[Please forward as desired.]

(It was suggested to me that I should post this to at least one Renderosity forum, so here we go.  Although this BVH release is for Daz characters, clearly it should be possible to use the BVH files in any application that supports these characters, including Poser.)

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I'm pleased to announce the most recent BVH conversion of the Carnegie-Mellon (CMU) motion capture library.  The new conversion is for the Daz (daz3d.com) 3rd-generation and 4th-generation characters such as Aiko3, Aiko4, Victoria3, Victoria4, Michael3, Michael4, and so on.  Over 2500 separate BVH files are available, with an index.

You can get the files at:
http://sites.google.com/a/cgspeed.com/cgspeed/motion-capture/daz-friendly-release

Or you can go to www.cgspeed.com and follow the Motion Capture link from the left-side navigation bar.

All of the files are free, and they're bundled into a small number of ZIP files so that you can get everything fairly quickly.

Other people have previously done releases of the CMU motion dataset for the Daz characters or "for Poser", however sometimes there are significant problems using these earlier releases.  This new "official cgspeed.com" release was created via a full retargeting in Motionbuilder, and is designed to import seamlessly into programs like Daz Studio when you use any of the Daz gen3 or gen4 characters.

Two training videos are available (in HD):
  Part 1: http://www.vimeo.com/13777740
  Part 2: http://www.vimeo.com/13777422

I recommend that you watch them full-screen if possible.

This Daz-friendly release is actually two separate releases: a "primary" and a "secondary" release.  The difference between these two releases is explained in the second training video, and in the full READMEFIRST file of the primary release.  Generally you should start with the primary release, and only get the secondary release if you think you need it -- see the second training video for an example.

A partial extract from the READMEFIRST file of the primary release is below.

Thanks to John Lukasiewicz for doing the initial heavy lifting on the Motionbuilder Python script that enabled this release.  No thanks to Autodesk for having bugs in their BVH export code, which I had to correct around.  :-O

AFFILIATION AND DISCLAIMER: I (Bruce) am not affiliated with and don't speak for Carnegie-Mellon University, Daz Productions, Autodesk, or Smith Micro, and they don't speak for me. :-)

Bruce Hahne
hahne at io dot com

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This READMEFIRST file accompanies the primary Daz-friendly BVH
conversion release of the Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU) Graphics
Lab Motion Capture Database.  See "Where to find stuff" at the bottom
of this file for where to get the BVH conversion and/or the original
CMU dataset.

This is the third major conversion in an occasional series of
conversions of the CMU BVH data into various forms designed to be easy for hobbyists to use.  The history so far is:
  2008: First Motionbuilder-friendly release
  2009: 3dStudio Max biped-friendly release
  June 2010: Second (slightly improved) Motionbuilder-friendly release
  July 2010: Daz-character-friendly release

This release is a set of BVH files designed to work seamlessly with
the 3rd-generation (gen3) and 4th-generation (gen4) prerigged
characters from Daz (www.daz3d.com).  These characters include, for
example:
  Aiko3 Victoria3 David3 Michael3 SP3
  Aiko4 Victoria4 SP4

I've spot-tested the BVH files from this Daz-friendly conversion in
Daz Studio 3. In theory they should also work with the Daz gen3 and
gen4 characters within any release of Poser or Carrara, however as of
July 2010 I haven't tested with either of these packages.

ADVANTAGES AND FEATURES OF THIS RELEASE:

• The BVH files are entirely retargeted to the Daz gen3 and gen4
   skeletons, and should import seamlessly onto these Daz characters
   with no need to mess around with joint renaming or post-import
   rotation corrections. If you've struggled in the past to use BVH
   files to animate Daz characters, you should give this dataset a try
   or watch the training video - it's very fast to use this BVH release
   with the Daz characters.

• Unlike other attempts at releasing Poser-friendly or Daz-friendly
   conversions of this dataset, this conversion has run the files
   through an actual retargeting algorithm in Motionbuilder.  Other
   attempts at Poser-friendly releases that I've seen contain massive
   joint-snarl and rotation-snarl problems.  This release should avoid
   most of these problems, since Motionbuilder did the heavy lifting.

• Index files: As always, the release includes consolidated indices
   that list the motion filenames and their descriptions.  Both
   spreadsheet and word processor friendly index files are available.

• This Daz-friendly release is based on the latest
   Motionbuilder-friendly BVH release, which provides better leg and
   neck rotation corrections than the 2008 release.  The result is that
   when you animate Daz characters using this Daz-friendly release, you
   typically don't get the problem of the character's head being bent
   down at a severe angle.

• Preserves the 120fps of the original CMU dataset - you get every
   frame from the original capture (both the good and bad data...), not
   a downsampled 30fps version.

CAVEATS:

• The original CMU motion capture data was recorded several years ago
   in a non-profit academic environment by people who weren't necessarily
   experts at operating the motion capture system. The data was never
   cleaned and contains a wide variety of joint-flipping problems
   characteristic of "dirty" motion capture data, when the Vicon
   joint-tracking software makes an incorrect guess about how a joint
   has actually rotated. All releases of the CMU data preserve these
   joint-flip problems in all of their (ugly) glory. Typically the only
   way to get rid of them is manually clean the data, which is of
   course a time-consuming and tedious process. Some of the capture
   data is quite good, but other captures, particularly earlier in the
   numeric series of directories, have a lot of joint-flip problems.

• Because MotionBuilder 2009 has a hip rotation BVH export bug, I've
   run this release of the Daz-friendly data through a hip-correction
   script that, for the most part, does an excellent job of undoing
   Motionbuilder's bug. However, occasionally this script introduces
   foot-slip / floor-contact problems - see for example animation
   directory 144, file 144_05.bvh. If you discover an animation in
   this release that you don't like due to foot-slip problems, you
   might want to take a look at the "Daz-friendly, hip-uncorrected" BVH
   release, since I'm also releasing the full set of Daz-friendly BVH
   files PRIOR to application of the hip-correction algorithm. The
   "hip-uncorrected" release is at cgspeed.com, as usual.

• This release provides 120fps BVH data, as do all of the BVH releases I've done so far. Generally you'll want to set your animation software to 30fps (for NTSC), 25fps (for PAL), or 24fps (for film) after you've done the BVH import, since these fps rates are what most video-editing software will expect.

• These BVH files are not designed to work with non-Daz characters
   such as E-frontier / SmithMicro characters, Miki2, RuntimeDNA
   characters, etc. I also don't know if they'll work cleanly with
   lesser-known Daz figures such as The Freak, The Girl, etc.

• Since it's impossible to test 2600 different BVH files on a dozen
   different Daz characters within 3 different applications (Daz
   Studio, Carrara, Poser), there are plenty of combinations that might give
   you "interesting" or undesired results. However, work so far within Daz
   Studio has given positive results.

• Blender users: I have yet to see a successful import of a Daz
   character into Blender, and Blender uses a "z axis up" world
   coordinate system that makes life even more miserable for
   converting a variety of data, so please don't hold your breath
   hoping that this Daz-friendly release will be usable in Blender any
   time soon.

USAGE RIGHTS:

CMU places no restrictions on the use of the original dataset, and I
(Bruce) place no additional restrictions on the use of this particular BVH conversion.

Here's the relevant paragraph from mocap.cs.cmu.edu:

Use this data! This data is free for use in research and commercial
projects worldwide. If you publish results obtained using this data, we would appreciate it if you would send the citation to your  published paper to jkh+mocap@cs.cmu.edu, and also would add this text to your acknowledgments section: "The data used in this project was obtained from mocap.cs.cmu.edu. The database was created with funding from NSF EIA-0196217."