of currently-dropped channels, and all materials now contain mapping channels where you can apply textures to different components of the material. This change impacts the SDK as follows: FBFastTessellator has been removed.

Python Tools Menu
You can now access the Python tools via the Python Tools menu.

The Python tools now include a batch tool script and an FBX Export option to save MotionBuilder 2011 files to FBX 2010.

Joint Physical Property Enhancements
Two options have been added to the Joints solver: Disable collision and Creation type.

Disable Collision
The Disable collision option gives you the ability to deactivate the collision effect during a solve, letting you control whether the Rigid body objects strike or pass through each other. When you activate the Disable collision option, the Rigid body objects affected by the solve collide and react with each other. When you disable the Disable Collision option, the Rigid Body object reaction to the Joint solve is not affected if it collides with another Rigid body object. This ability to disable the collision behavior of the solve is useful when you want joint behavior from Rigid Body objects but do not want them to collide.

Creation Type
The Creation type menu has been added to the Joints solver to let you choose between the default Joint solve behavior or the ability to activate the Joint behavior only upon setting the solve to live. In previous versions of MotionBuilder, joint behavior was created only at the moment when the solver is set to Online. Because of this, you must position the affected rigid body objects correctly at the moment of solver initialization.

Dynamic Lighting Shader
Two settings have been added to the Dynamic Lighting shader: Transparency Factor slider and the Affecting Lights field.

Transparency Factor slider
The Transparency Factor slider lets you manipulate or animate the Transparency value for the Dynamic Lighting shader. The default setting is 1.00. A material's Transparency settings can also interact with the Dynamic Lighting shader's Transparency values and affect the result.

Affecting Lights field
The Affecting Lights field lets you specify which lights illuminate the object to which the Dynamic Lighting shader is applied. Since there is a maximum of eight lights available in any given MotionBuilder scene due to OpenGL limitations, you can use the Affecting Lights field to add lights to the scene.

Time-independent Keyframes
Changes have been made to preserve the Bezier-Auto and Bezier-Clamp key types when transferring animation in a Maya-MotionBuilder-Maya workflow. Bezier-Auto and Bezier-Clamp keyframe types have a new "time-independent" mode. When exported to Maya, the new "time-independent" key types are not converted to "Fixed" (User) keys. They preserve instead the exact same key type (Maya exact equivalent). So when "time-independent", Bezier-Auto keys are Spline in Maya, and Clamp keys are Clamp keys in Maya.

Camera Back/Front Plate
Image and video files are no longer attached to a camera's Back Plate or Front Plate. To apply an image or video clip to a camera's Back or Front Plate, drag a texture onto the camera or into the Background Texture field in the Camera settings.

New Default Layouts
The default layouts have been revisited and updated. In addition, new default layouts have been added to support screen resolutions of 1920 x 1200. The updates to the default layouts include the following:

• The Dynamic Editor window is replaced by the Animation Layer editor.
• The Navigator window in the Editing layout no longer includes the Motion Blend tab. You can however access the Motion Blend window via the MotionBuilder Window menu.
• The Creation, Animation, Editing, Preview, and Story default layouts now include a default layout configuration for monitors with a display resolution of 1920x1200.

Motion Capture on Bones
Motion capture sensor data can now be associated directly in the motion capture hardware with a character's skeleton nodes. This mechanism is demonstrated by the new sample Skeleton mocap: deviceskeleton.

Python Batch Tool Script
There is a new Python-UI-based batch tool script. The Python code (BatchTool.py) can be found in the MotionBuilder root directory under the
bin\config\PythonStartup\ folder.

New FBFCurve Functions
With FBFCurve::KeyDelete you can delete keys within an index range, which is must faster than multiple uses of FBFCurve::KeyRemove.

Embedding .cgfx and .dds Files
When saving a file, enabling the Embed Medias option in the Save File dialog box now embeds .cgfx and .dds files in the .fbx file. When you reopen the file with the embedded media, the .cgfx and .dds files are extracted to an .fbm folder and the path in the CgFX shader settings is updated to point to this
.fbm folder.

New Shape Editing Interface
The shape editing interface is now exposed to ORSDK & Python.

New function FBComponent::HardSelect()
In the Viewer or Navigator this both selects and item and shows it in the right pane, ready for the user to edit.

New Sample Code
FBKeyingGroupLocal.py: shows how to create a cube and add translation, rotation and scaling properties of the cube into a custom keying group.

Story Tool Optimization
The Story tool evaluation is now part of the MotionBuilder engine.

Updated Qt Support
This release of MotionBuilder supports Qt™ version 4.5.2.

Updated Python Support
The MotionBuilder libraries are upgraded to Python® version 2.6.4 (released in October 2009) – the same version used in the latest Autodesk Maya product. This release (as the previous release) of the MotionBuilder software includes the entire Python Package – a benefit to users who no longer need to download the entire package from http://www.python.org to make use of specific functions that ship with the standard Python install.

NVIDIA PhysX Support
This release support the NVIDIA® PhysX® solver plug-in.

Perforce Support
This release supports Perforce®.

Customer Involvement Program Support
This release enables you to preview your CIP data.

Windows 7 Support
This release of MotionBuilder is supported on the Microsoft Windows® 7 Professional on 64-bit Operating Systems (OS).

IPv6 Support
This release supports the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6, the successor of IPv4). IPv6 supports the use of a 128-bit address whereas IPv4 supports only the use of a 32-bit address.