OK, I now have a large inventory of BVH motion files. I now know how to convert BVH files in text format to actual BVH files. Now I need to know how to edit the contents of the files so that they work with whatever model I'm using.

When I import the BVH file into Poser, I often get error messages telling me that a particular body part doesn't exist on the model to which I'm applying the motion.

Now I'm looking for ways to either edit the BVH file or simply change the names of the body parts in question so they WILL work. Any tutorials/utilities for this?

How do you make bvh text files into usable bvh files?

Follow this procedure:

1. Open Control Panel, click on the File Options icon.

2. Click on the View tab, then scroll down and uncheck the "Hide extensions for known file types" option.

3. Find the bvh text file, right-click on it, then click on Rename.

4. Replace the .txt extension with .bvh, press Enter, press Enter again and that's it.

5. When you're done changing all the file extensions on these files, go back into Control Panel and re-check that "Hide extensions for known file types" option.

Thanks, I shoulda thought of that. The messages you get about missing body parts are annoying, but they usually don't hurt anything - because the parts they refer to are missing. I would think if you open the file in a text editor and changed names that conformed to standard poser body parts names you would be okay. However, some of the parts may not have a Poser counter-part - these you could delete or ignore.

Be very careful about opening bvh files in text editors. It is =very= easy to delete the wrong value. The easiest way to delete unused nodes in Poser is to import the bvh, then turn right around and export the puppy and rename it, or place it into a seperate directory. Changing the node name in the bvh can work, but again, you have to keep in mind that you are going to have some adusting to do (probably the most common single node error is 'Chest 2'. Most of the time you can do without it and no problemo. Occasionally, when the motion is a turn or bend at the hips, part of your motion vector is containe in Chest 2, so you can either lose part of the rotation, or get too sharp a twist on the mesh, and get breakage).