Hello everyone,

I was wondering if there's anyone experienced with Animations in Maya or any other modelling/animating software, if you could enlighten me. Here's my question. So I created a rigged model. There are many animations on internet. I was wondering, if it's possible to download that animation in .fbx file, for example, and import that .fbx animation in Maya to my scene, where I would use that animation to animate my rigged model.

Is it possible? If it is, do you know of any tutorial, that I could use to learn how to do it? Or any tips, advice would be helpful.

There are a few issues with your concept.

1) Animations are tied to bones (or baked into a model itself)

2) If you download an animation that is tied to bones the model you are making needs to have the same bone system or you will have to rework weights

3) If the animations are baked in you will have no way of moving them over (that I know of)

To solve your problem you could get the bones from the animated fbx file and convert those over. When doing this you would need to unbind the current mesh (assuming it has one) and then rebind your mesh to that bone structure. Even after that is done you will almost certainly have to re-weight the mesh to the bones so that it looks proper when animating. I would need to see an example of what you are talking about to be certain, but from the information listed this is what you must do.

I can also give you a better idea of how to do this if I know exactly what it is you are trying to do.

NOTE: There are services online that provide you with an easy solution for this. You can check out https://www.mixamo.com/ for getting your mesh to animate but at a price.

I am still looking for a source of combat animations (punch, kick, double punch, spinning kick, etc), free if possible. Do u know of any .fbx animation database, or mocap data database, where I could easily get any material to start my work with?

Or I was thinking about borrowing a kinect and record the mocap data myself.. I think I saw a tutorial on youtube:

They recorded markerless mocap data using kinect some software called ipisoft. Do u have any experience with this?

You could record the mocap data but to do so you will still need to weight and setup the bones. This will solve some of your animation issues for sure though.

You should know, that animation have often multiple layers of skeletons. A common way is to define a skeleton for the deformation of the skin (used in-game) and a layer of drivers/targets (and a layer for rag-dolls etc.). Both layers are then connected by constrains. The trick is, that you will only animate the drivers which on the other hand will animate the real deformation skeleton through the constrains. That has several advantages, the most import is, that you can modify the underlying deformation skeleton without loosing your animation, because the driver skeleton does not change.

You can utilize this to some degree when importing motion capture data, try something like this:

1. Build your deformation skeleton and bind it to the skin.

2. Import your motion capture data.

3. Add constrains, so that your deformation skeleton will follow the motrion capture data. You don't need to map all bones, a very simple startup would be to use the feets, hands, head and torso, add more targets to refine the quality.

4. Tweak the animation by manipulating the drivers, not the deformation skeleton !

Thought, defining working constrains is an art itself, a reason that you find artists in game studios with the sole task to create rigs, so it will not be an easy task. Best to use motion capture data which could be mapped more or less 1:1 on your skeleton.

Thank you both for your advices. I'll be sure to study up. I'll let you guys know if something exciting happens :)