Category Archives: MotionBuilder

MotionBuilder – Customizing keyboard shortcuts

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Suppose you want to customize the MotionBuilder keyboard shortcuts (for example, so you can use F1 for something else other than “Help”).

The MotionBuilder keyboard shortcuts are stored in text configuration files that you can find here:

C:\Program Files\Autodesk\MotionBuilder 2012 (64-bit)\bin\config\Keyboard

For example, in the MotionBuilder.txt config file, look for this line:

action.global.help            = {NONE:F1*DN}

You could change that and use F1 for one of the other actions.

MotionBuilder error reading registry key during uninstall

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This case illustrates a common troubleshooting technique for some install/uninstall problems: deleting the Installer registry key.
Way back when I started support Softimage, this was how we fixed problems like “Uninstall says Softimage already uninstalled”, even though that was not true.

In a recent MotionBuilder case, the customer got this error when he tried to uninstall MotionBuilder 2011:

There was an error reading the registry key SOFTWARE\autodesk\motionbuilder\2011//defaultproductkey.

The solution:

  1. In the Registry Editor, find this key:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Products
  2. Search for MotionBuilder in the Data.
  3. You should find a DisplayName value under an InstallProperties key.

    The full key name will be something like:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Products\83E7ADBE34330A442ACF348F731E5F87\InstallProperties

  4. Export the key (as a backup) and then delete it. For example, on machine, I would delete this key:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Products\83E7ADBE34330A442ACF348F731E5F87
    On your machine, the key name may be different than “83E7ADBE34330A442ACF348F731E5F87”
  5. Try again to uninstall MotionBuilder.

MotionBuilder: Error loading the resource strings at startup

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Sometimes I’ll see a case in the queue, and I’ll get curious to see if I can find the answer. In this case, there was the error message “Error loading the resource strings”, so I googled it and then searched through the our old support cases.

I didn’t find a satisfactory answer (suggested resolutions like “creating a new user profile” seem like overkill to me). So I fired up Process Monitor and logged a MotionBuilder startup. When I had the log, I spent a couple of minutes filtering down the results so I could focus on the file activity in user-specific folders like

C:\Users\blairs\AppData\Local\Autodesk\MB2010\

Sure enough, after about a minute of looking for some kind of file that suggested “resource”, I saw this file:

C:\Users\blairs\AppData\Local\Autodesk\MB2010\config\ADLM\res\en-US\AdlmIntRes.xml

So, I opened AdlmIntRes.xml, corrupted it by deleting just enough to make the XML invalid, restarted MotionBuilder, and voila:

How to fix this problem? It the file is missing or corrupted, you can force Setup to recreate the file by removing MotionBuilder, renaming the C:\Users\blairs\AppData\Local\Autodesk\MB2010\ folder (for example, to MB2010.bak), and reinstalling. Otherwise, if the file seems ok, then it could be a permissions problem, or some kind of environment/configuration problem (Process Monitor would help figure it out).

In general, Process Monitor is a great way to learn about an application. In this case, I spent some time learning what files MoBu reads at startup, and what’s in those files (I spent some additional time browsing through the various text files that MoBu opens).