Our dance motion capture database, has been released by the AMASS database in SMPL body model parameters.

Now you can teach your machine learning model to dance!

Thanks a lot to the team of Perceiving Systems, and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems.

Contemporary dancing performed by Andria Michaelidou & Elena Kyriakou, delivers a leading performance in Become the Fool music video clip by Parker.

The music video was built in the game engine Unity, inpired by Bauhaus architecture and design.

In this tutorial we present how to use .c3d files from our dance motion capture database in Autodesk Motion Builder, to export a MotionBuilder Actor (.fbx files).
We show the process of converting the raw data from the markers captured in the lab, into a useful Actor that can be used to bake the animation into any humanoid 3d skeleton.

Import a .c3d file in Autodesk Motion Builder:

1. Launch Autodesk Motion Builder
2. Go to File > Motion File Import ...
3. Select your .3d file
4. Click Import

Tip : Motion Builder can read only up to 65,535 samples (frames). But don't worry, our .c3d files do not exceed that number.

Snap Actor on the Markers and export .fbx file.

Using MotionBuilder Actors, we can export a .bvh file, that can be used to animate any character.

1. Follow "Load .c3d in MotionBuilder and create MB .fbx Actor" tutorial, or download the .fbx file that contains an animated Actor.
2. Drag & Drop in your scene, the .fbx file that contains your configured BVH skeleton (CMU_Skeleton.fbx). This is a MotionBuilder .fbx file that contains a characterized .bvh.

   

3. Select FBX Merge -> <No Animation> & Click OK to any Warnings
4. Now, a new Character will be created in the scene.
5. Animate the new Character:

   

   • Double click on the new Character.
   • Tick Active box.
   • Set Input Type to Actor.
   • Click Plot Character...
   • Select Skeleton.
   • Click Plot.
6. Export as .bvh file:
   • Select the root joint (Hips) from the Scene / Navigator.
   • Go to File > Motion File Export... .
   • Set Content: Hierarchy and Export.

In this tutorial, we animate any .fbx character using a .bvh file.

1. Load animation from .bvh file, by Going to File > Motion File Import...
2. Drag & drop Templates/Character to characterize it. Click Characterize. Click Biped.

   

3. Drag & drop your character (fbx: that you want to animate) into the scene, and characterize that too!

   

4. Go to Characters in your Navigator window. There you will see 2 characters: 1 for your bvh, and 1 for your fbx that you want to animate.
5. Select the Character that you want to animate and follow these steps to animate it:

• Double click on the new Character.
• Tick Active box.
• Set Input Type to Character.
• Click Plot Character...
• Select Skeleton.
• Click Plot.