is there a way to match animations by rig?

#1

Hi

I am looking at some bvh that I have in my collection, and realized that many of them are either duplicate or are from different sources.

So I am planning to get rid of the dupes, and divide them by rig, so if I have to apply certain animations to a mesh, I can rig once and just transfer the animation without have to rig all over again on the mesh.

Is there any software or technique that could help me to

-find all bvh that has the same data but different names

  • find all the bvh that shares a rig (or that has the same rig/bone structure and names)

Thanks!

#2

There are some tools in 3DS max that you can do this quite easily, what software are you using?

In max under the animation menu, there is save / load animation, that will do just that on your selection.

#3

Thanks for your reply; I am on a mac, so I use mainly cinema4d and cheetah3d; learning blender too since I do not have the cash to update cinema4d (it is an old v10)

What is this feature that you mentioned doing? Allow me to load a model rigged and skinned and load an animation on top of it from a bvh file?

#4

It is a tool for moving animation around in 3DS max.

Unfortunatly i have no knowledge of the bvh file format. Sorry :S

#5

Howdy,

You might be interested in my CD FBX Import/Export plugin for Cinema 4D which has the CD Retarget tag. The CD Retarget tag allows you to manually assign joints when the source skeleton is not the same hierarchy as the target skeleton. It also allows you to have multiple source skeletons and switches between the sources with a popup menu.

For this kind of work (using mocap), what I normally do is to create a normal rigged character with IK and constraints, then constrain the IK goals to the controllers instead of parenting them. Then create addition null objects and parent them to a mocap skeleton, and add those objects as targets in the IK goal’s constraints and set up a blend between IK controllers and the mocap targets. This lets the mocap skeleton drive the IK of the rigged character and allows me to blend between manual control and mocap control.

Here is an example video:
http://www.cactus3d.com/bvhBlend.mov

The mocap driver skeleton would then have the CD Retarget tag applied to it, so in the final setup, you’d have the bvh skeleton driving the mocap driver skeleton, which in turn would drive the IK skeleton.

Adios,
Cactus Dan

#6

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.