Motionbuilder 2011 is here! This slide shows the major new features and if you click “read more” you can see a full list. I believe the ship date is in April like the other Autodesk products. Stay tuned for more details as I get them!
What’s New in MotionBuilder 2011
Autodesk® MotionBuilder® 2011 3D character animation software includes the following new and enhanced features:
- NVIDIA® PhysX® plug-in enables better creation of rag-doll simulations.
- Improved animation layers match the behavior of those in Maya 2009 and higher, and offer better interoperability.
- Skinned characters play back faster by using the computing power of the GPU.
- Updated native Autodesk® FBX® 2011 format support helps eliminate extra translation steps.
- Expanded Mocap samples provide access to data for various human body types and motion to help bring characters to life.
Detailed Features
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 version of 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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