Trax Editor and Motion Capture

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In this video tutorial you will learn something advance about the Trax Editor of Maya. You will run different animation clips at a time by changing their attribute values time by time

In this next half of the lesson animation with trax editor, you effort with a subsequent scene file that contains motion capture data applied to a skeleton.

Motion capture data is created by capturing the movement of an actual human or animal and digitizing it so it can be applied to a 3D animation character. Motion capture data holds key-frame animation. Motion capture data is helpful since it can capture the slight shades of motion and sign that make a character’s actions come into view life-like. Motion capture data can considerably decrease the work related to posing and key-framing your characters.

When creating a clip from motion capture, it is a fine observes to begin by creating a source clip from the whole motion series that keeps out the Da Vinci pose. You can create the clip and save it to the Visor or Outliner straightforwardly without loading it onto a track. You can afterward relapse back to the source clip and load it into a track if essential.

You frequently require more animation of a motion succession than is provided in the motion capture data. for instance, you may require to have a walk cycle that is considerably longer than what was provided in the original file. You can employ the Trax Editor to edit the motion capture data and make clips that can be cycled to create longer animation sequences. When you cycle a clip, the clip is expanded in length with duplicate animation from the original clip over a distinct gap of time.

If you want to cycle a clip, you have to first decide areas within the animation series where the clip does again flawlessly. for instance, if you want to make a walk cycle from the motion capture data, you require to decide the time (frame) where the right foot is placed on the ground, and then move forward in the Time Slider, frame by frame, until you find the next frame where the right foot is placed on the ground in precisely the same (or very alike) way, and then make a clip. The resultant clip will hold two steps of the walking motion. The clip can then be cycled to create a motion that replicates. How flawlessly it cycles depends on the original motion capture data.

In the steps that go after you make a walk cycle from the motion capture data by:

• Creating a clip from the walking piece of the motion capture succession that can be replicated.
• Cycle the clip to make a longer walk series.

Motion capture data can be used in a diversity of methods. You can forward the motion of a character using the same motion capture data. The Redirect tool lets you to change the original animation for a character by altering its path or compass reading at any time during its animation. The Redirect tool does this by offsetting the translation and rotation attributes for the selected character.

For instance, you can alter the start or end point of a character’s animation by redirecting the character’s starting position or by redirecting its motion throughout the animation. You can redirect a character in an obtainable animation progression in the scene or a character linked with a clip within the Trax Editor.

In the steps that go after, you redirect the skeleton to turn to the right while walking. The workflow for the redirection is as follows:

• Scrub forward in the animation to decide a place in the clip where you want the character to turn. A sensible choice is where the ball of the skeleton’s right foot is placed on the ground plane since this precisely simulates how an actual human being might turn.
• Select the whole skeleton. In this instance, selecting the whole skeleton selects it at the root joint (the top node of the skeleton’s hierarchy) Selecting at the root joint makes sure that the whole skeleton gets redirected when the redirection control is applied.
• Make and position a rotation redirection control using the Redirect tool.
• Key-frame an first starting rotation for the redirection control.
• Rotate the redirection control so the skeleton faces the new direction of travel.
• Key-frame the second rotation for the redirection control.