AI Mocap Research — MotionMaker for Maya

What it is

MotionMaker is a built-in system within Maya 2026.1 that provides all Maya users with a motion database for bipeds (male and female) and quadrupeds (canine). Using a database of locomotion animations, it allows animators to create locomotion animations within a scene, actively adapting movements along a path based on speed and time. It has a handful of modifiers to help adjust the output animation, and most interestingly, allows you to train the model with your own animation data.

As things are right now, this can be used to easily maneuver a character along a path in Maya and for quickly staging characters in cinematics. Animators can focus more on acting choices without spending too much time on natural locomotive movement. The output does require significant cleanup of foot placement though and is not as clean as some other mocap solutions. Currently it can't be used for much more than locomotion. The practical upshot is that it comes native with Maya 2026.1.

Video Log

This is the generated video using what was provided in MotionMaker, with Foot Slide Reduction, Speed Ramping, and Snap Location turned on. I've adjusted the Foot Slide Reduction settings to improve foot planting, but as you can see, there is still some sliding and dipping happening. Note that this clip took less than 1 hour to create.

Interestingly, the limbs stretch the slightest bit during the jump — there's potential here for influencing stretchy limb exaggeration, and it can be easily stripped out during retargeting if not needed.

Notes

• Comes trained on various locomotion animations for male, female, and dog.
  • As of April 1, 2026, the only available sets are walk, run, and jumps. Autodesk is planning to add more in future updates.
  • These were responsibly sourced — Autodesk seems to have purchased the AI rights from the actors and is capturing their own movements using their mocap studio.
• Animator sets a path that the character moves along, and motion is automatically created.
  • Has motion scale functionality, affecting weight and speed to simulate giant or miniature character movements.
• Uses a timeline and trax style editing window to transition between different styles of animations, from skeletons to actions (male run to female run, run to sit, etc.).
  • Because this is trax style, it's best to handle each action in the same style and ensure there is enough time. Maya handles the blend.
• You can build your own database of animations from mocap data or keyframe animation.
  • Pipeline includes retargeting to the "standard character," tagging the action styles, exporting the animation data, and training the model using that data.
  • Note: This feature has not been released as of April 1, 2026.

Things to Know

• Need to work with Y-up.
  • Z-up causes the motion generation's translation to act super wonky.
• Need to ensure that the biped and the path locator are on the same location when generating motion, otherwise the character will translate to the locator position in an odd way.
• When moving the biped, using the Translate tool made the biped move erratically — it seems to be doubling the distance moved. I've worked around this by taking the translation of the locator, halving it, and pasting it on the biped.
• Retargeting to a custom rig requires transferring the animations onto your own skeleton (can use HumanIK or other tools) and then running a retargeting tool.
• Any change made to the character will require regenerating the motion.