Animator here

[The Nemesis]

I've wanted to help some of the meshers here animate for a while but I've never really had much time.
Just focusing on animation wasn't really my thing, I made short films like the one you see in my signature.
I freelanced for a while so had to slow down with that and now I have a job at Bioware I have even less time to make whole shorts.

So this is a good chance for me to finally lend my animating skills to the community. I just need to know which moddlers are looking for any help with that.

I use Motionbuilder (so you would need to import the Bvh files into max, then export to FF cause I dont have Max 4 or 5).

For a look at some of my films check out the Marvel Civil War recreation flic in my sig, or even better, my last proper short film (which is over a year old now!), Beast.

Hope there's someone out there in need, if so PM me so we can talk more.

[Jakew]

Awhile ago, Revenant and Volsung created some AMAZING Justice League Unlimited meshes / skins. They looked absolutely perfect. However, due to the proportions of the meshes, I believe they needed someone with animation skills to work on them (rigging, etc). Only a handful got released from around 15 or so characters.

The relevant threads showing the unreleased meshes can be viewed at:

http://freedomreborn.net/archive/index.php?topic=41722.210

and

http://freedomreborn.net/archive/index.php?topic=40963.270 <--- check out this Batman 

If you could get in touch with either Volsung or Revenant, I'm sure they'd be pleased to work with you.

[docdelorean88]

Volsung has been looking for an animator for a long time. PLEASE get in touch with him, we need that animated batman mesh.

[Vertex]

I'm working on a major overhaul of all my animations and trying to build a library. Honestly someone to help with the animation would be a godsend to me but I'm completely clueless about the program you're using and not quite sure how you could animate one of my meshes with it.. but hell I'm game if you are.

[Previsionary]

Volsung and Revenant have moved on from the community. I doubt that'll be of much help... reaching them probably will be fruitless, so don't be surprised if nothing comes of that.

if you are set on working with someone though, stick with the active people like Vertex, Tommyboy, YellowLantern.

if you want to help out, maybe creating equivalent animations (based on what you've seen FF meshing doing in ctool etc) and just releasing the bvh files to the community at large is a better approach than connecting with any one specific mesher.

whuh? No, Volsung is still here and he just posted last week. In fact, I think he's still helping out with a mod or two.

[GogglesPizanno]

but i've been wrong before.

Just blame it on Prev....

[The Nemesis]

Hmm a few options there.

Vertex, I'm still not 100% sure the workflow would be successful as I haven't physically done it yet, but in theory, theres no reason why it shouldn't, and I've imported MB animations to Max countless times, just haven't then exported to FF before. Motionbuilder is a better animation tool than Max, so I do it there and the idea is pretty much just to export as a BVH which one of you guys can then import.
In the Marvel Civil war scene I imported those charcters to Motionbuilder with their original skeletons and weighting still intact, so making new animations for an already rigged character could possibly take under a week. Faster once I'm used to the workflow.
If you use any instant messengers Vertex, PM me your details and I'll see if I can help you.

Until I actually start helping someone, I will try and see if I can make new/more specified animations for some already released meshes.
-Nemesis

[Vertex]

I'm on all messengers daily, in fact right to the left here under my name is a listing of names to reach me by messenger type.

[Xenolith]

I hope this works.  I would love to do animations but can't get my hands on an old version of 3d studio.  ->surfs off to check out motionbuilder   

[The Nemesis]

Xeno, Motionbuilder is not as cheap as it used to be unfortunately.
Best animation tool out there though, so it's not that suprising.

[Xenolith]

I see that.  I'd better see if you can get this to work before I do anything crazy.

[The Nemesis]

Oh hell yeah. If people are intested we'll keep u up to date on the whole thing. I guess first priorty will be to try the workflow just to see if it works.
Then we'll start geting the work done.

[herodad1]

if requests are still being taken, the werewolves here i always thought needed better keyframes   http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/pinocchios_Meshes_and_stuff/ maybe animations more like TJ's venom mesh where he runs on all fours and clawing movements.we need some good werewolves me thinks!

[Jakew]

Volsung and Revenant have moved on from the community. I doubt that'll be of much help... reaching them probably will be fruitless, so don't be surprised if nothing comes of that.

[herodad1]

oh sorry.misunderstood ips.

[Xenolith]

I was checking out the software...

They sell an Autodesk educational package that includes Motionbuilder, 3ds 9, and some other things for about $400 as long as I can prove I'm a student.  Well, for that deal I'd be willing to enroll at the local community college and take some 3-D animation classes @$60/credit hour and not-so-consequently saving myself a huge chunk of money in the process. 

I bought a edcuational Microsoft Office suite when I was in graduate school and the license never went away, I just couldn't move it to another computer or upgrade it with a newer version without buying the commerical package.  I wonder if that's true for this package, too?  If so, it's still worth it considering MB and 3DS9 combined run for over $4,000.

I'll find out more...

[GogglesPizanno]

Or just find a friend or family member who is or knows someone who is in/works for a school...

[The Nemesis]

I don't know about the new version, but I don't think they run out generally, so student is definately a cool way to go so long as, again you don't need to upraade your computer soon after the license expires. I thought MB by itself was around $4000. In the UK when I looked into buying a new version it was like ?2400 or something. If I had bought that after my average freelance job I would have ended up in the red!!

In the end I knew that every now and again old unsold versions would pop up on ebay. So long as they were still sealed in the plastic and the seller was a legit software retailer it was usually safe. I dont know if they still show up. I forget how much I got mine for now but it was MUCH cheaper and it registered fine.

The manual is bigger than the Bible!!! The big ones!!

[yell0w_lantern]

Of course, you can get Max 5 Try-and-buy if you can find 2DS Max 5 for Dummies with the original cd.

[Xenolith]

I think I'll just go with the educational pacakge.  I am going to be starting an on-line comic strip soon, and I think it would be really cool if I could one day animate a fight scene or something like that.

[The Nemesis]

I've always wanted to do that, just never had the time. Back in the day when I used to animate fight scenes with my brother we worked out that on average it was taking us an hour per second of (what we at the time called 'final quality') fight animation per character. It's why I went for a Marvel Civil War page with no action.
I still have one of those anims up on youtube, never finished it. I think it's 3 years old now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbTcBOwHTF0&feature=channel_page

Prolly took me weeks.

[The Nemesis]

Vertex and I have been at this all evening now, after batting theories back and forth all yesterday afternoon.

We managed to get the mesh+anims into Motionbuilder pretty easy. I got the MB character rig on there, and before long I had actually added some animation to the model (as in put a test animation after the animation it was originally imported with).

Then came the troubles. It just wouldn't export to BVH.
I don't have too much experience with this so I was trial and erroring for an age!
In the end I realised what was causing the failure. The BVH exporter (or perhaps BVH format in general) doesn't like spaces in the bone names.
So we removed all the spaces from the bone names (yes, thats a bit crazy for many reasons).
The export works.
Now the problem is import. Theres a possibility that since we changed the bone names from 2 separate sites, we've made so very minor mistakes in parts and now they aren't matching up properly. I can only hope thats what it is, but Character Studio really isn't my realm so Vertex might be able to tell you more.

We're still at it though, and we'll keep you posted!
We've always got another idea.

[GogglesPizanno]

Way back in the day I tried importing a Poser BVH into max to try a similar idea. After several failures, and lots of web surfing, it turned out that Poser's "official" version of BVH and 3D Studio Max's "official" versions were not compatible. People seemed to have lots of problems with the export form one package and the import to another.

I hope things have gotten better, but implementations of BVH always seemed to be sorta proprietary... kind of silly for an standardized format.

[Vertex]

Well guys after working together from one day to another on our first try.... here's the progress report.


As Nem said at first he couldn't properly export because of an apparently prob on motionbuilder's side.. .. not liking spaces in the bone names.
After that he was able to export without errors, however.... when I attempted to download the bvh file into max it stated the bones were unrecognized yet named every bone in the max file... by name. At first we thought it was because we had both renamed to take the spaces out in the names seperately so I sent him a new copy of the max to work with. He exported again and still no dice. We played and played with it and then decided to call it a day and will try again. Anyhow, any of you who have worked importing bvh files... please feel free to chime in with suggestions because it named all the bones that it insisted it couldn't recognize.. apparently motionbuilder doesn't wanna export with spaces and character studio doesn't wanna import anything but the standard names.

[The Nemesis]

The funny thing is, I opened the bvh file in a differnt tool, 'BVH Hacker' and tried to rename a few bones (re-add the spaces) just to see if it worked. When I saved and reloaded BVH hacker didnt only remove the space, but all letters that came before it! So I think BVH as a format may not like spaces.

And if thats true it's wierd that Character studio imports BVH, yet uses spaces in it's bone names all the time rather than underscores.

[Valandar]

Way back in the day I tried importing a Poser BVH into max to try a similar idea. After several failures, and lots of web surfing, it turned out that Poser's "official" version of BVH and 3D Studio Max's "official" versions were not compatible. People seemed to have lots of problems with the export form one package and the import to another.

I hope things have gotten better, but implementations of BVH always seemed to be sorta proprietary... kind of silly for an standardized format.

Actually, before I started animating, Glitchgirl sent me a BVH from Poser of the "Blazing Sword" anim for Voltron. After using a text editor to rename bones (yes, it's a plaintext format!) I had few problems.

Basically, Poser figures named things after the bones, whereas 3DS Max Biped names them after the joints themselves.

Also, I should add that 3DS Max is MILES better than Poser for animating.

[The Nemesis]

Just to let ya'll know, In the end Max 5 just appears to be too old for Motionbuilder.

Vertex and I tried real hard over the last 2 weeks, but no joy. Instead, I'm working on getting my hands on the right version of Max to do the animations from. It won't be as fun as Motionbuilder, and it will definitely take longer to do, but it's better than nothing I guess.

[UnfluffyBunny]

just wondering if you'd be interested in some commision for bvh animations, and if so how much would you charge? >_>

[The Nemesis]

Hey UnfluffyBunny, I don't freelance any more, may newer job really only leaves me with time for casual stuff like this.