Allow me to preface by saying, I'm a newbie but then again, i'm not.

I have some experience in 3D modeling
I am pretty familiar with apps such as Adobe After Effects,Bryce,Poser,Blender and Carrara.

Being new to Poser, I decided to research everything I can to learn about it.

This is what I,after a month of scouring several websites across the vast wilderness
of the internet,have come to the conclusion....

1. Creativity: there is an abundance of talent among those of us who, I would like to think, 
       inspires others to step forward and show the world that there is a positve community of artists
       willing to show the potential that you have, and be able to share it FREELY
       via the Internet.
2. Viability: the nature of others to to judge our peers both negative and
       positive,in hopes that they/we can better become ourselves and learn from our mistakes.
3. Inspiration: Those of you who have witnessed some of the results via Youtube can see    what  Poser can do.

Having said that, why do we not have a resource of motion files available yet?

Pleading Ignorance, maybe there is a resource somewhere, I have yet to find it.
I however have taken some steps in creating my own Bvh files and challenge those of
you that are willng to step forward and create your OWN PERSONAL BVH FILES for G2
characters as well as 3rd party characters.

Come on guys, lets take Poser to the next level!

HINT: Renderosity Adminstration, take note....make a sticky.

it's not easy to make those, and it costs quite a bit of cash for a proper mo-cap set-up. a bvh file created in poser is also gonna be difficult and time-consuming to make, but it can't compare to motion capture IMVHO.

I tend to agree with you.  Having been an artist in one medium or another most of my life, it was not static pictures that attracted me to 3D, but rather the animation, and how I could make things come alive.  I guess that part of the problem is getting these motion capture device's costs down to where the "starving artists" can afford them.  Then again, if this ever happens, it may be too upsetting to some people's "apple carts", and thus it would be in their best interests to keep the prices inflated for as long as possible.  Although one can find a few free BVH files here and there, I've decided that one just has to go through the laborious process of setting up their animations by hand.  But maybe in the long haul, this is still the best way to go.

I have a personal library of over 1000 animation files for Poser. This was a result of buying files for Poser, like from ES3D, or buying other motion files and adapting them to work, and collecting free motion files from various sources, like Second Life, samplers, etc. The problem is that those files all belong to someone else, the originals anyway, and sharing those is a serious violation.

So, it is possible to get the files, but it is a serious amount of work to adapt them to Poser, my collection is the result of four years of collecting, and it does cost some money.

More important than motion files is the lack of a free base rig, and this is what is really holding Poser back. In other programs, like Character Studio, you can apply a standard biped rig. In Poser you can do this to, but you are not allowed to sell the character then, as that standard rig is not for redistribution. So to create characters involves starting from scratch. 

Poser needs a free redistributable biped and quudroped rig, with all the revelvant fall of zones, limits, etc, applied, that we can apply to our own creations, modify and tweak for best results, and then we know that standard BVH files will work with this base rig for all characters.

Hi Ditto on everything Helgard said

I too have an extensive library of over 1000 BVH files collected over 8  years
from credo and other places

I use the much overlooked "puppetmaster " python plugin from Philc.
to transfer motion from one figure to another
so in effect we DO have a standard low res "biped rig"  for easy animation setup and creation to be later transfered to our more complicated resource heavy rigs for rendering.

this standard rig is the p4 male and female  AKA "dork" and "posette"
these old zygote rigs are perfect for easy animation in real time
and they are most compatible with standard Biovision motion files you might find out there
once you animation is roughed out and refined you fire up puppetmaster
and transfer the motion to your Apollo,M2,M3 V1,V2,V3,V4,jessie,James  or your Sanctumart heavy  Robot Rig etc etc.
 I believe s similar feature is built in to poser7 and called "UNIVERSAL POSES"??
it can be a time consuming process but for me it worth it when i see a NON standard rig like
Sanctumart's "charger" robot fighting realisticly.

Thanks for giving your opinions. hopefully more Poser users will read this and share their thoughts as well.

Miss Nancy and kirwyn:   no doubt MoCap systems are expensive. I did come across something that caught my attention. also read a post in a different forum about this system as well as a user submitting a short animation he created using it. pretty impressive,the price isn't bad as well. sorry I didn't create a link, not much of a user in terms of emailing.

 naturalpoint.com/optitrack

Helgard and wof359: Thanks for the info,much appreciated.I agree that it can be time consuming and costly.  I do have thesecondlife clips i use and utilize a handful.so that helps. I'm in the process  of creating some martial arts motions and look to share with the community when  i'm finished. so is it a violation to share freely the bvh files you buy as long as you don't
sell them? I guess it is a an ethical issue as technically you are keeping the origianal
            creator from profiting,huh? oh well. back to the drawing (key)board.

eddiegroover@yahoo.com           

Attached Link: http://www.bvhfiles.com/

Some of the files might require the odd tweak, but they do work in Poser. 

Yeah thanks, I found it a little while back. appreciate nonetheless.

I've been thrilled with the ones from http://www.es3d.com .. I bought the whole collection and they all work extremely well in poser...

One thing I'd like to see is the ability to at least set every 4th frame to show etc, because right now I'm still getting just 2 fps with full texture, on a fast e6660 dualcore for bvh movies, during preview w/P7...

Agree I'd really like to see at least some other folks' work on movies/animations you've done, for inspiration, as well as bvh files and animation stuff from the merchants...

Helgard, that's interesting to hear re your collection... any other sites you'd recommend, beyond es3d.com, that do good-quality animation bvh's for sale?

Poser doesn't use dual cores for anything but rendering so they are not being used for calculating the rig/skin. What you need is a faster display card and a faster CPU (faster as in more GHz not cores)

Thanks for the link graphicsguy. I'll check it out.

Keep a close eye on the optitrack camera site; they are supposed to be going hot with an optical mocap solution for Siggraph that weighs in at under $5,000. What all it will include hasn't been announced yet, but do a search in the forum for yoshi-mocap. It appears that optitrack has bought or liscenced the program he was developing for use with their first generation cameras, and you can find out tidbits from those threads. Not cheap, but considerably less expensive than the next lowest cost system by Gypsy (and if you go with full body you wind up paying 20k for the Gypsy Gyro suit, instead of 14k for the Gypsy upper body frame). The good news is that advances are being made in Poser's animating capabilities, and those are sparking more interest in its use for keyframing figures. And the more attention, the more resources should become available....

*"so in effect we DO have a standard low res "biped rig"  for easy animation setup and creation to be later transfered to our more complicated resource heavy rigs for rendering.

this standard rig is the p4 male and female  AKA "dork" and "posette" 
*Actually, no, these rigs belong to e-Frontier, so you can't redistribute a figure made using these rigs.

*sell them? I guess it is a an ethical issue as technically you are keeping the origianal creator from profiting,huh? oh well. back to the drawing (key)board.
*But that is my point exactly. Why don't we have a free rig we can use to make new characters? I have no problem making my own rig, but every person who makes a new figure has to make his own rig. If we had one standard free rig, and we all used that, then we would know that the BVH files will definitely work, but if every person makes a new rig, you have to adjust the bvh file for every human figure. The standard bi-ped rig in Character studio is used to make sale products, why, if Poser is THE charcater animation package, is it so hard to make a rig freely available for people to use to make more figures.

According to the feedback in Renderosity's ethics forum, e-fronteer has stated that you can use their rigs to make your characters, and distribute or sell them as you see fit. Anyone who can use your Poser rig "owns" it already.

Paloth, any official link to this? I don't want to release a character and then find myself in the middle of a copyright battle.

Exactly. thats what I thought how it works. If I created a bvh file using Simon G2 figure and
shared FREELY with others who already have Poser, how can that be violating any policies?

see my title at beginning of post.

Helgard perhaps we are talking about 2 different things here
Who needs to Sell/buy a rig ??
I am talking about Selling Distributing BVH/animated pose files GENERATED
using the zygote figures that people already have installed by default
the reason i mention posette and dork is that they are VERY resourc friendly while tweaking and refining an animation  you then transfer you motion directly to your
hire res M# V3,V4 etc with "puppetmaster"

I have had 3 such products in the marketplace here for the last 4 years/

its the motion data  that  is distributed,,NOT  the poser figures themselves

bvh files are a rare find these days people just dont make them or if they do make them, they sell them. I cant see selling them beccause they dont always work on the figure you bought them for.

M3/V3 has zero free bvh files why? Im sick of doing these by hand all the time theres got to be an easier way.

Here is the thread, Helgard.

It is nice to know that this topic has generated a certain amount of interest.
what is important here,however, is to create a solution that arises from
our opinions,insights and speculations. 
Does anyone remember the old fable where a poor man wanders into town and asks
for food and was turned away by each of its inhabitants.then he makes his way to the center of town and puts together a large pot of water over a fire and drops in a stone. at this point he begins to draw the attention of townsfolk, one by one.
when each asks what is he doing, he says he is making stone soup to share with the community.
thus he continues to stir the "soup" as one after another approaches him and would say to him,
"what this needs is a few potatoes"
another comes by,"just a hint of parseley and a carrot or two would do this just fine....."
......and so on and so on.....

Well, you know where this is going by now.

If we all put together our resources maybe we can create our own motion files for Poser
characters. and yes, I am speaking of bvh specific files. even If each of us makes one file
and share with other P6 or P7 users, then perhaps we can generate our own repository.

Now of course I have to think in realistic terms. there are variables involved.the number of actual
P6 andP7 users who participate. the amount of those that read this.(Sticky?) other reasons which I have overlooked. probably a few GLARINGLY OBVIOUS reasons which I am sure someone 
will point out.

Let me wrap this up for those of you who are drifting off. please remember the internet has
allowed each and everyone one of us an opportunity to express our views, to share our
talents with friends whom we've never met but know that these same people share at least
something in common with us. the desire to create. and that desire to create is what helped build
Nations. (Triumphant music starts building up to crescendo as crowds of thousands cheer.)
O.K.  Everyone inspired yet? lets build up our own motion files and freely share today!woohoo!!

       Ed G.
      voted most likely to incite a riot
      voted most likely to shamelessly use an excessive amount of smileys in his post

To justify my theory, I went back to the Poser forums page to see how many views there were of my post. 216 views to date and growing.
potentially that could be over 200 motion files created and shared.
In the grander scheme of things,that isn't such a huge number. but for those of us with a tight budget(college students and the like) that would put our Poser characters to action and maybe 
inspire more of us to create. I have had Poser for over a month now and have YET to create
an animation worthy of viewing by anyone, including myself. mainly because I have been
between learning how to create motions that have to come across as smooth as possible
due to my own strict standards.(which by the way is NOT easy) and finding usable free motions.
and I am sure I'm not the only one here who is going through this. just my two cents....

I'm on a Mac. Most BVH files just spin the rainbow beachball. When a few BVHs loaded (free samples from BVHfiles.com) they mangled the figure in a painful looking way (Alien IV clone leftovers and StarTrek:TheMotionPicture transporter disaster come to mind). Aren't BVH supposed to be "universal"?

I'm getting one of the ES3D pack this weekend because it uses PZ2 files. If that works I'll be relieved. Can we start a PZ2 repository instead of BVH?

More WalkDesigner files would be cool too. I've been thinking about trying to make some basic dancefloor moves in the WalkDesigner (step touch, step touch, lol). Is anyone else weirded out by what is called "sexy walk"?

Unfortunately, my Mac also won't run certain Python scripts that use a graphic interface like the NATURALIZER script (sigh). If anyone knows a workaround I'd love to know, If not, maybe some friendly PC users could offer some PZ2 created with this type of script...?

Lastly, it might help to find out what people need in animations. I was amused (but it's become less amusing) that all BVH collections seem to be either shooting a gun (and then falling down dead), or whacking a sword (and then falling down dead). If you only want your characters to fight and die there are lots of resources, but more believable "everyday" moves would be cool too.

Totally looking forward to that OptiTrack rig!

holly

I've been anxiously watching the OptiTrack developments for the past year and a half. Here is a video/interview I recently found showing the system:

http://on10.net/Blogs/laura/optitrack-offers-you-motion-capturing-you-can-do-at-home-and-affordable/

The x factor in my mind is how much cleanup there will need to be of the files. You can see in their live demo that there is some noise (note the legs going wonky now and again). It's hard to say how much time this would save somebody to use if the cleanup is extensive. Most bvh I've encountered--both found and purchased--is usually pretty noisy, so it leads me to believe that the cleanup is the hardest part of mocap.

That said--and taking a page from ed111's idea of a shared community--if , say, somebody working on a specific non-commercial project purchased such a system and generated raw bvh files they created for their project that they then made available to such a community with the idea that individuals might then download a file, clean it up, and return it to the shared space, that might be one way to harness the power of many individuals for the benefit of the community, while also benefitting the purchaser of the system for making the files available.  Just a thought...

Holly- totally agree with you on the part about creating everyday moves. out of the non-cleaned up bvh files Ihave,I would say 90% are fight/kick/stagger/falldown/dance moves.

tvining-great idea..great idea...

O.K. everyone, Im passing around the hat,  lets all pitch in and get that Optitrack system.
 don't be cheap,now. look under your cushions, your car seats, your swear jars......
that last one is a freekin goldmine if you've been as frustrated at trying to create motions by scratch as I am.......
          ......and ya know something? after seeing that it can take a week to render a five min video
after spending HOW LONG? to set up your motions? 
damn it man.......................ok lets see..........(mumbles to himself)............15 cents from top of clothes dryer.........................................(drops in jar)...........junior want miss this ............(sneaks
kids' piggy bank change).....I swear I'll pay it back.....OK, lets see, four dollars and fifteen cents.... 
          ....Now all I need is four thousand nine hundred ninety-five dollars and eighty five cents!!!!!