9.5.2

92 • CHAPTER 3
CONFIGURATION • 93
Bones and relative rest pose
FBX les that were saved using an older version of MOTIONBUILDER contain so-called relative rest
poses for the bones. This means that no specic rest pose can be generated in this format (which is
why MOTIONBUILDER cannot convert these les; bones saved in earlier versions than MOTIONBUILDER
3.2 will be maintained in this format). In this case, the importer will try to generate a possible rest
pose based on the animation data of mesh and bones. Unfortunately, this will not work every time.
The Console window will display information as to whether the imported document contains a relative
rest pose.
If the imported skeletons do not look as expected, this might be because of relative rest pose data.
The Use Start Pose As Rest Pose option makes the importer use the start pose of the animation as the
rest pose of the bones. This works for skeletons that are properly aligned with the undeformed mesh
at the start of the animation.
Other information
 The le version of an imported scene always shows 5.0.0. This may change
after MOTIONBUILDER 5.
 Files created with the latest FBX plugins for Maya or 3ds max may contain a
so-called bind pose. The bind pose is currently not supported.
 The top-level objects are always imported in alphabetical order. This is a
feature of the FBX SDK, that cannot be changed at this time.
Troubleshooting
Errors in the position data of the bones / trouble with MOTIONBUILDER 4 les
The MOTIONBUILDER 4 CD contains several FBX les that you may have problems importing. This
is due to the FBX SDK incorrectly converting the default position of the bones for those les. Even
though the les may look ne in MOTIONBUILDER, they won’t appear correctly in 3ds max, Maya or
CINEMA 4D.
The rest position for these bones is, however, correct. For this reason, there is a Keep Rest Pose option.
Enable the option to keep the rest pose and discard the faulty animation data. Alternatively, repair
these damaged les as described here by the FBX support:
“Some of the scenes shipped with MOTIONBUILDER 4.0 were defective, such as
01WalkPoseGAULIX.fbx. What occurs is that Gaulix’s animation is driven by our character constraint
(the character constraint is saved as “active”), not by the animation curve or the default TRS.
“In the faulty samples, the default TRS was not updated by the values of the active constraint at
the moment of the save. The default TRS was left to an intermediate state. It only works well in
MOTIONBUILDER because it’s the only package to evaluate the character constraint.
“To correct your problem, follow these steps: