Hello,
I was looking for Motion tracking software and I found out that there wasn’t any software for blender currently, except that I found out that these BHV files are working
perfect with blender. I read that it was made with Poser. But with an example file it should not be difficult to do it with blender, well, anyway, I am not a developer, but I was just curious about it.
Regards,
Bart
BVH is normally used in MoCap (motion capture) as you have said. This means it is taken from the data of an actor jumping around covered in ping pong balls… making BVH from an already hand animated work (poser, blender whatever) is kind of counter productive.
I was looking into your topic a small while back and found this (click). Not sure whether the script produces a useable raw BVH or not as I didb’t test it. Looks like it though.
Sure nice script, only I do not want a BHV exporter, I wanted a program that produces BHV like poser does, but blender can not still though it can import BHV files from it.
I don’t know what is the cheapest program for it, but it might be Poser.
I understood that they use Mocap for all kinds of purposes, but when I have to do it by hand, I guess I am just too stubborn to do it all.
Actually I do not see a future in commercial purpose of blender but that could be the death of it. Commercial purpose must be done with and about money.
I haven’t used the script myself, but… what the difference between an “exporter” of BVH and a program which “produces” BVH?
Or are you talking about the rigging process needed to set up the skeleton in preparation for BVH?
You’re still confusing me over this point. The reason for BVH has always been to import action-captures… usually from a real actor with tracking equipment, into your 3D program so you could then tweak the animation into your own scenes (make all the changes you want). They used this kind of thing in… Lord of the Rings with Gollum as example. So if you have the animation created in the computer (as opposed to captured / tracked) then you’ve already missed the action-capture step… right? It’s in the computer already, so no need at all for BVH import / export / anything… or am I missing something?
Bollocks, but that’s a complete different topic. There is a general bias against Blender in the “industry world” of some countries like mine, here in New Zealand. One of my fellow graduates (3D animation, but he was a modeller / texture artist) went abroad and emailed me loads of questions because his job required that he learn Blender and Linux. There are only a few people who bother to learn more than one 3D app seriously enough to make unbiased calls on which is better at what. Blender is behind the likes of Maya in one or two areas, but it is ahead in others. If you were to learn Maya and apply for a position where they used 3DSMax, you’d be much the same as if you had learned Blender; a reputable corporation should give you as an animator 2 weeks or so to learn a new program. If you’re freelancing, they usually just want the final rendered movie, so it doesn’t matter squat what you’re using. Speaking as someone professionally trained and qualified in Maya I can assure you that Blender is certainly capable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrTumor 
I understood that they use Mocap for all kinds of purposes, but when I have to do it by hand, I guess I am just too stubborn to do it all.
I have of course did some animation but I guess if I don’t have BHV files, I have to look
at a video to copy all the motions.
I don’t think when you create a new animation with a new setup for BHV that I missed something, but it is still attached of course, maybe something for the layers or something and than press new in the action editor like NLA or something.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrTumor
Actually I do not see a future in commercial purpose of blender but that could be the death of it. Commercial purpose must be done with and about money.
Maybe bollocks to you but I am not a very enthousiastic animator. I already have problems to rig a character, but maybe if you like to work non stop it will work.
Maybe I am getting better but about animation I am not getting used to it very well.
When I trained, we used “reference reference reference” a lot. This included finding video footage and using it as a background which we could animate our characters against to get the timing right. If you look at the DVD extras on things like Horton Hears a Who, you’ll see a lot of animators dancing around like they’re trying to be actors or something. Untrained people think such extras make the animators look stupid… actually, it’s an extremely important part of their process. It’s not motion-capture where actions are mimicked by computer / camera setups, but its still a standard way of animating.
Whenever I’ve imported BVH files, I see a basic rig which has been key-framed to the actor movements. The rig is set into the BVH itself and it would have been made by the animators who set up all the tracking gear. Rigging is a fairly standard process, though not a quick one; there are often “rigging specialists” as well as “animators” because both tasks are a full time job… especially if done to a better than average level.
Ahhh - now your statement make a lot more sense. Join the club! Animation is hard work. I’ve spent the last six months transferring what I’ve been taught in Maya into Blender equivalents (so I can avoid piracy and also use it in schools where they can’t afford multiple Maya licenses)… and I’m still figuring out half decent methods of making a spine. If you stick at it and work something out, it’s great! In the mean time, make plenty of silly little animations to lighten up your otherwise hard concentration day, nd to remind yourself that, to a certain point, you can produce something, and you’re only really searching to get that next level better than now (ongoing search).
Maybe I like to say that I feel encouraged, I just keep on looking and trying of course. Although I see that blender has problems I can not figure out, but it are maybe my
problems too.
G.luck.
What exactly is it that you are trying to do… make a character? Perhaps you could ask about what’s going wrong where you are at?
Here is a link to what I am doing; click here
I am not doing that often, but I think I have to look at a video of course.