3ds max - bvh ?

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Digging through the forums and the archives I found a bvh exporter for 3ds max that works with the SL skeleton, originally made by Abu Nasu, a couple of years ago. The script works, but only with a specific skeleton setup. I was wondering if there's anything that works with the SLAV skeleton setup, both importing and exporting bvh files.

On youtube I found this:

I can't find those scripts or any reference to them at all though.

 

[Chip Midnight]

The only other option I know of was Puppetshop by Lumonix. It was a commercial product, then was free for a while, then went commercial again, and then went away completely when the developer was hired by Autodesk. As far as I'm aware it was the only commercial plugin for Max that would export Biovision format. There doesn't even seem to be anything on ScriptSpot for doing it. I've tried to adapt Abu's rig to something at the right scale for working with SLAV but without any luck so far. I know others had turned it into a full FK/IK rig or adapted it to Biped but nothing that was ever made available AFAIK and I haven't spent much time playing with it, though I have used it to do some straignt FK animations.

Not sure whatever happened with Wiz's BVH exporters for Max and Blender. There's no mention of them on his blog. Just the youtube videos.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

A shame, thanks for the reply though.

[Chip Midnight]

It's kind of hard to believe that there's nothing out there for Max but Autodesk wants you to use FBX and then use MotionBuilder for retargetting and conversion. Wish I could afford the full suite.

[AthenaStarfire]

The only way to export modern BVH with Max is its included in 3DS 2013 (at a US$15,000+ price tag) I have 3DS Max 2011 ftom a student discount, and does not support BVH. but I am about to dump it and learn Blender.

Seens Blender 2.63's native save and load is .DAE and you can easily import/export any ani to BVH with the suppied plugin.

Sorry insanely expensive 3DS you have been busted..(And for free no less!)

 

 

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

I have 3DSMax 2013 (Design) and it certainly didn't cost me $15000. The only way I see to work with bvh files is by using the biped, which has more and different bones than the SL skeleton.

This biped is no different from the 2011 one as far as I know.

Maybe you're confused with some other program?

[Chip Midnight]

Max 2013 is a bit over $4000, not $15000, and it does not export BVH. It can be imported for use with the Biped procedural animation system but there is no output. As disappointing as that is there's a reason for it and that's that BVH is an extremely limited and outdated format. Even SL doesn't actually use BVH. On upload it's converted to SL's own .anim format which stores more data than BVH can. The only reason it's the upload format is to make SL compatible with Poser since in 2004 a lot of people were already using it and it was affordable. As someone who's been making a living with Max and 3d Studio before it since 1992 I feel comfortable saying that it is worth every penny of its rather modest price. There are good reasons why Blender still isn't used much professionally and its price and bvh export aren't it. Blender is an excellent choice for SL content creation though and people who aren't already Max (or Maya, or SI) users should definitely use it over buying an expensive professional package if Second Life is all they want it for.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

I completely agree, one more thing I'd like to add.

If it wasn't for programs like Max or Maya, Blender would be no where near as extended as it is right now. A lot of features and even some of the UI seem to be more or less copied from the commercial software. The rendering in cycles was used in the commercial products before it was introduced in Blender (Iray was available in 3ds max in early 2011) for example and the material editor looks suspiciously close to the one in Max.

One could say the same for Open Office vs MS Office and Photoshop vs Gimp.

This means two things: For a good development of the free software there's a need for commercial counterparts, breaking new grounds and it means the commercial product is usually one step ahead, both in adding features and in getting rid of bugs.

[2Tee2 Caeran]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

 biped, which has more and different bones than the SL skeleton

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 well nothing stops you from adjusting the biped skeleton and renaming the bones so that it matches SL one