.bvh to .anim w/o Avastar

[Jenna Huntsman]

Hey all,

I'm tinkering around with the SL animation system, and I've got some animations which I want to try out mixed priorities on - I've heard / seen that SL's .anim format can facilitate this, but I seem to be drawing a blank as to how to convert my .bvh files to .anim files. (Or at least, any solutions that don't point to Avastar - I don't want to spend money on an idea which could go nowhere!)

I've found a couple different tools, but none will allow me to import a bvh and save out a .anim

• Extrude Ragu's AnimHacker - I'd like to play around with this, but it can only handle .anim files, no support for .bvh
• AnimMaker - Oooold tool for creating and manipulating .anim files. Still seems to work with Bento, which is cool. Uses different Coordinate space than AnimHacker. Again, no .bvh support though.
• Anim2BVH - Conversion goes the wrong way. No bento support.

I've seen it mentioned on the forum that the viewer creates a .anim from a .bvh before upload, but it doesn't seem like you can export the .anim :(

Anyone got any recommendations (aside, of course, Avastar) of any other tools which may help in this endeavour?

Edited April 20, 2022 by Jenna Huntsman

[Aglaia]

You could also use Bento Buddy. Not free neither, but cheaper than Avastar. You could import the bvh then export to anim. I haven't tried, but it should work, i think.

Edited April 22, 2022 by Aglaia

[Anaiya Ahren]

Can't you just use Blender ( Addons tab --> enable Import-Export: BioVision Motion Capture (BVH) format), or has that changed since the version I have?

 

 

[Jenna Huntsman]

3 hours ago, Anaiya Ahren said:

Can't you just use Blender ( Addons tab --> enable Import-Export: BioVision Motion Capture (BVH) format), or has that changed since the version I have?

You can, but unfortunately that's not the answer to the question I was asking - that would just re-export a .bvh, when I want the resulting file in the SL-specific .anim format which allows for some more advanced configuration.

The Avastar plugin for Blender can do this, but unfortunately I'm not in the position to invest in a tool like that right now for an idea which is just a concept right now.

[Quistess Alpha]

On 4/20/2022 at 1:26 PM, Jenna Huntsman said:

I've seen it mentioned on the forum that the viewer creates a .anim from a .bvh before upload

It does, and I've been meaning to rework some of the linden source into a simple converter that would also read/write a human-readable analogue of .Anim. . . but other things keep coming up and it would probably take me a week or so of dedicated effort. . . maybe in a few months I'll get around to it.

If you want to give it a go . . . https://bitbucket.org/lindenlab/viewer/src/master/indra/llcharacter/llbvhloader.cpp should give you a good lead.

[Quistess Alpha]

@Jenna Huntsman I got around to it!

My converter works on the few test cases I tried (mostly bvh animations from open-collar) although it's not 1:1 with the viewer's conversion (it doesn't cull minute changes or 0-data, and I'm not sure why the bvh examples I have explicitly tell the avatar to go 46 inches upwards.)

It turns out the math for the conversion is pretty straight-forward, but file-IO is a bit of a nightmare.

If you're comfortable compiling from source, feel free to send me a message. There's still a bit of cleanup to do before I release it publicly* though.

*if I release it publicly.. . on the one hand, was a decent amount of work, on the other, I'm not really interested in trying to add usability features like a file selection interface, and I don't really want to be obliged to explain to people how to use a command-line or compile from source. . .

 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

13 hours ago, Quistess Alpha said:

if I release it publicly.. . on the one hand, was a decent amount of work, on the other, I'm not really interested in trying to add usability features like a file selection interface, and I don't really want to be obliged to explain to people how to use a command-line or compile from source. . .

Just link it here if/when you've cleaned it up enough, there's a small chance someone can improve on it. ♥️

[Quistess Alpha]

6 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Just link it here if/when you've cleaned it up enough, there's a small chance someone can improve on it. ♥️

Just remembering all the minor issues left to sort out (see todo.txt), and fixing one or two of them took a bit, but here it is:

https://gitlab.com/Quillia/anim-converter

Maybe c isn't the friendliest language for this sort of task, but I think the general structure is simple enough to be redone in whatever language/framework someone might want to convert it to.

[Jenna Huntsman]

21 hours ago, Quistess Alpha said:

Just remembering all the minor issues left to sort out (see todo.txt), and fixing one or two of them took a bit, but here it is:

https://gitlab.com/Quillia/anim-converter

Maybe c isn't the friendliest language for this sort of task, but I think the general structure is simple enough to be redone in whatever language/framework someone might want to convert it to.

I've had a little play around with this, but I can't get it to successfully convert any of the animations I've got - I'll upload one of them and DM you a link, but this is the output that I see:

./bvh2anim bentoReferenceWtransforms.bvh out.anim
Animation priority: 4
Does the animation loop? (y or n) n
ease_in amount: 0.3
ease_out amount: 0.3
nFrames: 1
Frame time: 0.041667
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

 

[OptimoMaximo]

5 hours ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

I've had a little play around with this, but I can't get it to successfully convert any of the animations I've got - I'll upload one of them and DM you a link, but this is the output that I see:

./bvh2anim bentoReferenceWtransforms.bvh out.anim
Animation priority: 4
Does the animation loop? (y or n) n
ease_in amount: 0.3
ease_out amount: 0.3
nFrames: 1
Frame time: 0.041667
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

 

Most likely the error is given by the 1 frame specification. In a SL compatible bvh, first frame is reserved to TPose, then the animation begins. So in this case I suspect that specifying 1 frame causes an error.