MotionBuilder is professional 3D character animation

Character animation

Character animation is a specialized area of the animation process concerning the animation of one or more characters featured in an animated work. It is usually as one aspect of a larger production and often made to enhance voice acting. The primary role of a Character Animator is to be the...

 software. It is used for Motion capture

Motion capture

Motion capture, motion tracking, or mocap are terms used to describe the process of recording movement and translating that movement on to a digital model. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, and medical applications, and for validation of computer vision and robotics...

 and traditional keyframe animation. MotionBuilder is produced by Autodesk in Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

. It was originally named Filmbox when it was first created by Canadian company Kaydara, and later acquired by Autodesk and renamed to Motionbuilder.

It is used in the production of games, films, and other multimedia projects. MotionBuilder is widely used, for example in mainstream products like Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed is an award-winning historical third person, stealth action-adventure video game developed by Ubisoft for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. The bulk of the game takes place during the Third Crusade, with the plot revolving around a sect known as the Secret Order of...

, Killzone 2, and Avatar.

Functionality includes:

• Real-time display & animation tools
• Facial and Skeletal animation
  Skeletal animation
  Skeletal animation is a technique in computer animation in which a character is represented in two parts: a surface representation used to draw the character and a hierarchical set of interconnected bones used to animate the mesh...
  
  
• A software development kit
  Software development kit
  A software development kit is typically a set of software development tools that allows for the creation of applications for a certain software package, software framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar platform.It may be something as simple...
  
   which exposes functionality through Python
  Python (programming language)
  Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
  
   and C++
  C++
  C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
  
  
• Native FBX
  FBX
  FBX is technology and a file format owned and developed by Autodesk. It is used to provide interoperability between digital content creation applications.-History:...
  
   support which allows interoperability between it and, for example, Maya and 3dsMax
• Ragdoll physics
  Ragdoll physics
  In computer physics engines, ragdoll physics is a type of procedural animation that is often used as a replacement for traditional static death animations.-Introduction:Early video games used manually-created animations for characters' death sequences...
  
  
• Inverse kinematics
  Inverse kinematics
  Inverse kinematics is a subdomain of kinematics, which is of particular interest in robotics and computer animation. In contrast to forward kinematics, which calculates the position of a body after a series of motions, inverse kinematics calculates the motions necessary to achieve a desired...
  
  
• Story timeline editing

The Autodesk FBX

FBX

FBX is technology and a file format owned and developed by Autodesk. It is used to provide interoperability between digital content creation applications.-History:...

 file format (.fbx filename extension

Filename extension

A filename extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file applied to indicate the encoding of its contents or usage....

) for 3D-application data exchange has grown out of this package.

External links

• http://www.autodesk.com/fbx
• http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HNN/is_5_17/ai_86648337