Exporting BVH from Motionbuilder

[Daumus]

I'm trying to export mocap data from Motionbuilder as BVH, but every single time, no matter the size of the skeleton the animation gets completely screwed up. If the skeleton is tiny, animation looks like the character's limbs are imploding, and if i scale it to 100 the whole character looks like a spider.

Now, i've gotten to learn Blender in the past few days and tried retargetting data to Avastar and then exporting from there and it works, but it's not ideal as data isn't transfered correctly and my workflow is slow as i'm new to Blender.

I'm completely stressed out from this, does anyone know how to export data from Motionbuilder so that it works in Second Life? I'm 99% sure it's all about scale.

Data used was retargetted to female Bento rig for Second Life.

Edited November 14, 2017 by Daumus

[Resi Pfeffer]

Are you sure, your mocap program translated the data correctly for the second life template mesh avatar?
Maybe you have too many limbs, or the hip is not the root, or whatever?

This template is made for poser, but as i found out, it also works very well using it with IPI Mocap Studio, for example.
http://static-secondlife-com.s3.amazonaws.com/downloads/avatar/avatar_mesh.zip

[Daumus]

Importing the exported BVH file into Maya or Blender is fine, the animation is there. However now you got me thinking, i always thought that exporting BVH only exports the skeleton with animated and baked joint animation but when i try to load it up into Second Life i can see the Bento mesh in preview. How on earth does it load up that mesh when BVH should only save animation? You might be onto something here...

[Resi Pfeffer]

Just started with animations, so better dont expect too much.

First i exported the animation directly from ipi studio as BVH to blender. and it worked.
Then i exported the anmation directly from ipi studio to SL, and it didnt work, because the hip wasnt set as the root. And maybe there have been more issues due to the unequal amount of limbs between the animation avatar in my mocap studio and the sl avatar.
To fix the issue i had to import the SL Mesh Avatar template to my mocap software.  While capturing, the movement also gets copied to the SL Avatar. And thats what you want to export to sl, probably...

Keep me updated.

[Daumus]

Yeah, thing is i'm not recording anything from iPi Mocap, i'm using some pre-recorded mocap data with a fairly simple skeleton and no finger animations. The goal is to get that retargeted to SL Bento rig, edit out hands if they're clipping through body and animate the fingers.

[Resi Pfeffer]

Yeah, i think you need the right SL skeleton to make it work. The one you use may be simple, but who knows what it does? Where did you get it from?

[Daumus]

The source skeleton is what came with mocap data, i've retargeted data from it to Bento skeleton. I don't think it matters what skeleton is used for source as the animation has to end up on Bento rig anyway, after retargeting i delete the source data anyway.

Edited November 14, 2017 by Daumus

[Resi Pfeffer]

thats right.
If the bento avatar works in your mocap software, then SL also should display the movement correctly.

But are you sure, you exported the bento avatar movement, instead of the movement from the source skeleton?
Thats where i got stuck for quite a while: I exported to .bvh using the top left menu bar. But that just exported the data from the standard skeleton.
I had to switch to another menu, where i could export the data explicit from the SL skeleton.

[Daumus]

I'm sure i exported the BVH from Bento skeleton as i deleted completely the source mocap skeleton i used for retargetting because i didn't need it anymore...

[Resi Pfeffer]

Have you already tried to use the standard SL mesh skeleton instead of bento? Just to see, if that version works?

Cant even find a similar problem using google, neither did i find a solution.
Maybe you should go back to your initial suspicion, and do something about the scale or limb alignment.

And, keep this thread alive. Its hard to imagine you are the first one experiencing this problem. I bet, there is someone out there who can tell you easily:
Ahh, just click that button, right there!"

[Daumus]

I managed to get the Bento rig into Blender without it screwing the rest pose. I had to fix the rig first in Maya as the rotations were wrong,  the whole rig was rotated sideways and then skinned. Not to mention there's at least 10 joints which are completely useless. Also, whoever made that skeleton really doesn't know a single thing about rigs. The spine of the rig is horrible, joints go all over the place.

Now i've come into another problem. When i try to use Match Scale in Avastar, it scales the imported Bento twice its size for some reason and i don't know why. I've tried setting import scale to 1, and then to 100, same thing.

After that, the retargeted animation gets completely screwed up, and i can't fathom what's going on. I've uploaded a video of my workflow so you can see how it turns out.

 

[OptimoMaximo]

hi! your retargeting in blender is all screwed up because you checked on "with translation" in the same section where you set the reference frame. If you turn that off, the stretching shouldn't happen anymore

EDIT: Also, i found that setting a frame different than zero doesn't always work. I would suggest using frame zero even if it has no keyframe. Blender looks for the pose in the frame, not for keyframed frames specifically. If the source animation has a prfect Tpose embedded, you may also use "use rest pose" checkbox instead of a reference frame, but i never used that feature myself, so i can't tell how it works

However, since i see you use Maya, you might want to take a look at MyAniMATE, which exports .anim files straight out of Maya. It works 100% with HumanIK and it comes with skeleton definition files for quick set up

Edited December 30, 2017 by OptimoMaximo

[Rhiannon Arkin]

wow. i have the exact same result when exporting from maya to sl. even just exporting the base bento skeleton as it is provided with the mel script posted on the wiki results in the distortion you have. impossible to use. 

Has anybody out there any advice on how to use maya for animations for sl ? seems so strange that this doesn't work. 

 

[OptimoMaximo]

On 17/5/2018 at 11:41 PM, Rhiannon Arkin said:

Has anybody out there any advice on how to use maya for animations for sl ? seems so strange that this doesn't work. 

Yes, there's my plug in to export animations in native SL format (.anim)  Check my forum signature for a link to get it

However, the problem with the regular skeleton files from the SL wiki is the different standard assumptions for joints and world orientations when rigging, in comparison to animation when it comes to export a bvh file or a .anim file. Basically, the scenes you get for rigging can not work for animation "as is".