Using Rocketbox Characters

Many Golaem Crowd users like the Rocketbox characters, reknown for their quality and large diversity of models and animations. It is pretty straightforward to import them in Golaem Crowd, but there are a few tricks involved.

Rockebox characters are usually provided for Max and/or Maya. If you already have a Maya character, you can skip the first part.

Exporting from 3DSMax

We will use a FBX file to transfer the character from Max to Maya. As usual, a FBX transfer is not as straigtforward as it should be and some precautions should be taken.

1. The character meshes are stored in their own layers, which are given the same name as the mesh. Maya will artificially rename the mesh when loading the FBX which will be complicating the asset management step. The best way to avoid it, is to put each mesh in the default layer, and delete the source layers.

  • Open the Layers Manager (Tools/Manage Layers menu)
  • Expand mesh layer.
  • Right click on the mesh and choose "select"
  • Right-click on the default layer, and choose "Add selected object"
  • Delete the source mesh layer


The final layers arrangement

2. Optionally, you may want to load an animation and export it as well. Just select the root of the character and load a .bip file


Loading a Bip animation file

3. Export the character as a FBX file. If you need to keep animation, do not forget to check "Bake Animation" in the final export dialog.


 

4. Open Maya and import your .fbx file

 

Loading the rig

1. Select the root of the character (most likely bip01)

2. Open the Skeleton Motion Converter

3. Depending on how you imported the character, there is no bind pose. The best way to load the rig is to select the "current values" detection mode.


The dectected skeleton in current values mode

4. Check the preview and make sure you get a valid detection, then export the skeleton file

5. Go to the "Skeleton Mapping" tab. The mapping should have been detected automatically, just export it


Automatically detected mapping

 

Creating assets file

1. Open the Asset Manager and select the character root in the ouliner (bip01)

2. Click on the "+" button and create a character (e.g. policeman)

3. Select the created character in the asset manager, and the mesh you would like to use in the outliner (most likely the "hiPoly" one, but you may want to create different level of details as described here). Click on the "+" button, and create an asset group (e.g. fullbody)

4. In the asset manager, check "Show selection in Maya" and select the created character (e.g. policeman). Click on the "Export FBX" button and save your .fbx file.

5. Select the bounding box and set correct bounds in the attribute editor

6. Go to the rendering tab, and click on the "+" button to create a new rendering type (e.g. policeman)

7. Select the created rendering type, and click on the "+" button again to add the "fullbody" asset group

8. Save the .cam file

 

Using the created character

You can check our tutorials and use the created characters as you would use a character from the samples or the character pack.

However as Rocketbox characters are built using meters (instead of centimeters, which is the default Golaem Crowd scale), you will probably need to scale them.

The best way to do that is to use the CrowdField scale parameters, and dividing the default value by 100 (meter to cm conversion)


The CrowdField attributes

Here is a facial animation demo that we created using Rocketbox characters: