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Characterizing with custom naming conventions

When you want to keep your custom naming conventions while doing the characterization process, you still want to make sure that your skeleton is facing the positive Z axis on full TPose.
Instead of renaming the bones go directly to the Asset Browser window and under the Templates folder from the Characters section drag the character icon to any joint of your model and select characterize from the popup option that appears. A prompt window will warn you that the characterization process could not be completed; it will also give you a list of the nodes that it cannot find. (fig 12).

Fig 12.

If you look under the navigator window, you will see that a new character does appear under the character section.
Open the character section and rename Character to MocapDudeCharacter. Double click on to load its properties on the navigator window. Under the character definition tab you will find the following options: Reference, Left and Right Foot Floors, Left and Right Hand Floors, Base (Required), Auxiliary, Spine, Roll, Special, Left and Right Hands, Left and Right Feet, Left and Right In-Hand, Left and Right In-Feet, Neck and finally props (fig 13).

Fig 13.

Alt + drag the bones of your skeleton to the boxes under the mapping list besides the list of options that was previously mentioned (fig 14).

Fig 14.

Here is a table of the nodes that Motion Builder expects against the naming people commonly use (fig15).

Fig 15.

The Feet and Hand Floors are meant for geometry that you don’t want the feet or hands of your character to go through. They work in conjunction with the floor contacts of your character settings, most times is establishing the ground floor for your animation. If no model is specified for your contact floors the grid gets assigned by default (fig16).

Fig 16.

After you drag the pertinent bones from your skeleton to the different slots of the mapping List, click the Characterize checkbox inside the Character Definition tab (fig17).

Fig 17.

You will be asked if you want to characterize the skeleton as a Biped or a Quadruped. Select Biped. Your rig has been Characterized! Fit the contact planes and Create a Control Rig trough the steps covered in the Characterizing with native naming conventions section so you can pose your character and layer animation on top of motion capture data.

Conclusion

This tutorial has taken you through the process of Characterizing a skeleton Automatically (MB native naming conventions) and manually (Custom naming conventions) so you can transfer animation amongs different sketons, animate using a Control Rig and transfer motion capture data to your moldels via the actor tool.
To learn more about layer animation do the Understanding Layer Animation tutorial.
To learn more about the actor tool do the Transferring Optical Data to Joints tutorial.