Stockmoves Tutorials:
Chapter 3. - Maya Importing more Stockmoves data

3.1 Theory

Each time you convert a .UMF file to a scene file of the package of your choice, a new hierarchy gets created. But the nice thing is that all the objects in this hierarchy have the exact same naming. 

What that means is that once you have connected your skeleton to the Stockmoves data, you can import new animation data very quickly. We'll show you how to do it in the following sections. 

3.2 Maya

First of all, go to the plug-in manager and make sure that the animImportExport plugin is loaded.

Open up the Maya ASCII file of the new Stockmoves data. Select All of the Stockmoves elements. Then Select File - Export Selection. Change the file type to animExport and click Export.

Now, open the scene containing the Stockmoves data the you want to update. If you like, you can use the scene from the last tutorial. If for some reason you don't have a scene like that, just load up a scene with the Stockmoves data and imagine your beautiful 3D character.

Now select the Stockmoves elements of the new scene file. Select File > Import. Change the file type to animImport. Browse to the anim file that you want to get the new data from and open it. That's how easy it is to apply new animation data! Because the Stockmoves elements are always named consistently, new animation files can be loaded in without any hassle.

3.3 Maya Trax Editor

The Trax Editor lets you layer and blend motion capture sequences nonlinearly. In this tutorial, we will take four converted Stockmoves files and blend them into one sequence.

First, start with a scene that contains Stockmoves data constrained to a skeleton and 3D model. For this tutorial we will load up a Stockmoves scene and leave it up to you to imagine or create that beautiful character. 

Open up a Maya ASCII file that you converted with the Unica2maya converter. Select the Stockmoves hierarchy and bring up the Trax Editor.

The Trax Editor

What we first have to do is create a character node for the hierarchy. You can either do this in the Trax Editor by selecting Create - Character or from the main menu by selecting Character - Create. Bring up the Create Character Options window. We only want to include the Translation and Rotation Attributes, so make sure that the boxes next to NO Scale, No Visibility, and No Dynamic are checked off. Then click on Create Character.

Excluding Attributes

Next, you will need to create a clip for the character. In the Trax Editor, Select Create - Clip Options. In the options window you can set the start and end frames of the clip and you can either store the clip in the Visor window and remove the keys from the timeline, or you can keep the keys in the timeline for further editing. Since we are just storing the animation, select Put Clip in Visor Only.

Creating a clip

Once the clip is stored in the Visor window, you can load a new anim file into the Stockmoves elements. If you can't remember how to do this, refer back to section 3.2. Repeat the steps for creating a clip for the new anim file. Then put the clip into the Visor window under a different name than the first one. Repeat these steps for each anim file that you want to use in your sequence.

Storing clips in the Visor window

The next step is bringing the clips into the Trax editor. If you have more than one character in your scene, locate the appropriate character node listed in the left side on the Trax Editor. With your middle mouse button, drag a clip from the Visor to the track next to your character. Continue doing this with each clip that you want to use. Once the clips are loaded into the track for your character, you can move, scale, and cycle them.

Adding clips to a character

If you want to blend clips you will need to add another track to your character. To add a track, select your character from the list at the left. In the Trax Editor, select Modify - Add Track. Now you can drag clips to the new track and overlap them in time. To create the blend, select the two clips that you want to blend. Then select Create - Blend. Maya then creates a line that links the two clips together.

Creating a blend

If you want to edit the attributes of the blend, just click on this curve. Then, In the Trax Editor, select View, Graph Anim Curves. This brings up the graph of the blend weight curve in the Graph Editor.

Editing blend attributes

Here's a sample of a little sequence that was done in less than 5 minutes.
play movie (mpg - 250 kb)

A more elaborate example

You can load as many sources as you want and sequence them, loop them, stretch them, make transitions between them, or even blend them again! You can come up with a lot of animation in a small amount of time!