Introducing BVH motion converter. BVH - BioVision Hierarchy file is one of the most common format for holding motion capture data. You can find tons of free BVH.

• Bvh Motion Converter
• Bhp Converter

This text file is included with each of the BVH ZIP archive files for the 3dsMax-friendly release. How to use the BVH files from the 3dsMax-friendly release of the CMU motion database. V1.00 last update May 1, 2009 B. Hahne Get the BVH data at: www.cgspeed.com in the Motion Capture section This HOW-TO-USE-THESE-FILES.txt help file goes with the 3dsMax-friendly BVH files available at www.cgspeed.com in the Motion Capture section. I also hope to do a short training video that demonstrates these steps, and if/when that's complete I'll post it somewhere near the download links for the BVH files. I've tested these steps with 3dsMax 2009.

The conversion is straightforward: you load the BVH data onto a Biped, save the data back out in.BIP format, and then it's available to use with any Biped. It would also be possible for me to batch-convert all of the Max-friendly BVH files to.BIP and simply make the.BIP files available, however I thought it might be better to make the raw BVH files available instead, in case people want to further edit them (via text editor, script, or whatever you like) in some way. Here's how to put any of the BVH files to use, within 3dsMax. Create a Biped via Create tab - Systems -Object Type rollout - Biped, then drag up in the main viewport to actually create the Biped. You can create the default Biped - there's no need to adjust the spine link count, number of fingers, etc.

Make sure the Biped is selected, then go to the Motion tab. You should see a large number of rollouts available for the Biped. Find the Motion Capture rollout towards the bottom and expand it. The upper left icon within the Motion Capture rollout should be 'Load Motion Capture file'. In 3dsMax 2009, the icon has a small file folder above a small camera. Click this button to start the BVH load process.

An 'Open' file dialogue box should appear. In the file dialogue box, 'Files of type:' will probably default to '.BIP'. Change this dropdown to '.BVH' so that you can see BVH files. Still within the file dialogue box, navigate to the BVH file that you want to open, select it, then click the Open button.

You should get a warning message from Max that says it doesn't recognize all of the joints in the BVH file. It should say 'The following track names were found in the file and are unrecognized by Biped: LHipJoint, RHipJoint, lowerback, lowerneck, lhand, LFingers, LThumb, rhand, RFingers, RThumb'. If the warning message mentions any OTHER joint names then there's a problem, but that shouldn't happen if you're using the correct set of converted BVH files.

The Carnegie-Mellon skeleton has a variety of joints that don't map onto the 3dsMax Biped, so they're intentionally named in a way that prevents Max from trying to incorporate them into the loaded data. Click 'OK' on the warning message to make it go away. Max should now bring up a large complex window titled 'Motion Capture Conversion Parameters'. In the Motion Capture Conversion Parameters window, towards the top left of the window, set 'Up Vector' to the 'Y' radio button. The default is 'Z'.

The CMU dataset uses 'Y' as the up axis, so we're supposed to tell Max that in the BVH file, 'Y' originally meant 'up'. (3dsMax uses the Z axis as its up axis.) You should be able to leave all other parameters in this Parameters window at their default settings. Still in the Parameters window, click OK now that you've set Up Vector to 'Y'. Max should load the BVH file data. The Biped appearance will now change significantly, since Max completely overhauls the Biped skeleton to match the BVH base skeleton that it's just imported.

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Don't worry if the shape of the skeleton doesn't look anything like what your preferred skeleton will look like when you actually animate. Click the animation play button (lower right corner) to test the playback of the data. You should get a smooth playback of whatever animation you've just loaded. Now we'll save the BVH data as a.BIP file so that we can use it with any Max Biped. Make sure the Biped is still selected, and that the Motion tab is also still selected. Open up the 'Biped' rollout (it's open by default in Max 2009) and click the little diskette icon which is for 'Save File'.

Bvh Motion Converter

Max should bring up a 'Save As' dialogue box. In the Save As dialogue box, make sure that 'Save as type:' is set to.BIP.

Navigate to a directory where you want to save the data, type a file name in the File Name box, and click Save. Now you can test the.BIP file. Create a new Biped.

I usually create my new Biped at least 2x larger than the original, so that it's easy to compare the motions when I hit play. You can give the new Biped as many spine links as you want, you can add extra fingers, etc. 3dsMax seems to be pretty good about retargeting across Bipeds, so in theory you should be able to create any Biped that you like. Select the new Biped and again go to the Motion tab, so that you see all of the rollouts available for the second (new) Biped. Under the Biped rollout (NOT the Motion Capture rollout), click the 'Load File' icon. In 3dsMax 2009 this icon is immediately to the left of the Save File icon that you used in step 6a above.

Max should bring up an 'Open' dialogue box to let you choose a.BIP file. Still in the Open dialogue box, choose the.BIP file that you previously saved in step 6a and click Open to assign it to your second Biped. Your second Biped should immediately take on a pose similar to the pose held by the original Biped. Play back the animation and confirm that the new Biped matches the motions of the original. If you made the new Biped larger, Max will adjust its step size and motions appropriately to the size of the second Biped.

The CMU dataset isn't entirely clean. In particular, you'll find times when wrists or ankles will twist or flip incorrectly. The investigations I've done so far suggest that these problems aren't a result of my conversion script (which attempts to preserve the original data as much as possible, to the extent that it's usable by Max), but rather are coming from the original captured data. Techniques for cleaning up bothced keyframes on limbs are beyond the scope of this little intro text file, however generally the approach is to find the joint(s) with the problem and replace the data with new keyframes that work, or simply delete the bad keyframes and make sure that the transition across the keyframe gap looks clean.

Solution To batch convert the files:. Open 3ds Max. Create a biped (Create Systems Biped). Select root node on the biped (Bip01). Go to the Motion Panel and under the Motion Capture rollout, click on Batch File Conversion. The Motion Capture Batch File Conversion dialog box will appear (as shown below).

Click on Source File Selection, select the.bvh files you would like to convert, and click on Open. For the Destination Directory, click on Browse. And choose the folder where you would like to store the converted files. By default, Specify Conversion Parameters Once will be selected. With this option selected, you only need to set the parameters once for all of the files in the batch. (If you choose Specify Conversion Parameters for Each File instead, then the parameters dialog mentioned in step 6 will appear once for each file.).

Bhp Converter

Click on OK. The Motion Capture Conversion Parameters dialog box will appear next. You can choose to leave the default parameters or adjust the parameters in the interface. (You can also click on Load Parameters to load a.MOC file with predefined parameters.).

Once you are done setting the parameters, click on OK to convert the files. 3ds Max will then convert each of the.bvh files into.bip format. Once the conversion process is complete, all of the.bip files will be stored in the path you specified in the Destination Directory. Note - You will want to reset 3ds Max before proceeding to work on a new scene to clear the animation that was loaded for the conversion process.