3D Studio Max, animation to Poser

I have a 50 frame 3D studio max animation, i would like to use in SL, but i cant figure out how to get it from .max to something that will animate in Poser so i can save it as a BVH, or does anyone know of a plugin for 3D studio max so it can be exported directly to a BVH file?

Heh, I've searched all over for one. I think there are one or two out there but it'll cost ya. Character Studio would make it SO easy!!

The only plugin/app I know of for this is PolyTrans. I'm not much of a Max user though, so there certainly could be others I'm unaware of. If you want to check out the PolyTrans demo, head on over to www.okino.com.

I think the demo version only exports the first 25% of keyframes, so however many you've got in your animation, multiply it by 3 and then add that many to the end. I've never tried it, but in theory it might work.

PolyTrans has a lot of other useful features as well for Max as well as for Maya, Lightwave, and others. It's worth buying if you've got the cash.


EDIT: Oh, and as you're probably aware, if you're going to use anything other than Poser to do your animation, you'll have to first build and rig your skeleton so it's identical to a Poser skeleton. You can use the sample BVH file in the avatar mannequin files for help with this.

i think the animations from the biped can be imported into poser if you made your biped with the same number of bones and same bone names as in poser

btw using other's animations is thievery, but i dunno if you made your anim, if you did it yourself then do not feel concerned by this comment

totaly out of line.

sounds like the OP created an animation. even if it was someone elses animation, it is not theivery to simply use it.

Man, so many people whining about stolen animations N stuff. What about sounds? I see lots of shops selling audio clips from movies, tv, etc. Don't hear anyone complaining about that.

As for the OP, I'll bet my left testicle its not stolen. You can't just go download "free" Biped files. Unlike BVH, it's a proprietary format Autodesk guards like a hawk.

And Eeran, if you have access to Maya (not the PLE version) there are skeleton rigs users here have made for creating animations in Maya & exporting to BVH format.