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[McCloud]

Hello Everyone,

I'd first like to say that I'm new here and am VERY impressed with the Wintermute Engine, I have done extensive search to find a great engine that's geared toward writing adventure games.  I think this maybe it.  It blew me away when I saw the 3D Character demo!

My questions is this, I'm doing all this stuff on my own right now, and I'm trying to find the most effective and easiest way to create my graphics.  Really, I'm just doing some test so that I can learn WME.  I want to use Poser to create my characters and I understand that Poser has too high of a poly count, but Milkshake offers a tool to lower the poly count.  The problem I'm having is that I have several BVH (Motion Capture Files) I'd like to use in animating my characters, to give them the most nature movement.  Milkshake, I see has an importer for BVH files, but I found little documentation on how to do this.  Perhaps it's something fairly new in MilkShake, but has anyone had any experience doing this, or have a work around in some way that I can use the BVH files?

Thanks.
-Jeremy

[Nihil]

Using the bhv-files just works like this: Load your model, then import the bhv-file ("import skeleton" and "import motion data" must still be checked so that the skeleton is automatically created), then you just go one as usual, attach the skeleton to the right vertices, and it should work then.

Problems that can arise are for example different sizes, i.e. the imported skeleton is much bigger than the mesh - in that case I guess it's best to re-import the bhv and toy around with the settings (Scale Factor, and perhaps the offset, too - I think moving the skeleton manually after import can lead to really nasty results).

[McCloud]

Using the bhv-files just works like this: Load your model, then import the bhv-file ("import skeleton" and "import motion data" must still be checked so that the skeleton is automatically created),

Right after I import my BVH file, my model disappears.    At first it was just blank, but then I would check show skeleton and only the skeleton would appear.  I can't remember how I was trying to do it before, but it use to just crash completely.  So it looks like a made a little progress.

I tried just creating a skeleton on my own, but my skeletons looks nothing like the skeletons that are created when I import the bvh files.  It looks like a bunch of lines going all over the place, and when I finish and try to animate my character manually, it doesn't move so fluently like in poser, it just stretches the skin and looks funny.  Is it really this hard to do?

Anyway, thanks for your import, I'll try playing with the other options and scaleing to see if I can get it to work when importing BVH.

-McCloud

[Nihil]

I tried just creating a skeleton on my own, but my skeletons looks nothing like the skeletons that are created when I import the bvh files.  It looks like a bunch of lines going all over the place, and when I finish and try to animate my character manually, it doesn't move so fluently like in poser, it just stretches the skin and looks funny.  Is it really this hard to do?

This sounds like a scaling issue to me - try to scale your model much bigger before you start to do your own skeleton - if I'm right that should do the trick.

[McCloud]

Thanks, havn't had a chance to try it yet,  I got a little frustrated it trying to find my Easy-to-Use-3D-that-can-perfectly-export-3ds-files-and-supports-ray-tracing-program and started doing some 2d stuff.  Besides, I have to wait for one of my friends to download some of these trails anyway.  I did notice that when I created my own skeleton, or whatever it was, when I go to animate it, the skeleton doesn't move right, it only stretches that part of the image, it's not anything at all like animating in poser.  Is this normal?

[Nihil]

Well, animating in Poser and Milkshape is more or less the same, only that Poser-models are already set up right :-)
Did you assign all the vertices to the right bones before animating?

[McCloud]

Well, animating in Poser and Milkshape is more or less the same, only that Poser-models are already set up right :-)
Did you assign all the vertices to the right bones before animating?

I havn't played much withit, but I'm still having trouble importing the  BVH files and getting them to work.  I tried different scale values, but once i import the bvh, my character disappears, if I load the BVH file first and then import my charact the skeleton for my BVH only changes color, but still no character.  I probalby just have to play with it more I guess.

On the bright side though, I managed to do the 2d characters that look really good, using poser and photoshop.  At first it didn't look that realistic because I had a purple out line around my character and had no shadow.  So I tried placing shadows for my character to give it some depth.  It seems that in order to do this in Sprite Edit I would have to load them as subframes one at a ime and create a whole set of different frame for the shadow unless I just use a blured circle for all of them.  It seemed doing it this way would take too much time, and I wanted shadows that would match my characters movements, but it's ok, cause I found an easier method that gives me a good shadow and knocks out those outlines.  So, to me I made a big accomplishment already.  Just I have trouble matching my rendered scenes to my character to match the perspective.

On the downside, much of my characters look the same cause they are poser models.  It doesn't really look that original, you can tell it's poser, but hey, it's a start!

[Nihil]

I havn't played much withit, but I'm still having trouble importing the  BVH files and getting them to work.  I tried different scale values, but once i import the bvh, my character disappears, if I load the BVH file first and then import my charact the skeleton for my BVH only changes color, but still no character.  I probalby just have to play with it more I guess.

I tested it a bit, and my experience so far is that the skeletons created via the bhv-import are WAY bigger than the meshes exported from Poser - so I tried this:

-import the mesh
-scale it up to factor 100 (I think it was 100)
-then import the bhv

That way it looked ok - though I can't say if that applies to all mesh/bhv combinations.
Another thing you could try is to scale the bhv down on export in Poser, I think that works too.

On the bright side though, I managed to do the 2d characters that look really good, using poser and photoshop.  At first it didn't look that realistic because I had a purple out line around my character and had no shadow.

A purple outline in WME or in the picture already? Did you try to render to png-format in Poser? With that there should be no outline and the background should already be transparent.

On the downside, much of my characters look the same cause they are poser models.  It doesn't really look that original, you can tell it's poser, but hey, it's a start!

The most important thing when working with Poser is not to use the standard-textures :-) If you are able to do your own textures I strongly suggest to do so, because it gives your models a whole new look, and if you play a bit with the morphs, too, they will be only very hardly be considered as Poser-models. But of course that's a lot of work.

[McCloud]

I tested it a bit, and my experience so far is that the skeletons created via the bhv-import are WAY bigger than the meshes exported from Poser - so I tried this:

-import the mesh
-scale it up to factor 100 (I think it was 100)
-then import the bhv

Thanks!  I'll give it another shot.  Thankyou so much for your help!

A purple outline in WME or in the picture already? Did you try to render to png-format in Poser? With that there should be no outline and the background should already be transparent.

!!!!  mmm...  I think I may have been doing this the hard way.  I don't remember seeing a png option in poser, but I had never used png before until I read something about in the forum.  I think I was saving them as bmp and then using photoshop to convert it to png.  But hey, it there is a png exporter in my version of poser, that would be great.  Thanks!  I think I'm using poser 3 or 4

If you are able to do your own textures I strongly suggest to do so, because it gives your models a whole new look, and if you play a bit with the morphs, too, they will be only very hardly be considered as Poser-models.

Shows you how much I know about poser, I didn't even know you could upload your own textures!  Thanks again!

[Nihil]

I think I'm using poser 3 or 4

Oh, in that case I'm not sure about the png-export, I think Poser 4 is able to do, but I'm not sure about Poser 3.

[McCloud]

Oh, in that case I'm not sure about the png-export, I think Poser 4 is able to do, but I'm not sure about Poser 3.

Yep, I have Poser 3 and it doesn't support it.  I tried doing the bvh thing, but after reviewing what you said I did it backwards, I tried to scale the bvh to 100 and my system kept locking up.  So, I try it on the model next time I get a chance, and maybe that will work.

I do thankyou for all your help.

-Jeremy