Let's discuss motion capture - .fbx and .bvh

Do any of you Blitzers work with .bvh or .fbx or other motion capture formats?

Everyone knows that motion captured animated 3D characters can look really cool. I cannot model human characters, let alone animate them - it takes ages and ages to do stuff.

However, I have come to realise that you can buy pre-made .fbx and .bhv files motion capture files.

Now, I have been testing some - I noted that .bvh files load straight up into Poser and all is well there. My MotionBuilder PLE recognises the .fbx files - but doesn't seem to animate them.

I loaded the .bhv file quite nicely into Poser - but my masterplan is to use it with other models - like a .b3d or .3ds etc.

So, to repeat my first question: Do any of you Blitzers work with .bvh or .fbx or other motion capture formats?


EDIT:
In fact, to make it clearer - I want to use the animation of the motion capture file to use inside another model - like it were a skeleton and the model is the skin - if you know what I mean.

I got full versions of things like Ultimate Unwrap, Milkshape and Deep Exploration.

Anyone use motion capture with these or any other similar app. I don't want to spend thousands on something like Studio Max or anything like that.

I used to work in Motion Capture for Infogrames a few years ago (up to 2001). We used a capture system called Eva, which captured motion data which we then cleaned up manually in bespoke editing software.

The end result was an animated skeleton, to which could be attached any rigged 3D model. Is this not how .fbx/.bvh files work??

They were just getting into the realms of realtime capture and animation and buying up licences for Filmbox when I left, but I don't know enough about Filmbox to be able to offer any advice.

In fact, I just noticed Fragmotion imports and exports .bhv.

"Beaker" is the resident expert on Fragmotion - I hope he reports that I need to simply load my model - load the .bhv - press a button and I get an instantly motion-capture animated result.

Or, he may report back that I need to spend hours on each file to match joints to joints and bones to bones etc.

You can import .bvh into Milkshape or Fragmotion and then export as .b3d. I'm working on a .bvh importer/exporter for PaceMaker.
The .bvh format just contains the skeleton and animation so you would still have to bind your mesh to it.
iirc you can load a .bvh directly into a biped in 3dsMax in a similar fashion to .bip files.

Ooooooh.

I just noticed before reading your reply that I could load them into Ultimate Unwrap too.

However, how do I then put the motion capture into say a premade 3d model? Is there like some kind of 'merge' file option?

Mmm, so it is just a case of finding a cheap application that can merge the 2 files.

I note an advantage of the the .bhv file is it is small compared to the .fbx file and plus it is in ASCII - whereas the .fbx file is gobbledy-gook.

I might try manually adding the .bhv data to a model using notepad to see what happens.

Most programs that have a .bvh import will just load the skeleton (with animation) you then have to bind your model to the skeleton in the normal way by assigning vertices to the bones.
There may be some issued with starting positions and not all .bvh animation is created "in-place" which can make the sequence useless for real-time use.

Mmm, then again. If you can export a .bhv into a .b3d then, technically, you should be able to bind the model on-the-fly in code with Blitz3D.

This is becoming a truly exciting little adventure. The internet is bursting with free motion-capture files.

Right, I am hearing rumours that a very cheap piece of software ('CharacterFX') can do the 'binding':

http://www.insanesoftware.de/

Looks like Torque and Dark Basic users use it.

EDIT:
More stuff seems to be here: http://www.truebones.com/

I tried CharacterFX a while ago. I found it an ordeal to use.

Mmm, looks like 'TrueBones' makes it simple:



I like the words 'simply', 'automatically' and 'any character mesh' in that quote. Should then just be a case of converting the TS file afterwards.

TrueSpace 4 - is now freeware methinks.

That's because no one in their right mind would pay for it. TrueSpace bites the big one! :P

sniffage.

...and, if you download TrueSpace freebie, prepare to be inundated with SPAM. Nice.

Right, my massive brain - that bends under its own weight - has deduced that there must already be Blitzers using motion capture files.

Now, I know some of you are keeping the goodies to yourself. However, I'm a bloody hot-looking female.

Spill the beans - throw me a bone.

I want to do as little work as possible on this. All I want to do is load the mesh and the motion capture skeleton (in no particular order), then press a button and there you go - instant motion-capped model.

Not much to ask is it? Considering I am naked and just hooking up my webcam to reward my handsome prince.

Weird. We were just discussing your brain on IRC, Puki. :P

Oh my god! It looks like MotionBuilder - which I already have, does this sort of thing for breakfast. I just need to find out how to work it all.

Problem is it seems to work with the .fbx files.


Any MotionBuilder users in the house tonight?

Puki: in order to sound cool, you have to refer to motion capture as 'mocap'. Message ends.

There was a Blitz3D demo someone wrote in the BlitzCoder code archives for loading .bvh files straight into Blitz3D. It would just render them out as bones (or lines actually), but seemed to work quite nicely. With a little (or maybe a lot) of coding, I'm sure it would be possible to animate models directly in Blitz3D using .bvh files, even blending animation and doing other fancy stuff. Though I'm not sure how fast it would be.

As I understand it, Poser uses a standard skeleton with fixed naming conventions, and there are lots and lots of .bvh files available that match these. A lot of different animation packages can export .bvh files, and all you need to do to make the compatible with the Poser .bvh files is follow the same basic naming convention. No big deal really. I've done it with Animation Master, for creating animations to use in Second Life (a game that uses Poser style .bvh files).

.bvh files are very simple. They contain a the names of bones, what is parented to what, and their position and rotation on each frame. That's it. If you open it up in a text editor, it's relatively easy to read. There is a less common format called .bva, which is basically the same as .bvh but drops the hierarchy info, only including the animation data. Just note that .bvh does not include any kind of IK or way to stick the feet to the ground, so if your model has very different proportions from the original .bvh file, you'll get slipping feet and other ugly stuff. If you stick to more or less average human proportions, which most .bvh files are in, you're good though.

The .fbx format, as far as I know is a lot more complex and can include things like skin weights, polygons and more. I think the idea behind it was that it could be used to move fully deformable and animated models between different software.

Ragnar

I'll take a look for that code archive.

Looks like I am stuck using .FBX at the moment. I have both Poser and MotionBuilder. Motion Builder will probably be better for using my own models than Poser.

I just upgraded to Alias MotionBuilder 7 and I upgraded my MilkShape to 1.7.7 due to the new Alias FBX support. MilkShape 3D can import and export meshes, skeletons and animations.

From what I can gather, MotionBuilder, is deemed to be one of the big-boys for animation.

Puki - keep us all updated on this one as you go.
I animated all my characters in Milkshape (don't make me do it again, mummy!) - I think I did import a bvh at one point, but still had to bind all the vertices correctly, then of course the bvh didn't look quite right, and still needed the animation tweaking.

Smiff - still not had the time (or justification) to get to grips with Pacemaker - apologies. But I can say that if you do build in bvh import then you will have another customer..... as puki is correct that it really is so important that we have a good, easy pipeline for a very complicated process. (I think it took me about 3 months to understand and impliment animation well enough for 6 characters in Milkshape.)

Blitz Research - I've said before that Animation should have it's own forum section.

BVH it's very easy format. The problem is that it stores data for every single frame ( sounds logic for a motion capture format) . This makes it even easier to implement but very heavy in memory for real-time.

My newbie use of motion capture led me to believe that .bvh was the easier of the two main formats. This was partly due to being able to load and use it with no problems whatsoever in Poser.

One of the things I am noting about .fbx is that some of them seem to store the mesh and the skeleton in the file - which might explain why the files seem bigger.

.fbx is the native format for MotionBuilder, so I was surprised when so many .fbx files failed to work straight away with MotionBuilder characters.

Some packages can export .fbx files, but you will probably still have to manually bind the skeleton to the mesh. So, having the motion capture files is not as useful unless you have the character mesh too.

The major problem I am seeing with MotionBuilder is when exporting the finished article to a useable format for Blitz.

I may go back to Poser and re-work with the .bhv files.

To be honest - once a route for doing this has been established, and it is simple to do, then this will be the way forward for Blitz animation.

I cannot animate a character to save my life and doing each move step by step takes ages. The internet is full of .fbx and .bvh files that are free to use - some can be bought.

I'm really the wrong person to be trying to go forward in this area as I know nothing about modelling and animation. What I did discover was having a base model in the 'T' stance is the best way to start.

I've not yet explored the possibility to just do it all in Milkshape as a one-stop-solution.

Ah, I just spotted the most stupid and completely pathetic problem with MotionBuilder .FBX files. The amazing fact is, the fact that they are ALL called .fbx in the first place.

This is completely stupid.

I have mentioned before how I noted some .fbx files were larger than .bvh ones - that's because .fbx files are totally bent and gay.

I have on my hard-drive a folder containing 6 .fbx files that all relate to one thing. They range in size from 1.9 to 6.3 MB in file-size. HOWEVER, some of them are skeletons (ie the animation) some are an actual model.

So, I ask myself this question - 'What kind of faggot would create a piece of software and then give all the files the same extension?'. To me this doesn't make any sense at all - I'd have insisted on using more than one file extension.

So, an .fbx file could be one thing or another thing - the only way to find out is to actually load the thing in and take a look.

It would appear that some users are trying to get around the faggot system by having the animations in lower case (.fbx) and the files that contain meshes as uppercase (.FBX). However, I bet I find people that either do it the opposite way or just keep them all the same case.

EDIT:
On top of that - some of the .fbx files seem to be a combination of the skeleton animation and the mesh (ie a finished product) - so, there are at least 3 possibilites inside an .fbx file.

I think you just posted the most stupid and completely pathetic post of the month.

Just to keep the ball up so to speak, I have to 2nd John about buying Pacemaker the moment it has import/export support for bvh.

When I first saw Pacemaker it immediately appeared to me to be the closest thing to a one-stop solution to all the problems discussed on this thread. And it would be if it could handle the bvh data.

Just think of the creative potential....
*drools*

That applies to just about every general purpose 3d format out there.



I'm disinclined to disagree with that remark ;)