I have spent a good deal of time this week trying to get some of my purchased motions into motion puppet so I may use this powerful tool for quick and realistic animation and I ran into my share of problems and crashes during the process.

For those of you who don't already know how to do this, I decided to streamline the info found in multiple places on the forum into one process to assist in achieving both a robust and an organized Puppet Tool.

Special thanks to Sen for his past tut's and to Rampa for taking a moment to tinker with his to provide this info.

The path where the puppet motions are located is:

C:\Documents\Reallusion\Template\iClone 5 Template\iClone Template\Preset\

Depending on your OS, it may be "My Documents" or "Public Documents"

The Base Motion folder is the only one you will have in this Location by default along with a file named "OrderList.ini" -- Ignore this file, you do not have to edit, copy, paste, or evemn look at it.

Inside the Base Motion folder, you will find 4 folders; Idle, Mood, Move, and Talk,

Inside each of these you will find the pupper motions and 3 BMP files. These BMP's are the icons located above the motions in the puppet panel inside iClone.

To Add a custom motion folder or "category", Create a new folder in the preset folder named anything you like. Inside this NEW folder, create Folders for your desired motions.

*IMPORTANT* You must have the BMP files located in each folder you add to your new motion category and they must be named as follows:

Folder_Click.bmp

Folder_def.bmp

Folder_over.bmp

If these are not present or are not named with the same as the folder they are in, the puppet will CRASH iClone.

Its a good idea at this point to Launch Iclone, add an actor, and bring up the puppet to make sure your new category is there. It should be located in the drop down menu along with the default "Base motion" category.

If all is well, move on, if not, review and retry.

***iClone loads information for the puppet at program launch so it is important that iClone is closed while you are editing the folder(s) and that you launch the program for each test, if your iClone is idle and you make changes, you will not see these changes until you close and relaunch iClone***

To get your motions into your new category, navigate to their location using your explorer

C:\\Documents\Reallusion\Template\iClone 5 Template\iClone Template\Motion\

OR

C:\\Documents\Reallusion\Custom\iClone 5 Custom\Motion

Copy your desired motion(s) and paste them into your new folder(s)

*IMPORTANT* For the puppet to interperet the motion, it must have a configuration (.INI) file.

Simply open the "Base Motion" folder and select any of the existing INI files in this directory and copy, then paste it inside the folder with your new motion, then name the file the same as the motion file.

These INI files are identical to one another so it does not matter which one you pick.

At this point, you if you have followed these steps, you will have a new category and new motion(s) to use in your puppet.

If the puppet crashes iClone, review the folder(s) and names to make sure the names, capitalizations are correct and the BMP's are present and the BMP's are there.

You may add as many category folders as you like and add motions to any of them including the base motion folder.

Keep in mind that the more motions included in a single category effects the time it takes for the puppet to load that category so keep each new folder as small as you can. Once you get over 50 in one category, you start to notice (depending on your system this number may be higher or lower).

Hopefully this will help you save time and a lot of keyframing to get that perfect motion in your next animation.

Vet's, if there is anything I left out or need to add, chime in and I'll edit my post. 

 

I created and keep a template folder in the base motion folder to quickly add new motions

"Folder Template" including Idle, Mood, Move, Talk and each of those containing only the 3 required bumps and this folder just sits, If/When I need a new category, I simply copy and paste this folder in the same directory (creating "Folder Template - Copy", then edit this copy to create my new motion category)