# MotionBuilder Reviews **Vendor:** Autodesk **Category:** [Animation Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/animation) **Average Rating:** 4.1/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 17 ## About MotionBuilder 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software and services. ## MotionBuilder Reviews ### 1. Using Motion Builder with Vicon **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Animation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 08, 2022 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** Motion Builder is easy to pick up with some tutorials be it online or with someone beside you! The functions are simple and while there are some complex steps to do to get your character linked to vicon, with practice it becomes easy! **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** It, unfortunately, crashes randomly even though we only have one character on set. Not sure how the crashes can be fixed, but hopefully the reports sent in will help to give more information on fixing the crashing. **Recommendations to others considering MotionBuilder:** Have a look at your needs before committing! **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Currently not using Motion Builder in a business. I was using it in an environment that does not make profit. However, MotionBuilder makes things very easy to record what I need on the go. ### 2. Best mocap suit for creating games **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 23, 2021 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** Motionbuilder has the best tools available to streamline the work flow of any gaming studio be it capturing the mocap and importing into mobu which makes the process easy and the format support of this software is really good **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** I hope they can fix the issues that can hamper the file.. Many times the software force closes when using character creation window and when using constrains system **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am easily finishing the work that i have for creating animation with the help of story tool and re targeting of animations on different characters which is quite useful to finish the work fast ### 3. AVTpro's Motionbuilder Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alonzo V. | VFX Producer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 03, 2019 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** MotionBuilder is one of my favorite apps. Affectionately known as "Mobu" (Moo-boo) was created by an Oscar award winning team back in 2003. It's very mature, and stable app that falls in the Autodesk suite of tools as a real-time Motion Capture. It was used for AVATAR . There really isn't anything better on the market for fast, ease of use, humanoid and quadruped "Motion Capture/ MoCap". I also love it for keyframing but with the amount of free MoCap" available that use .FBX animation file transfer standard, I often only have to tweak the mocap with a few keyframes. However, it is the best "real-time" animator. Real time animation is something you can't understand until you experience it. MotionBuilder FBX allows MoCap data from most if not all animation apps via FBX. Mobu uses something called HumanIK or HIK for short. HIK allows instant rigging of most bipedal character with an very intuitive yet powerful rig. So your character model can be rigged and animated in less than an hour with an Auto-Rigger like Mixamo, or Maya Quick Rig and motion can be drag/dropped and you have a performance for games or films. This is a life-save for those who need to get things animated quickly or have already put a lot of energy in other parts of the process, like modeling and texturing. **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** Being a Mac User I dislike like MotionBuilder being discontinued after version 7.5. Probably over ten years ago, but Mobu is so useful I continued to used it on the Mac and only switched to Window in BootCamp when I was in full production. **Recommendations to others considering MotionBuilder:** Eventhough there is a lot of free training on YouTube, get Pluralsight or a trainer. **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** EvenThough I own an OptiTrack MoCap system for performance capture, I use MotionBuilder even without MocCap and with regular keyframes. I also use it with Endorphin, a now discontinued Ragdoll simulator, so I can produce very physics-based performances with keyframing. I'm the first vendor to use the local University robotics Mocap lab for human animation. So I would able to put on a MoCap suit, generate animation C3D optical marker files and format my captured body movements to a Maya character with MotionBuilder. So eventhough I have a OptiTrack system, the school has a Vicon capture volumes but both setups worked with MotionBuilders Actor for HumanIK Control Rigs. This solved a huge expensive problem for the University that only used tracking markers instead of an expensive mocap formatting software. ### 4. Motion builder is best software to do animation **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alok H. | 3D Map Modeller - II / 3D Artist / CG Generalist / Game Assets Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 05, 2020 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** Best in the industry realtime 3D engine, used to generate and finetune movements in animation, manipulate captured data, and we can get best animation results. **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** Well, I dont found any of its disadvantages, and its a good thing. There are some other same kind of softwares, I found this one is just best. **Recommendations to others considering MotionBuilder:** Motion builder is Autodesk's best product if you want to mation capture from video footages and manipulate and finetune to apply on your 3D characters. **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Problem solved using motion builder is real time character movements can be tweaked and finetune to expected animation results. ### 5. 3D character animation software **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 07, 2020 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** Autodesk MotionBuilder software streamlines the process of animating game characters through a combination of real-time architecture, animation layers and multimedia non-linear editing functionality. **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** 1st if all, it’s a very expensive software; Also, some parts of the interface are very difficult to read; **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** MotionBuilder is built on a real-time display architecture, which allows you to work without the need to waste time generating previews of the produced animations. To allow the production of quality animations, a full list of tools is available to create animations by advanced keyframes and layered animations. ### 6. Very handy for mocap animators **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Simone G. | Rigger - Animatore - Animatore tecnico, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 30, 2019 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** It's quite simple to use and there are some tutorials that explain many features. You can retarget animations easily and effectively, also you can clean and refine mocaps directly over the baked joints by adding animation layers. The rigging system is very flexible, rigs have an hybrid ik/fk system without the classic switches, this allows you to modify animations without spending hours to understand how to switch between ik and fk smoothly. It's very stable and reliable. **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** The interface is a bit poor, snapping and changing the layout are limited. For example you can't have one viewport on a dedicated screen and another viewport integrated with the main layout (just like Maya with the "tear off" option), you must keep X viewports all inside the same window and put them all togheter on the other screen. You can't resize the views and you can't fix the ratio of the views, this is very bad. **Recommendations to others considering MotionBuilder:** It's very handful if you want to become a complete animator. **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Fast retarget and mocap refine, it manages universal fbx files. ### 7. An impressive software, but it requires extensive knowledge to be useful. **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** David C. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 20, 2018 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** Compatibility of the software with the Microsoft Kinect device through a plug-in. In the hands of experts, exceptional results are achieved. Models so realistic that sometimes it is difficult to distinguish them from real images. **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** Very complex to use. High hardware requirements. It is very possible that the equipment you have may not be able to run this application properly, especially regarding the graphics card. Little compatibility with other software. It is very costly to successfully complete a project with this application. Unless you work in a company specialized in 3D design and animation, you will need to hire external personnel. **Recommendations to others considering MotionBuilder:** Ensure to have the appropriate staff and equipment before embarking on a project that uses this application. **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used it specifically in a project where you intended to develop 3D models for medical staff to use during their training, communication with the patient, and assistance tasks. ### 8. Great Software for Mocap Animation **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Printing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 19, 2018 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** Using Motionbuilder, although daunting, comes easily for someone with experience with other Autodesk Applications. When used in combination with other software, it is excellent for interpreting mocap data and applying it to models. **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** As with any complex animation software, Motionbuilder has steep learning curve. I don't know if that is able to be remedied by anything other than industry experience, but having a more robust platform for learning would be a step in the right direction. **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Speed and quality are always the primary factors in a marketing and product based industry. Having tools that help increase speed and with higher quality than not only other software, but even previous iterations of this software are paramount. ### 9. Easy to Integrate in Your Highend Animation Workflow **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Christopher K. | Producer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 08, 2017 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** As a long time 3DS Max/Maya user, I love how easy it is to integrate Motionbuilder into our pipeline. Motionbuilder has a single step workflow for importing/exporting assets (via FBX) from one Autodesk program to the next which is smooth and fluid. The ability to work seamlessly from one program to another is vital for meeting deadlines and keeping clients happy. In the cases where motion capture is needed, Motionbuilder excels because of its highly flexible Performance Capture ability. This is primarily because Motionbuilder has long been the standard for most motion capture solutions, through a robust sdk and architecture. It allows users to easily calibrate and capture unique facial and body animations and fine-tune the animation to match the artist's vision. **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** Over the years, Motionbuilder has had some of its key features duplicated in other Autodesk software such as Maya. Because of this, certain tasks that once required a tool like Motionbuilder specifically (like re-targeting and quick rigging) are now employed by the other members of the Autodesk family. Motionbuilder would benefit from a larger library of pre-built animations. That would be extremely useful to artists, who currently use closed systems such as iClone. Motionbuilder has seeded the end to end animation solution to Maya on the high-end and to iClone on the lower end (even though the price of iClone is closer to Maya than one would think). Lastly, the UI needs a complete redesign that improves its ease of use and makes its comparable to 3DS Max and Maya. **Recommendations to others considering MotionBuilder:** Motionbuilder is a great software for dedicated MoCap and editing Character Animators. Works with for those who seek an end-to-end solution though, iClone or others like it might be a better solution. **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Being a Film Producer in Post, having an effective MoCap workflow for my team members allows us to be able to animate and export high quality animation clips easily. Which in turn, shaves time off our turnaround and allows us to meet tight deadlines. Our pipeline, which includes an older Infrared Camera Tracking system, a Kinect based solution and a newer trackerless body suit solution which all work well with Motionbuiilder through plugins. ### 10. The mature standard for Performance Capture and Animation **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eric M. | Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 23, 2016 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** A user of Motionbuilder since its inception under the Kaydara banner, I've always loved Motionbuilder for its laser focus and incredible real-time engine (That could run highly dense datasets in close to real-time long before GPU or Multi Cores became the order of the day.) If you are doing high end or serious game Performance Capture, what's not to like about Motionbuilder? The first true non-linear cg animation solution, Motionbuilder has really added any new or significant improvements in 2016, more importantly, it has shared even more of its features with Maya and Max. Enhanced HumanIK tools in both suites have become easy and more robust with new solvers, all built on MB's HumanIK standard. Today, several good tools are available on the Indie market for Motion Capture. Using a Kinect, software such as IPISoft and IClone can do awesome motion capture and some cases match or exceed what Motionbuilder can do. What's best about Motionbuilder is it's Performance Capture not just motion capture. It allows the artist to combine not only capture facial, body and re-target stock motion clips, it allows them to combine, trim, edits, adjust curves and graphs thus fine-tuning the animation to match the individual characters perceived personality. From Facial capture to tracking of high end Actor capture like Avatar (In fact Motionbuilder was the major pipeline solution for capturing the actors performances and transferring them to the 3D characters). The Story Editor functions as a Full Pre-Vis/Storyboarding environment inside of the Animation software. If you are a Live Action Narrative Storyteller, this tool allows you to build virtual cameras in the sequence you want, place virtual actors and drop motion clips into the scene. This creates an easy Storyboarding tool for getting approval and sign-off on your scenes. To that end, Motionbuilder is infinitely customizable via the powerful scripting language Python. This and a very accessible SDK, gives the user a lot of power in creating plugins and ports to it's open environment. Motionbuilder can support control from Industry cameras such as Vicon or OpiTrack or low cost options such as the Kinect. Motionbuilder can even be driven in realtime by MIDI, LTC Timecode or GPI Triggers (This allows real-time performance and driving of CG elements. Think a CG character interacting with a live person in a presentation (via triggers) or performing certain task via a MIDI input. The killer option that puts Motionbuilder in a class by itself is it's support for Virtual Cameras. This allows the user (Director, Cameraman) to virtually control the camera in 3D space. Using tools such as Optirack's Insight VCS Pro with it's Motionbuilder plugin, an filmmaker can organically operate a real camera rig, while watching the 3D scene in real time. This bring unprecedented realism and creativity to any project. **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** Motionbuilder has seen a substantial upgrade in years. In fact, most of it's core functionality has been duplicated in Maya, so while it is still king for working with FBX and assembling and editing layered animation, task such as re-targeting, quick rigging via HumanIK have long sense been in it's bigger, more famous brethren. The workflow for dealing with BVH motion capture needs to change. Back when FBX was a fledgling file format that Autodesk needed to promote over the industry standard, making an artist import a skeleton, rig it then re-target to your asset. FBX is king now, BVH motion files should be drag and drop and work in the Story Editor. In the Story editor, Autodesk should match the Story environment in Maya thus making direct connection of Storyboarded Story content immediately available in Maya. Lastly, the UI needs an overhaul as it hasn't changed much since it was in the hands of Kaydara. (This won't happen, but I'd like to see it). **Recommendations to others considering MotionBuilder:** If you need to edit or layer fbx or motion captured clips, Motionbuilder is your tool. **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** As an instructor in Motion Capture, Motionbuilder allows me to seamlessly work with motion captured clips of BVH and FBX motions. Layering and editing the clips to create new performance clips. ### 11. MotionBuilder has been detrimental for my creative team when working with our clients. **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 17, 2018 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** The learning curve is FAST and when you're working with new products can be so important to productivity! **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** The controls are slightly different than past software. **Recommendations to others considering MotionBuilder:** Take advantage of their learning tools **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** It really does boost productivity which is vital when you're running a small business team. ### 12. How easy to start, eh? **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kielse N. | Development Team Manager, Computer Games, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 20, 2016 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** Autodesk can provide a full version for you to start using and see if their software are good for you. If you like, you can buy. The tutorials are great to have a fast start and if you are a game developer is great to use MotionBuilder and just export the FBX with animations to Unity, for example. **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** It is a new software with a different user interface. You need to remember if you need to hold Shift and drag or hold Alt and drag to change the zoom or the angle of view. Unfortunately Unity, the software that I used most frequently, has a different UI controls, so I had a bit of trouble start using MotionBuilder. **Recommendations to others considering MotionBuilder:** Try first and if you like, buy it. **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use for game development and Animation. You can use your 3D assets, import to MotionBuilder, start creating your Animation Clip and export everything you need in one FBX to use it on Unity. On unity you can create an Animator Controller and simply drag and drop all animations clips you created to have several states. ### 13. the best animation packages **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alessio V. | 3D Artist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 02, 2017 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** The Full Body IK rigging system and the very easy way to capture motion and retarget it to another character, have a flexible features in motion capture workflows allow you to assign markers directly and an improved IK solver helps create higher-quality animation, plug-in for Kinect that can help capture body movements for use in the software, and its available for Linux. **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** MotionBuilder havent an own skinning process, I prefere have more friendly user interface tools for animation like maya, some time you must use complementary software. **Recommendations to others considering MotionBuilder:** Try first for some day, and only if you like, buy it. **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** I could create custom animations for some character so fast and with kinect ### 14. Motionbulder the best software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vadim M. | 3D Animator | 3D Designer, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** Most of all I like in Motion Builder rapid creation control rig, which you can load into Unity or unreal engine. Also in mitoin buedder very convenient system of constraints. Just a few clicks you can assign any object to your character or create a procedural of constraints. Also in Motion Builder is very easy curves of the panel on which you will be able to quickly fix the noise of your animation, there can be smoothed automatically the noise using one of a plurality of filters provided. in Motion Builder have the opportunity to preview your animation (rendering). Using built-in tools, you can make and set a beautiful scene, since there motionbulder light sources, materials, shaders, and more **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** in Motion builder like everything, the only thing that would have added rapidly-customizable facial rig. Also physics poor. ery little information of constraints. I would like more difficult tutorials in this regard. also I would like more examples already configured scenes and characters, that the user could not only theoretically but also practically make out the features of the program and tools **Recommendations to others considering MotionBuilder:** This is a great software for character animation **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Motion Builder is used to create animation game. In a short time you can collect various animations in one scene and switch characters in a single click (creation cutscene with crowds of characters, objects, equipment) ### 15. Setting the industry standard for love motion capturing. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Games | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2016 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** Incredible integration with the rest of the autodesk suite, the real time monitoring of our cameras and trackers helps immensely with getting the right take straight away, instead of wasting time reviewing and dealing with exceedingly long mocap sessions. **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** Limitation to bipedal movements. Would love to be able to capture animals without extra steps. **Recommendations to others considering MotionBuilder:** Know the limitations of the software before going in. If you're capturing anything other than humans then you'll need to do some custom magic to make it all work, otherwise it's a great and robust piece of kit for your animation workflow. **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Quick workflows for animation in videogames; allows us to preview our blocking and scenes immediately after acting them out. ### 16. looking for mocap? Go for motion builder **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Entertainment | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 22, 2016 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** The curve of learning is very fast. And this technique is very usefull if you got a short time to animate. **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** I would like that motion builder have more friendly user interface tools for animation like maya does. That can save you time making changes in the same software for the animation **Recommendations to others considering MotionBuilder:** You must know about the mocap technique and the complementary software. **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** Time is money. Like i said if you are in a project where you are in a crunch time or the time to animate is very short. Doing mocap technique with motion builder can be a good option ### 17. Great software for every kind of shot in Motion Capture **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bruno Z. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MotionBuilder?** The interface is awesome! I´am professional animator so I used to use all kind of software for animation. In MotionBuilder is one of the best. It´s simple and friendly to the user. **What do you dislike about MotionBuilder?** I really do not have anything I dislike. May be only the exportation files. But think in the new versions they already cover that. **Recommendations to others considering MotionBuilder:** I think is the best motion capture software in the industry **What problems is MotionBuilder solving and how is that benefiting you?** All the kind of problem I use to have in the blocking process of animation. ## MotionBuilder Discussions - [Is MotionBuilder free for students?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-motionbuilder-free-for-students) - 1 comment - [What is motion capture software?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/motionbuilder-what-is-motion-capture-software) - 1 comment - [View MotionBuilder pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/motionbuilder/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-06+08%3A00%3A47+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=1804197b-5e7e-4b9e-9e3e-8f4522b0e336&secure%5Btoken%5D=b2b462a7ff0dfdaf023a573c16c201dfa01ffd8bf0ab51edb11450441ce34358&format=llm_user) ## MotionBuilder Features **Generative AI** - AI Image-to-Text - AI Text-to-3D **Agentic AI - Animation** - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration ## Top MotionBuilder Alternatives - [Blender](https://www.g2.com/products/blender/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (307 reviews) - [iClone 8](https://www.g2.com/products/iclone-8/reviews) - 4.8/5.0 (12 reviews) - [Cinema 4D](https://www.g2.com/products/cinema-4d/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (136 reviews)