It would be great for someone to make a Generic character with the right bone names in Motionbuilder, so that you could animate in MB and then export the bvh to Poser. Wouldn't that be awesome!!!! I'm sure if someone made this people would pay for it. Someone should and we could put it in the store

Excuse my ignorance but what is the advantage of creating the BVH in Motion builder? Why not just make the BVH in Poser where you plan to use it anyway.

Poser sucks at animation in comparison with motionbulider, body parts go flying everywhere, things become distorted, try to get someone to jump and he floats all over the screen. In MB it does exactly what I want it to and easy to pose and move, more control, better accurate control. Poser on the other hand sometimes goes ballistic on you.

Poser have need of a REAL AUTOMATIC MOTION CAPTURE SOFTWARE .. other softwares are not usefull.

I'm with you Flog. I've had my eye on Motionbuilder for awhile...

Forgive my ignorance, I've only hit the "Make Movie" about a dozen times in all my Poser time, but isn't it possible to do almost all one's animation using "canned" bvh, which can be bough in quite a number of collections (from DAZ, Credo, etc.) ? I'm not trying to start a new skirmish in the religious war between hand-anim purists and mo-cap users, I'd really like to know the opinion of anyone who may have tried both.

I usually stay out of these threads simply because they tend to degenerate into a p*ssing contest. Anyway, here's my 2 cents worth... Poser is one of the easiest programs to animate a biped character in. I've used the canned BVH files as well as hand animated scenes totally from scratch and one thing I can tell you is that they call it animation for a reason.... I have never used a BVH that I didn't have to tweak after importing it. At times I think it would have been easier to hand animate some things instead of having to tweak the result after importing a BVH. I have MB and unless you use a bone setup specific to the figure you are going to use in Poser you will have mixed results with the exported BVH files. If you are having problems animating with Poser, it's probably because you are using spline interpolation and not enough keyframes to control the spline. Flog says he has problems with his character's body parts flying all over the place. If you are trying to make a figure jump use the body parameter dial to move the figure up and forward or back not the hip and feet. It's much easier IMHO if you use IK also. One other thing that I do is animate at half the frames per second I am going to use in the final animation and retime the animation before I'm ready to render unless I have dialog in the animation. End of my 2 cents worth Ed

EdW - that was just the kind of info I was hoping for. Could you elaborate on the "mixed results" ? In another thread (http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12351&Form.ShowMessage=1002408) this question was brought up, and noone seemed to know even how to get MB-generated bvh INTO Poser. Could you enlighten us all on how to do that ?

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/artistdownload.ez?Who=markdc&fileid=4535&key=199198

Here is an animation that I did in MB and brought into poser as bvh. Its one of the stock motions with some timewarp curves thrown on it. I did a tutorial on the subject and should have it online again soon. It's actually fairly easy to get the animation from MB to Poser. Here is what MB has that Poser doesn't: Non-linear Animation (motion blending) Time warp curves constraints floor contacts real-time opengl playback (even with a model as dense as V3) Much easier to use function curves editor Much better FK/IK rig I will say Poser has a much better dope sheet. -Mark

"I have MB and unless you use a bone setup specific to the figure you are going to use in Poser you will have mixed results with the exported BVH files" This is exactly what I'm looking for. It would be nice to have a tutorial on making a generic FBX Motionbuilder character that you could animate and then import the generated BVH into Poser and work with most of your models. Similiar to the stock motions on the Poser CD. MarkDC, hope to see that tutorial. Shoot you could possibly sell it. It would be helpful.

MarkDC, hope to see that tutorial It's at the bottom of my homepage again. -Mark

I dont have Motion builder and am curious can it open directly BVH skeletons like credos lifeforms?? or must you have that ability to export FBX?? theres alot of buzz about this program on the other boards Like "CG talk" and Postforum But it sounds like it can only open rigs that are buitl to certain conventions the MB uses. is that how it avoid the tedious "Joint mapping" process of Lifeforms ??

You can bring in a bvh skeleton, then you have to characterize it by matching joint names to MB names. It doesn't take too long. I think it's worth the trouble because of the features I mentioned above. Hopefully Daz studio will have an fbx export. -Mark

HMmmm.....But even if DAZ studio has FBX export (Not Likely) you will still need character rigs built to motion builders bone naming conventions and Mike&Vicky3 sure arent :-( oh well i will continue to animate my CG humans in Good old poser4 propack's Dope sheet and Graph Editor.

This may be common knowledge, but the mocap sold on DAZ (House of Moves) and Credo (Mega MoCap) is OK for Poser as-is (even if P3/4 figure BVH presumably has no parms for buttocks and upneck body parts???).

thats what would be cool though, just a generic that works well and has the same mocap results as HOUSE OF MOVES. Hey Mark, hehehe maybe you should just make a generic character, that would create bvh files like HOUSE OF MOVES with Poser Parameters. That way they just animate the generic character, export the bvh and it already be Poser ready. That would be awesome. You could sell it in FBX format. That would be awesome alright!!! Extra cash. I'd buy it. Forgive my ignorance, I've only hit the "Make Movie" about a dozen times in all my Poser time, but isn't it possible to do almost all one's animation using "canned" bvh, which can be bough in quite a number of collections (from DAZ, Credo, etc.) ? I'm not trying to start a new skirmish in the religious war between hand-anim purists and mo-cap users, I'd really like to know the opinion of anyone who may have tried both. And for the about guy, are you crazy man, bvh cost like 35 bucks a peice for a simple jump or something. Thats expensive as opposed to MB 100$ and make all the bvh you want.

Marc having alittle trouble with getting the poser .bvh into MB. I get a warning that its an unrecognizable file. could this be a mac thing ??

having alittle trouble with getting the poser .bvh into >MB. I get a warning that its an unrecognizable file. could >this be a mac thing ?? Maybe. That's really odd. Post it here, maybe we can see what's wrong with it. -Mark

ok, everything went well till I tried to import into MB. I use MB 4.03 and PP. so if anyone has hep I would be greatful. Usualy to get a Poser obj. into MB I have to import the obj into maya then export as fbx. I jsut want to eliminate all this mish mash of usins so many different apps.

oops guess I should also say that I use OS X