CGTalk - BVH To 3ds Max

omegasnake

03-20-2008, 12:05 PM

Hello guys.

I am trying to animate a character in 3ds max using motion capture data that I obtained from a 'GYPSY 5' suit. Obviously there were problems with the animation, so I used motion builder to clean it up. When I try to export the animation as .bvh, it creates two files (both .bvh). When I try to add any of these animations to the biped in 3ds Max, I get an error...

"The following track names were found in the file and are unrecognised by the Biped: Hips"

When I click OK, 3ds Max crashes!

Another problem occurs when I try to add the uncleaned data to the model, the .bvh deforms the biped. Is there any way around this?

What I wanna know is if I am exporting from MotionBuilder properly? And how do I get rid of the error message?

Regards.

AnnaKey

03-26-2008, 06:19 AM

Hello, omegasnake,
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=85&t=604783 This thread might help. There is a BVH skeleton there and the pipeline, which prevents Biped from deforming. You may be getting Hips error because you select hierarchy not from Hips in MB, but from some other root.

Howi

03-29-2008, 01:57 AM

Indeed, it worked a treat for me, I have now completed rendering all my motion capture on my final year project.

Couple of points when using the bvh_adapt.zip that anna linked:

when exporting, use Ctrl+W to go into hierarchy view, and marquee select everything on the bvh skeleton from the hips downwards ONLY.
Make sure you don't select the reference node, as this will cause errors in max. (I found that trying to do the clicking on the node to grab the rest of the hierarchy didn't work properly, hence the marquee select)

Don't grab all the other bvh reference stuff either, you just need the skeleton itself from the hips down.

If you didn't already know, when characterising a set of bones imported from a Biped, the Bip01 node goes in the 'Hips' slot. The pelvis doesn't get put into any characterisation slot.

Don't worry about how it will look, as it will still come through into max ok, it's just that the Bip node is what carries the fwd/back/up/down/rotate info on it.
If you have a character in a crouch, or something where the body is quite bent around the hips, the Bip_Pelvis can be out of position, but the rest will come through fine, so you can clean it up ussing layers in about 5 seconds:)

As far as which bvh file to bring in, I found it was the one with the longer filename as a rule, but that may not apply to you. It usually isn't the one labled Take_00x.bvh, Ive found. In my case it was the one with the same name as the MOCAP track data I had imported and created into a marker set.

Hope this helps

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