Autodesk MotionBuilder 2011 software delivers features that enable it to integrate more smoothly and reliably into production pipelines. With extended animation layers that closely match those in Autodesk Maya 2011 software, a more consistent method for handling materials, and native support for Autodesk FBX 2011 asset exchange technology, artists will find it easier to use MotionBuilder 2011 alongside certain other products. In addition, skinning and blendshape deformations are now calculated on the GPU, the in-viewport experience is significantly more interactive, and playback many times faster, while the Story Tool offers greater stability and performance.

Top Features and Benefits

GPU-Calculated Skin and Blendshape Deformers
Using the GPU (Graphical Processing Unit) to help calculate skinning and blendshape deformations yields significantly faster performance, providing a more interactive in-viewport experience and much faster playback.

Animation Layers Updates
An expanded animation layer toolset offers new capabilities to rename, mute, solo, and merge layers, and blend them with variable weighting. In addition to providing more control and greater flexibility in MotionBuilder, the toolset now more closely matches the behavior of that in Maya, helping improve interoperability.

Animation Layers Update in MotionBuilder 2011

Integrated Nvidia PhysX Plug-in
Rigid-body and ragdoll simulations can now be calculated using the Nvidia PhysX plug-in, a feature of particular benefit to games customers using the PhysX middleware.

Python Batch Tool
The batch tool helps eliminate repetitive tasks by enabling a set of processes to be automatically applied to multiple files, has been rewritten in Python programming language, enabling it to be more readily customized or extended.

Native FBX 2011 Support
MotionBuilder now supports the most recent version of Autodesk FBX asset exchange technology, helping improve interoperability and provide support for more features.

Story Tool Re-architecture
Artists working on pre-visualization, or laying out storyboards or multiple cameras, will appreciate improvements to the stability and performance of the Story Tool as a result of under-the-hood work to make it part of the core MotionBuilder engine.

New Material Handling Method
A new method for handling materials that is aligned with the FBX material model provides better consistency with content creation applications and games engines, increasing ease-of-use and helping improve interoperability.

Material Handling in MotionBuilder 2011

Motion Capture on Bones
Enhancements to the MotionBuilder Open Reality SDK enable developers to bypass the Actor solve to directly access data on the character’s bones.

Enhanced SDK Documentation
Consolidated documentation and new examples help new users to become familiar with the MotionBuilder SDK.

Perforce Support
A new plug-in provides support for users of Perforce asset management systems.