Raw mocap vs retargeted vs game-ready: what you're actually buying

Studio mocap libraries sell three very different things under the same word "animation." If you have never bought studio data before, the difference between a raw source take, a retargeted clip, and a game-ready edited clip is the difference between an hour of file prep and dropping a clip directly onto a character. This guide explains what each tier contains, when to pick which, and how the format options on every Mocap Atlas product page map to a real production pipeline.

The three tiers in one sentence each

Raw source take. The complete studio recording, including calibration and setup sections, in optical marker format (C3D), solved actor skeleton (BVH or FBX), or a prepared 60 fps FBX. Best for studios doing their own retarget, for motion matching databases, and for research.

Retargeted clip. The same performance, mapped onto a game skeleton: UE5 Manny, UE5 MetaHuman, Unity 6 humanoid, Mixamo, iClone, or CC3. Best for production use where you want to skip the retarget step.

Game-ready edited clip. A short, cut, looped-where-applicable retargeted clip. Best for idles, single-purpose transitions, and animation graph filler.

Every product in the Motion Matching Library 2025 shows which of these tiers it sits in, and which formats are available for purchase.

Raw source: what is in it, what to do with it

A raw source take is the unedited studio recording. When you buy one, you usually get an envelope around the motion you want, not a clean isolated clip. A 65 second stand to walk recording, for example, will typically include the actor walking to their mark, holding a calibration T-pose, performing the take, and stepping out of frame at the end. That is not sloppiness. It is the production reality of studio mocap, and it is what gives you the flexibility to trim differently, pull alternative timings, or use the surrounding motion for blending.

Available formats for raw source takes include:

• C3D (150 fps). Optical marker positions in their native format. No skeleton, no rig, no joint rotations. Just the labeled 3D point cloud as it was solved from the Vicon cameras. This is what biomechanics researchers, custom solver pipelines, and anyone training a learned model wants.
• BVH (150 fps). The solved skeleton as joint rotations and root translation. Universal format, supported by virtually every animation tool. Best if you want to do your own retarget in MotionBuilder, Maya HumanIK, Blender's Rigify, or a custom pipeline.
• Solved actor FBX (50 fps body, 100 fps body-only variant). The same solved skeleton as the BVH but in FBX form, with the studio's internal actor skeleton naming.
• Solved and prepared 60 fps FBX. The cleaned, unified, downsampled version of the same data. Ready to retarget but not yet retargeted.

The Quantum Stage pipeline captures at 150 fps on Vicon hardware. Raw FBX comes out at 50 fps because the studio's solver delivers it that way, but the BVH and C3D variants preserve the full 150 fps source rate for anyone who needs sub-frame precision.

The Angled Stand to Walk Mocap Animation is a good example of a raw source product: 66 seconds of performance, every format available, full directional coverage, finger data captured optically.

Retargeted: what changes, what does not

Retargeting maps the motion from the actor's skeleton onto a different skeleton. The performance stays the same. The bones, names, hierarchy, and proportions change.

Mocap Atlas ships retargets for six common game skeletons:

• UE5 Manny (the default Unreal Engine 5 mannequin)
• UE5 MetaHuman (the body skeleton used by MetaHuman characters)
• Unity 6 humanoid (compatible with Mecanim)
• Mixamo
• iClone / Character Creator 3
• CC3

Each retarget is delivered as a 60 fps FBX. Finger curves are baked in where the source clip has Vicon Optical Finger data and where the target rig supports them. Hip translation is preserved; the root node stays in place.

The retarget step is where most "I don't have time for studio data" frustration comes from in production. Doing it yourself means matching skeletons, setting up an IK rig and retargeter in UE5 or a humanoid avatar in Unity, correcting joint orientation differences between rigs, and dealing with finger noise on optical capture. Buying the retargeted variant skips that work.

If your character uses a custom skeleton that does not match any of the six options, the raw source FBX or BVH is the right starting point, not a retargeted variant.

Game-ready edited clips: when to use, when not to

A small set of products in the catalog are sold only as retargeted edited clips. These are short (typically 5 to 15 seconds), already trimmed, loop-tested where the motion supports it, and have no extra setup or calibration footage. Idles are the obvious case: the Regular Breathing Idle Mocap Animation is 7.9 seconds, seamless loop, in place, ready to drop into an animation graph as a base idle state.

Game-ready clips are not raw source data sold under a different name. They are a different product, intended for a different job. The trade-off:

• You can use them immediately, but only for the specific motion they cover.
• They do not include the surrounding performance, so you cannot trim differently or pull alternative timings.
• They are limited to short motions where a clean cut makes sense: idles, single transitions, single direction starts and stops.

For locomotion controllers, motion matching databases, or anything that wants dense multi-directional sampling, the raw source takes in the Motion Matching Library 2025 are the right answer instead.

A buying flowchart

Pick the row that matches what you are doing.

When in doubt, the Complete Bundle option on most products includes every available format for that motion, which removes the choice entirely.

What Mocap Atlas does not sell, on purpose

A few things are worth being explicit about, since they affect what you can and cannot do with the files:

• No AI-generated motion. The animation data here starts from optical marker capture of real performers in a Vicon studio. Nothing is synthesized, inferred from video, or generated by a model. This is a deliberate product choice; see the About page for the reasoning.
• No character meshes or rigged characters. Animation data only. The retargeted FBX files carry skeleton and animation curves; you supply the character mesh, materials, and full game character setup.
• No Anim Blueprints, no Animator Controllers, no Blend Spaces. Those are project-specific scaffolding. The files are designed to drop into your existing state machines and blend trees, not to replace them.
• No license for AI or ML training without a separate written agreement. See the License page and the relevant entry in the FAQ.

Where to start

Three concrete recommendations based on the most common use cases:

1. First time with studio mocap and you just want to see what it is like. Download the Regular Breathing Idle or any other clip from the Free Mocap Animations collection. Import the retargeted FBX for your engine, play it on your character, and confirm the retarget works in your pipeline before buying anything paid.
2. Building a locomotion system. Start with a single raw source take from the Motion Matching Library 2025. Pick a star or dance card pattern; those give you the densest multi-directional sampling per clip. Use it to build out one quadrant of your motion matching database or one blend tree, confirm the workflow, then scale up.
3. Working on a MetaHuman cinematic or short film. Use the MetaHuman collection for body motion and pair it with the MetaHuman Animator pipeline for face. Game-ready edited idles work for held shots; raw source takes work for continuous performance.

If your project does not fit any of these patterns, the contact form is the right starting point. Custom format requests, bundle scoping, and questions about specific motions are part of the workflow here, not an exception to it.

This library is built for motion matching workflows, locomotion controller R&D, animation graph blending, and root-motion sampling in Unreal Engine 5 (UE5 Manny and MetaHuman), Unity 6, Blender, MotionBuilder, and any DCC that reads FBX or BVH. The structured movement patterns (circle, snake, square, diamond, star, and dance card) produce dense, multi-directional samples instead of clean one-off clips, which is what motion matching and learned locomotion systems actually want.

From here, browse the same clips filtered by engine or format: UE5 mocap animations, Unity mocap animations, MetaHuman mocap animations, and FBX mocap animations.