Importing animations for use with existing, rigged model

Importing animations for use with existing, rigged model

Greetings all. A mate of mine recommended that I took a look at Cheetah and I'm glad that I did. Excellent piece of software and I'm leaning strongly towards a buy. I've been thoroughly digging through this forum and yelling at google for the last two days due to one particular issue though.

I've got an existing model, it's rigged, it's got animations, it works perfectly in Cheetah. But I've also got a bunch of bvh files with motion captures made for a similar but not identical skeleton. What I'm trying to do is import those bvh files (after converting them to fbx via blender) for use with the existing model and add them as new animation takes.

In my struggle to find information I've found tons of references, including several from this forum. But I've not been able to find a tutorial on how to do it nor any clear information on the matter. One post on this forum said;

"Hi fomeboy.
That is fairly easy to realise. Find, if it´s included the T-Pose and assign the skeleton tag by binding the pose.If there´s no comfortable pose available you have to modifier your object to match that pose at frame N°1 and bind it via tag.

Cheers Frank"

But I have no idea on how to do that with an existing skeleton. I know I can totally redo the existing skeleton, re-weight, etc for the bvh-files and then save them as separate fbx-files (these will be used with Unity) but that's the opposite of what I'm hoping for.

In other applications I'd import the bvh files and make sure its components matched the bones in my model, and I'm guessing that is what Frank was referring to with tagging, but I couldn't find any information on how to do that when there already was a skeleton in place.

To sum it up; I've got a finished model, it's rigged, it works in cheetah. I've got bvh files that I've converted to fbx which import fine into cheetah. What I don't know how to do is apply those bvh-fbx animations to the existing skeleton of the model so I don't have to re-rig it.

Epic length on this first post, sorry about that, wanted to make sure I was as clear as possible.

Hi.
I´m pretty sure you can´t as every key in the FBX animation belongs to a one joint in the joint-hierarchy.
What I did in the quoted thread was building a mesh around the skeleton coming from the MoCap data.

What I´d try on a copy of your file is to pose your figure to match frame N°1 in the FBX skeleton. Delete the skeleton tag and add a new one, dragging your converted BHV/FBX joint system into it and hope the heat binding method will work here. Give it a try.

Cheers
Frank

animeeple!guive it a try.

or motionbuider

Simple as:

Cheers
Frank

Many thanks for the replies. I will probably do something in the middle of what both of you suggested; continue using cheetah for some areas but switch to another application for animations. Again, thanks for the quick replies.

You may also like to try animeeple.com I did some succesful retargeting of mocap using an evolver model and mrbones mocap. Sometimes you just need the best tool for that specific job. Cheetahs not really like motionbuilder, but animeeple is. And they churn out the releases and are very responsive to bug reports etc.

AC

Okay I think I have the same problem as the creator of the thread, I have my model rigged and want to add animations, I have the bones imported which is animated, and now i wonder if I make a new take can I make the first character disappear becuasue i can attach the mesh pretty easily, because when i import the bones that are animated they get into the first take and there i already have one animation. I didnt quite understand the explanation you wrote Frank, maybe you can explain a little bit clearer for a noob.
srry if i was supposed to create a new thread.

best regards
Filippus

This won't help but I got notified via email of your post in this thread; your problem and mine differ since you're after separate takes, I was trying to apply motion capture data to an existing rig. For the sake of closure and if anyone googling finds this thread I went with the surprisingly good animeeple.

It borderlines perfection for quickly churning out animations via motion captured data. The fact that it's free and the plugins are cheap make it the perfect companion to Cheetah. Like Targos said "Sometimes you just need the best tool for that specific job."

My knowledge about Cheetah is limited but it sounds like all you have to do is create new takes and then deactivate the old ones. Take my advice with a grain of salt however.

Targos said:

You may also like to try animeeple.com I did some succesful retargeting of mocap using an evolver model and mrbones mocap. Sometimes you just need the best tool for that specific job. Cheetahs not really like motionbuilder, but animeeple is. And they churn out the releases and are very responsive to bug reports etc.

AC

Click to expand...

I never realized that there was this post and I am trying basically to do the same

Targos, how did you lay down your pipeline to to the retargeting in animeeple? I have the mesh rigged in cheetah and the fbx and I was about to give up and use motion builder (demo....i've not won the lottery yet); but I have animeeple and if you could post some sort of instructions for the process I would really appreciate I have the fbx exporter for animeeple, so hopefully it will work fine when i will import in unity engine.

Thanks!