Any good tutorial to make a generic rig to use with bvh files?

Any good tutorial to make a generic rig to use with bvh files?

Hi folks

Finally got some time to get back to my old projects....work is killing me

Anyway, I have a problem: I am trying to create few characters for a project, and I do not really wanna animate by hand, due the time constraints, so I reached the point where i gotta use pre-made animations.

When you rig your own char is all easy; you do it in the way that you want...but then when you load a bvh files(like the truebone sets) or use services like mixamo or animeeple (just to mention a couple, there are more), you will experience that horrible feeling of "what the heck did i do wrong with this rig?".

So I was hoping that there is some sort of tutorial around, about how to make a generic rig in c3d that will work when you go to use these online services or buy bvh files (sadly i cannot work with them in c3d and gotta use cinema4d....i wish you could have bvh support in Cheetah3d *wink wink*); so in general you will just to do some minimal adjustments to the structure, instead than starting to move all the bones and do the weighting over and over again

Is anyone aware of such tutorial? I tried to download some test figures that they use, but I do not have the knowledge to "reverse engineer" the figure and understand how to rig my own in a way that it will work with their animations (Mixamo has an auto rigging service, but is kinda expensive IMHO; and I cannot try it with my bvh files unless i purchase it first, so is kinda like a jump in the unknown).

All that i wish to do is to get something that tells me "these are the bones names, this is how you gotta parent them and this is how you should weight the figure to obtain consistent results" ; so i can then rig my various characters in a uniform way, that will work with the various animation services available online.

Some of you are more skilled, so this would not be a problem, but for me it takes a bit to rig a figure, and is frustrating to finish and see it working fine and then see it messed up when you animate it (and my client does not have the budget to buy figures pre-animated; plus he wants them in a particular design so I am kinda stuck )

Thanks!

I may write one. What I did, in a nutshell, is grab a sample animation from Mixamo, zero out the skeleton (i.e. switch it to "rest" pose) and then build my figure around it.

podperson said:

I may write one. What I did, in a nutshell, is grab a sample animation from Mixamo, zero out the skeleton (i.e. switch it to "rest" pose) and then build my figure around it.

Click to expand...

Thanks a lot!!!

By rest position you mean the T pose?

BTW I've got one of their sample animation (the injuried walk if i recall it correcly), but i cannot see the handles to move the mesh; so how did you build the figure around the skeleton if you cannot take it apart from the geometry or select it?