BVH Capture Sequence not working like it used to...

[John Bigboote]

Time was (in previous versions of A:M) when you were working with a BVH file in an action and you had it all setup with all your constraints, you could change-out the underlying BVH animation with an alternate BVH and not have to re-constrain everything. When I try to do that now in V19 and V18... the 'Capture Sequence' option is unavailable (greyed out) but I seem to remember being able to do this in older versions.

 

To be clear- Capture Sequence DOES work initially when you bring in your BVH file... that is all fine. It is just when you want to alternate to another BVH file that the option goes away. This makes it so that every time you want to use a BVH action, you need to go thru the time-consumptive constraining process.

 

Wondering if I am missing a step- or if the feature is broken and needs a bug report.

[Rodney]

Now you've got me wondering how far back A:M was able to do that (swapping of BVH without reconstraining).

In my tests that's tended to be the thing that kept me from moving forward with BVH animation.... the requirement to re-constrain everything.

[robcat2075]

Wish i knew more about this.

 

Does it work in v17? v16?

[John Bigboote]

Well - I was just explaining to Kevin Detwiler... even tho the feature was pretty cool- it would not always work, and no fault of A:M's. BVH files come from many differing sources, some uses mocap suits with little glow-balls on them, some use mocap suits with armatures... some use kinect cameras and some folks regurgitrate BVH's from popular video games SDK's... no constant naming conventions, bone or scene orientations(XYZ) rotations, frame rates... etc. SO- it has always been a need to be able to rig a character quickly to a BVH skelton in A:M in order to use them. It was just nice to be able to switch-out a BVH from a like-session/creator without the rigging rig-a-mole every time.

And I remember doing it in A:M- perhaps in 17???

[robcat2075]

If the two BVHs have different bone names inside them that would be a show stopper, right?

 

But if you knew what the equivalent bone names were, a text edit in either A:M or the BVH file might fix that?

[robcat2075]

You can install v17 or v16 and try them pretty fast.

[detbear]

Since I have little Mocap experience in A:M, I don't know if it ever worked(Obviously). But I appreciate you guys checking into it.

 

Back in 2009, I worked on 3 projects as a mocap animator and mocap cleanup artist....But they were using the BIPED rig in max.

You could drop a bunch of BVH files onto the character and it worked much like "drag and drop" actions in A:M.

 

So I was hoping to get the Lego Character in A:M set up somehow to accept at least a number of BVH files.

 

MOCAP files are created differently, so many of them are on different scales. However, many of them are created with similar scale ranges.

You have to import them into MAX to find those that work the best with the setup.

 

That is my hope with the Lego Character. If it works with not all, but a "Bunch" of BVH files......that would be satisfactory.

[fae_alba]

I have a local rig that uses motion sensors. Tried to get it to work with I think the saucy rig, but couldn't figure which bones to constrain the bvh bones to. But the ability to do the constraints once, then swap out the big file (in my case from the same mocap suit, so same naming) was the major selling point.

[John Bigboote]

Maybe it is time I do a video capture. What is the best recording software that won't take-over my machine?

[zandoriastudios]

In 8.5p it was easy to load different BVH files and swap them out. It would be asinine to have to re-rig a character to use a new motion--you should be able to have multiple constraint relationships you could set up in advance to use BVH files from different sources. But you should only have to rig it once for any source...

https://zandoriastudios.com/tutorials/am-mocap-tutorial/

Step 3

Once your skeleton is constrained to follow the motion capture, create a Pose from the Action. Be sure that the Key filters are set as shown below. Name your pose “BVH” and save your model. This pose will now be usable to load any BVH file that is set-up the same way.

Step 4

To load a new motion capture file for your model, create a new action and drag-and-drop the “BVH” pose into the action.

Right-click the channel for the “shortcut to BioVision BVH File1”. NOTE: Do not right-click the shortcut, make sure that it’s the channel. Choose “Capture sequence” and load the BVH file that you wish to use.

Your model will follow the new BVH file, it doesn’t matter which file you used for making your constraints, just be sure that the BVH file was set up the same way. You can find lots of free BVH files on the web to practice with.

[John Bigboote]

Cool- thanks Will... sounds like a perfect solution but (there's always a butt!) in my experience none of the BVH's I have(and I have hundreds) start in a similar or a T-pose. On the bunch I was viewing yesterday, the 1st captured frame is some glitch-ball pose that needed be deleted.

 

In current versions(19), the heading is 'Bones' instead of 'Channels' and the shortcut to the BVH is not listed... unless I am missing a step.