Sending 3ds Max Scenes to MotionBuilder

This tutorial guides you through the procedures necessary to create a biped in 3ds Max, send a 3ds Max skeleton, biped, and character to MotionBuilder and prepare them for animation, animate a 3ds Max character in MotionBuilder and send the animated 3ds Max character back to 3ds Max as a fully-editable animated character.

The tutorial covers the following three kinds of animatable skeletons that originate from 3ds Max:

• Conventional 3ds Max bone system skeleton
• Biped system skeleton
• Skinned character with skeleton

The tutorial shows you how to:

• Send two kinds of 3ds Max skeletons and a 3ds Max character to MotionBuilder
• Characterize and add a Control rig to the 3ds Max skeletons and character in MotionBuilder
• Animate the 3ds Max character in MotionBuilder and send it back to 3ds Max

The tutorial was written using the 3ds Max software version 2014 and the MotionBuilder software version 2020.

Note: Although the procedures in this tutorial use the MotionBuilder keyboard shortcuts, you can use the 3ds Max keyboard shortcuts in MotionBuilder if you select Settings Keyboard Configuration 3ds Max from the MotionBuilder menu bar. See the MotionBuilder 3ds Max keyboard shortcuts in the Keyboard Shortcuts chapter of the MotionBuilder Help.

About frame rates

MotionBuilder adopts the native frame rate used in files imported from other software.

If you send a skeleton from 3ds Max to MotionBuilder, MotionBuilder changes its default frame rate of 24 frames per second (FPS) to match the frame rate of the 3ds Max file (30 FPS) when the file is imported into MotionBuilder.

Important: MotionBuilder retains the new frame rate (30 FPS) as the default unless you restore it to its native frame rate of 24 FPS.

For example, if you create a 90-frame animation for video, using an NTSC frame rate of 30 frames per second, the result will be three seconds of animation. If you later need to output to PAL video (at 25 frames per second), you can switch to the PAL frame rate. The 90 frames are converted to 75, and produce the same total animation time with a different number of frames. You can later switch back to NTSC frame rate to restore the original 90 frames of animation.

You can change the frame rate for your MotionBuilder output at any time, outputting the correct number of frames to maintain the correct playback speed for your animation, without losing animation data.