Exporting FBX

The FBX exporter will export the current recording to one or multiple files (depending on setting specifics). The exporter is highly configurable for easy integrations into whatever pipeline you are using. This article delves into all the settings, what they do and what they're for.

Settings

General

Filename

The name of the to be exported file.

Location

Specifies the folder where the exported file will be saved to.

Export file per

Select how many files are exported in the end: one for the entire scene, one per user or one per hand.

Note

When using anything but the MANUS Polygon avatar skeleton you are only able to export per user.

Data

Use full skeleton

Will export the entire full body skeleton. When only hand data is provided the skeleton will be in a t-pose. When this setting is disabled and the data is exclusively hands, only the hands will be exported.

Note

When using any other skeleton than the MANUS Polygon Avatar, it's not possible to export just the hands.

Hands

Enables exporting of hand data, generally you will keep this enabled.

Fingers

Allows for omitting of specific finger data, generally you keep all of them enabled.

Include tracker transforms

If tracker data was available within the scene, the data will be added to the scene.

Hand motion

This controls the positioning and rotational source of hands. None adds no positional or rotational data to the hands. IMU takes the device's data to set the glove rotation. Tracker will use the assigned tracker data (if available) for positioning and rotation. Tracker Rotation will use assigned tracker data for just the rotation.

Export optical markers

It's possible to generate marker data based on MANUS hand data. This is useful for integrating MANUS glove data with a marker body solve. For more information look at our virtual markers article.

Skeleton

You can choose different skeleton structures depending on your use case for the exported FBX file.

MANUS
- Polygon Avatar
Autodesk
- HumanIK
Xsens
- MVN Avatar (Mo)
Unreal 4
- Unreal Default
- (external) Mannequin Male
- (external) Mannequin Female
Unreal 5
- Unreal Default
- (external) Mannequin Male (Manny)
- (external) Mannequin Female (Quinn)
Metahuman
- (external) Metahuman Female Short Underweight
- (external) Metahuman Female Short Normalweight
- (external) Metahuman Female Short Overweight
- (external) Metahuman Female Average Underweight
- (external) Metahuman Female Average Normalweight
- (external) Metahuman Female Average Overweight
- (external) Metahuman Female Tall Underweight
- (external) Metahuman Female Tall Normalweight
- (external) Metahuman Female Tall Overweight
- (external) Metahuman Male Short Underweight
- (external) Metahuman Male Short Normalweight
- (external) Metahuman Male Short Overweight
- (external) Metahuman Male Average Underweight
- (external) Metahuman Male Average Normalweight
- (external) Metahuman Male Average Overweight
- (external) Metahuman Male Tall Underweight
- (external) Metahuman Male Tall Normalweight
- (external) Metahuman Male Tall Overweight
Mixamo
- X Bot
- Y Bot
Vicon
- Vicon Default

Use custom skeleton definition

This allows you to load a manual mapping from our internal bone name to a specific bone name. The resulting fbx will use the specified bone names. Below is a shortened example skeleton definition showing a mapping to Autodesk HumanIK bone names.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<config_root>
    <match_list>
        <item key="Reference" value="Reference" />
        <item key="Hips" value="Hips" />
        <item key="LeftUpLeg" value="LeftUpLeg" />
        <item key="LeftLeg" value="LeftLeg" />
        <item key="LeftFoot" value="LeftFoot" />
        <item key="RightUpLeg" value="RightUpLeg" />
        <item key="RightLeg" value="RightLeg" />
    </match_list>
</config_root>

The full file is included with Core in the following folder:
{{MANUS Core installation directory}}\ManusCore\Manus_Dashboard\MANUS_Core_Data\StreamingAssets\SkeletonDefinitions.

Settings

Framerate

Currently the following framerates are supported:

Integer framerates	Non-integer framerates	Dropframe framerates
24	23.976	29.97DF
25	29.97
30	50.94
48
50
60
72
96
100
120

Units

Controls what unit all sizes are in, setting this to your intended platform will make integration easier.

Unity (meters)
Unreal Engine/Maya/Motionbuilder (cm)

Items to export

Can be set to visible only or All. If a user is hidden from view using the clickable eye in the User tab visible only will skip exporting it.

Include SMPTE timecode signal

Uses timecode time in the exported file if available. For more information look at our timecode article.

Include meshes

Note

This setting is only available when using the MANUS polygon avatar skeleton.

Use first frame bindpose

Will replace the first frame of the recording with the skeleton's bindpose. Having the bindpose on the first frame may aid your specific workflow when processing recorded data.

Use keyframe reduction

Reduces the amount of keyframes by filtering out unnecessary ones. With this setting disabled all curves will have a keyframe on every frame.

Keyframe interpolation mode

This controls the tangent behavior of keyframes. Either linear or cubic, cubic may have a smoother natural look to the animation but may exhibit overshooting over linear interpolation.

Scale skeleton

Enables the Skeleton scale setting on the export targets.

Export bindpose

Export bindpose will open a file dialog to save the current export settings's bindpose as an FBX file.