Hi

I am a student at the Vancouver Film school for houdini and Nuke.
I was wondering if anybody would know how i add mocap files into Houdini.
what files are supported (bvh, fbx,….)
and what nodes i need and how to apply them correctly to a character.


Thanks so much
Matthias

Hey Matthias,
I'm just finishing a year long project done with mocap. Be prepared for some frustration, unfortunately the Mocap importers are somewhat buggy. Having said that, you can get them to work with a little work.
There are three command-line converters, open up a Cshell (or Bash) that is configured for Houdini, and try these commands

mcacclaim
mcbiovision
mcmotanal

Basically, you can import Acclaim, Biovision and Motion Analysis. Just type each command to get the help for it.

I recommend importing using Inverse Kinematics. However, this is where the bug(s) start to appear. When you first bring it in, the skeleton will look completely pooched. As it turns out, the Hips are in the wrong place, you have to move them in Chops to get them aligned correctly.

Use a Transform CHOP, and interactively move the Hips around until the skeleton looks correct. Once you have that transform you'll need to apply it to all your mocap data.

The Biovision importer worked best for me (didn't try Acclaim and Mot Anal has even more bugs) however, you'll lose the feet and hands! There is a Perl script that Rangi Sutton wrote that is on the Exchange that will attempt to restore the hands and feet. Seems to work fairly well so give it a shot.

Say hi to Ray for me )

Cheers,

peter B

Thanks allot :-)

I will give that a try. It seems its not so easy to add mocap to houdini.
So i might ask you for some help later on, IF YOU DONT mind.

CU
Matthias

Hey,
Feel free to ask but I'm in the last month of my project, so you might not get a useful reply quickly )

Cheers,

Peter B