Reference
Glossary
Key terms, plus units and conventions.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| MMCP | Motion MCP — the server that turns your prompt (and constraints) into animation. Runs locally or as Animatica Cloud. The protocol is open — see the MMCP spec. |
| Backend | Whether generation runs Local (your server) or Cloud (api.animatica.ai). |
| Prompt block | One action with its own text on the timeline. Blocks in sequence form a performance. |
| Constraint | A spatial pin (pose, hand/foot position, or path) that steers the AI. Shown as viewport markers and timeline pins. |
| Effector | The hand/foot target a leg/arm constraint places. |
| Take | A MotionBuilder animation clip container. Motion can go into a new take, an existing take, or a Story track. |
| Story | MotionBuilder's non-linear track editor. Story mode writes each block as an FBX clip. |
| HIK / Control Rig | Autodesk HumanIK — the characterized control rig you bake to for hand editing. |
| Namespace | The prefix on created joints (default animatica), keeping multiple rigs distinct. |
| Diffusion steps | Quality/effort of the AI generation. More steps = better, slower (cap 500). |
| Canonical skeleton | A plugin-created rig in the layout the model expects. Your own rigs are retargeted server-side. |
| Adopt | Make a selected rig pipeline-ready (store bind pose, hip height, namespace) without marking it canonical. |
| glTF | The glTF 2.0 format the MMCP server returns generated motion in; the tool parses it and keys your skeleton. Multiple samples arrive as separate animations inside one glTF. |
#Units & conventions
The tool works internally in meters, Y-up, +Z forward, and converts to MotionBuilder's native centimeters on import. Motion generates at the model's native 30 fps; enable Match scene FPS to key it to your scene rate.