Poser and BVH in Blitz3d
Community Forums/Showcase/Poser and BVH in Blitz3d
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| My upcomming editor is now capable of importing bone skeletons from standard_BVH and Poser3,4_BVH.. As well as read in the 2 diffrent animtion keys recorded in both. The below is a shot of a 40 frame animation exported from poser. Also added ability to export Keyframes either from Poser or Max or handmade animaitons to either Poser BVH or the Standard BVH formats. Mesh importing supported and export to B3d or Dx8.1(Skinned/boned) avalible. Just wanted to see how many blitzer's would be interested in such an app before I dedicate additional time to Blitz3d only features..  |
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| Where are you getting your .bvh's? All the ones I found were completely useless, because there was no single set with the same skeleton, and most did not loop or were asymmetrical. |
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| Most bvh's won't loop do to the fact they are real-time motion capture values so matching start and end frames would be almost impossible.. But in my editor you can copy the first keyframe of the animation to the last keyframe of the animation set - and the editor will tween the values making it loop-able. and before you ask, YES! I got rotation tweening to work! had to use quats but it's working.. :)> Theres alot of good, free BVH sites out there.. i found most of the ones i used for developing this app - off of google search. Becareful though as some sites forbid private or commercial use. |
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| Do you have one complete set of looping animations using am idemtical skeleton? If not, the .bvh files are worthless. |
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| Not true, for one thing most bvh animations don't need looping - aside from walk, crawl etc... Second of all i answered your above concern by mentioning a blending method Im using to morph the animation from a start to an end frame allowing for non-loopable bvh animtions to loop correctly. Secondly, most game models contain a series of animations devided into sets (keychunks), and I can only think of a few that would require looping - but the sets that do require looping I have covered. Now if you are talking about combing bvh animations from two or more sources you'll more then likely run into a problem where the bone/joint names do match up. I plan on a small 2d-diagram utility that will allow one to match joints in a BVH file - up with bones/joints in a currently loaded skel. Of course the app would handle the scaling and adjustments needed for each joint due to diffrent locations of the bones. To further detail your question, the skeletons are created by the hiearchey JointData stored within the mocap file itself, its the actual pivots used by the recorders mocap equipment. Not sure how Poser handles their anims but they do export some form of off-the-wall bvh file format. Frame blending is nothing new, in fact its quite an old process. This application allows for bvh importation, it dosent 'require it'. In fact hand animating a model versus importing ready made animtions is much simpler. My over all goal here is to achieve; perhaps, the most user-friendly animtion kit possible. With one-click bone assigning and premade skels. Allowing for scaleable skeletons would mean allowing the same set of animtions to be used on any amount of models with only slight adjusts. |
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| So you are saying that it's up to the user to tidy up bad animations? Look, no disrespect, but if you are telling anyone that these animations are actually usable in a real game, you're lying to them. They might be able to be made into a usable set, but until then, they are worthless. My suggestion is to get a set of good anims together yourself, and THEN you'll have something worth selling. |
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| Look, no disrespect, but if you are telling anyone that these animations are actually usable in a real game, you're lying to them. I beg to differ, halo.The screenshot he posted above looks a bit like Filmbox, which is used for editing and manipulating motion-captured data at a professional level. It doesn't take an animation expert to take a simple running/walking animation and tidy up the start/end so that it loops correctly. |
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| Take a break Halo and go and have a bowl of bran. Any tool that would open up the ability to use the growing number of bvh files available (even with tweaking required to bring them up from 'worthless'), and set them up for use in Blitz has just got to be a useful development. I'm interested in this tool Sabata - please keep the community posted. |
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| Halo is a fool. Obviously this is a tool for editing BVH files. And one look at the screenshot makes it quite easy to see the "copy key" button. If Halo is saying that these animations are useless because you have to copy the first frame to the last frame, then he is also saying he is too much of a simpleton to press copy, and hit paste, which makes the animation seamless. |
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| OK ok.. so your talking about the rigging of the model.. Lol why not say so. Rigging is painless, as matter of fact its the drive behind the entire application. Heres a short diagram,  Import a bvh file, which builds the proper skel for the scene.  Import a 3ds, b3d, x, md2 mesh. Position/scale the skel to match the layout of the model. Assign verts to nearby joints using simple selection tools.  Import animation from the same bvh or a diffrent bvh, it dosent matter ( this looks like where you are getting confused ). Or use the simple to use Keyframe bar and build animations yourself. PS: it took me less then 3 minutes to completely rig the above model. |
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| Looks great, and it would definitely be very useful. I would definitely be interested in this ( subject to price, of course ;) ) |
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| Sabata Rh When would a demo be available? |
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| I wood definitely give this tool a go. I have been looking for an animation tool for ages and been abele to import bvh motion from poser wood be a good feature has poser as a very nice tool to designin working loops. |
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| Wow, this looks really nice Sabata.... What are you writing in.. I'm assuming C/C++. Are you using DX or OGL? |
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| Looks like Blitz to me. |
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| If Blitz, what's the GUI? |
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| Madjack, still much to do... Skinning and uv mapping... fussion and sorting of the priority Keyframes list... As it is animation with 1000+ keyframes tend to run slow.. But i got some ideas to relieve the load on the cpu while sorting such large keyframe animations.. It's wrote entirely in Blitz3d.. The gui is a homebrew of images and funcs(). |
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| Looking very good! |
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| I am very interested in this app so please dedicate additional time to Blitz3d only features! ^_^ Seriously, this is a tool that has been needed for a long time now. AlienEditor would be really nice but this is something that would be a must have in my bag of programs. I'm with Qcat, Poser already has polished animation tools so to be able to use it to create import BHVs is perfect. I will be eagerly awaiting this app. Top notch! |
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| I noticed a few people talking about the growing number of BVH files available and googling them. Well I did google them, and I haven't anything. Anyone mind sharing some sites with BVH motion capture files? I mean Biovision BVH really, not Poser BVH. |
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| Here's a site with a bunch of motion capture files: http://www.e-motek.com/entertainment/index.htm You have to register though. |
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| Wow, nice link. Thanks :) |
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| Cool stuff. Keep us posted. Very interested here. |
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| Very useful tool !! This will make it even easier to get quality animation into Blitz. Keep up the good work ! |
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| Indeed, very promising stuff. |
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| Would definately be interested too! And even willing to pay for it. BTW: I checked the Motek link, and these guys are located VERY nearby! (15 kilometers!) cheers, John-Robin |
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