Error Message trying to upload .bvh animation

[kaahupahau]

When I try to upload a .bvh animation I get it shown in the file requestor - means for me, as it lists .bvh animations, .bvh is a valid format.

However, once I click "Upload" in Firestorm, I get an error message:

"Unknown file extension .bvh - Expectd .wav, .tga, .bmp, jpg, .jpeg, or .anim!

 

 

What am I missing? What can I do to verify the file is correct and intact?

It's a .bvh file from Animstreet, who seem to have been THE animation ressource for Second Life around 2010.

Alternatively, which other free ressources for .bvh files are known and available?

Free poses would also be nice, as the pose creator at the Builders Brewery seems to overtax my brain.

Regards

Kaa 

[Love Zhaoying]

I believe the point is, ".bvh" files are NOT a recognized file format for the upload process, and you would need to use one of the others (most likely ".anim").

I hope someone who knows the process sees your post / my response and chimes in. The issue sounds very familiar.

[RohanaRaven Zerbino]

Format is not your problem, the file size is, SL anim limit is 250KB, length limit is 60 seconds.

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Limits

Edited February 18 by RohanaRaven Zerbino

[kaahupahau]

1 hour ago, RohanaRaven Zerbino said:

Format is not your problem, the file size is, SL anim limit is 250KB, length limit is 60 seconds.

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Limits

Thank you Rohana!

Do you have an idea what to do in such a case? Can one cut down animations in some way and glue them back together once they're uploaded?

My friends of the Shork Group unearthed a treasure trove of 2500 animations in BVH format from the retired animstreet website. These were published for free use in 2018, but the website retired finally during the Corona days. And I am now trying to import these animations as to enable us to make furniture and animation components for our  avatars.

[RohanaRaven Zerbino]

While "free" might be tempting, the process of bringing those animations to SL is neither free nor fast. First, you would need to invest money in one of the add-ons for Blender/Maya for animation and animation retargeting for the SL rig. Then, you would have to invest time in learning to work with them and the main program of your choice (Blender or Maya), as well as learning about SL animation to be at least able to remove unnecessary frames without butchering the animation itself. Alternatively, you can try to find somebody willing to do that as a paid job. A rough estimate for the DIY approach would be between L$5 - 10K and 3-6 months of learning and work to reach the basic results. For paying for the service, it would likely cost even more but be completed faster.

Edited February 19 by RohanaRaven Zerbino

[kaahupahau]

Hmm... I took, from Outworldz, the animation "dippose-female.bvh".

All I had to do was upload it - and that one uploaded with no problems unlike the animstreet-files. It is only 59kbyte in size, which may well have been the reason for its success. But I had to do nothing else, the file is usable straight away in world. The outworldz animations I got for testing are all small in size, but they include even dance moves, and so far all I uploaded worked out of the box.

No aligning needed or anything...

Are we sure we're talking about the same method of animations? I'm not talking about motion capture raw files, I am talking of .bvh files , which are already aligned to a human skeletal system.

 

[OptimoMaximo]

26 minutes ago, kaahupahau said:

Hmm... I took, from Outworldz, the animation "dippose-female.bvh".

All I had to do was upload it - and that one uploaded with no problems unlike the animstreet-files. It is only 59kbyte in size, which may well have been the reason for its success. But I had to do nothing else, the file is usable straight away in world. The outworldz animations I got for testing are all small in size, but they include even dance moves, and so far all I uploaded worked out of the box.

No aligning needed or anything...

Are we sure we're talking about the same method of animations? I'm not talking about motion capture raw files, I am talking of .bvh files , which are already aligned to a human skeletal system.

 

It looks like you need some reference info...

Bvh file format IS raw motion data. Whether it was captured or not is another bag.

Bvh files do not imply "a human skeletal system", you can really dump any hierarchy to it. There is no fixed or standardized naming convention, anyone can output any skeleton really. There is also no obligation whatsoever in regard of world orientation, joint orientation and rotation order. If you take a SL Bvh animation and compare it to any random Bvh file non SL specific, you'll notice soooo many discrepancies between them.

There is one factor that may prevent an animation to upload, and that's its final size once converted into the native file format SL uses, the anim format. The limit is 250kb size OR 60 seconds length, which ever is being hit first.

[kaahupahau]

28 minutes ago, OptimoMaximo said:

It looks like you need some reference info...

Bvh file format IS raw motion data. Whether it was captured or not is another bag.

Bvh files do not imply "a human skeletal system", you can really dump any hierarchy to it. There is no fixed or standardized naming convention, anyone can output any skeleton really. There is also no obligation whatsoever in regard of world orientation, joint orientation and rotation order. If you take a SL Bvh animation and compare it to any random Bvh file non SL specific, you'll notice soooo many discrepancies between them.

There is one factor that may prevent an animation to upload, and that's its final size once converted into the native file format SL uses, the anim format. The limit is 250kb size OR 60 seconds length, which ever is being hit first.

Thank you! That explains a lot!

As Outworldz is making those ressources avaialble for SL & OpenSim, I  guess we can assume they prepared the files for OpenSim.

Whilst the files from AnimStreet, which often referenced DAZ in their textual description, most likely were prepared for his DAZ software. 

Then I understand, too, why the same animation in the Outworldz librars is made up from, like 5 files, whilst the AnimStreet file of the same entry is just a single, but much larger file.

Thank you!

It's these details that are non-obvious when looking at decade old ressources on archive.org

[kaahupahau]

On 2/19/2024 at 11:29 AM, RohanaRaven Zerbino said:

While "free" might be tempting, the process of bringing those animations to SL is neither free nor fast. First, you would need to invest money in one of the add-ons for Blender/Maya for animation and animation retargeting for the SL rig. Then, you would have to invest time in learning to work with them and the main program of your choice (Blender or Maya), as well as learning about SL animation to be at least able to remove unnecessary frames without butchering the animation itself. Alternatively, you can try to find somebody willing to do that as a paid job. A rough estimate for the DIY approach would be between L$5 - 10K and 3-6 months of learning and work to reach the basic results. For paying for the service, it would likely cost even more but be completed faster.

Optimo provided the key information I was missing. Thank you for having pointed out the issues, of which I now can make sense of.

The sole factor that remains is that I don't want to do that for SL. There are ten of thousands of animations already inside SL.
So for me only the time is of consideration, as I have no upload cost to consider. In which case it's a thing I can ask around my team and we'll see if one of them is interested in learning that, now that there is a pointer how it can be done, so that we can ask the right questions in the future.

 

Which, here, I clearly did not ask.

Thank you for your patience with a stoopid shork!