Is it possible to use Maya 5 for animation?

I'm sure this has been asked before but I scanned through about 20 pages of old posts and could not find a direct answer, so I'll ask.

Is it possible to do animations for SL in Maya 5.0? I found a freeware MEL script on the net to Import BVH files but I can't find a way to output them, and I'm not at home to check my application and see if it has a native way to do it (plus Alias's site is incredibly unhelpful)

Also... I'm wondering about the license restrictions? I have the student license. I don't think putting animations on my avatar or giving away animations would probably violate my license, but what about selling them for L$? It's not professional work and not money but it might fall under 'Goods and Services'.

Also, I saw the post about daz3d and have downloaded that and will try it out, but I'm already familiar with Maya so I was hoping there might be a way to just do the animation directly in Maya.

Thanks,
Samantha AKA Alexia Mechanique

I don't see any built-in support for BVH.

It's certainly doable, but it's a little bit complicated. I can give you the basic concept, but not the specific how-to's. In Maya as in Sl, I'm great at modeling and texturing, but lousy at scripting, so you'll have to forgive the lack of detail in this explanation. Hopefully someone will come along who can elaborate on this with the step-by-steps.

In theory, if you're good with MEL, then it shouldn't be too complex to write a script that will output data in the format of a BVH file. BVH is just text, so all that's involved is to create a script that will gather all the required information about your animated skeleton and spit it out in the proper order. As long as your skeleton is built right, I don't see this as anything very complicated.

When building your skeleton, you're gonna have to make sure it matches a Poser-type skeleton as exactly as possible. If you don't have a program like BodyStudio to bring the SL Poser models into Maya, then you'll have to settle for the OBJ's, and rig them yourself. To do this, open up the sample BVH file in your favorite text editor, and read through it carefully to get all the bone names. Construct your skeleton inside the OBJ mesh to get the approximate sizes for your bones, and make sure you name them each exactly as they appear in the BVH. Now, animate your little heart out, plug in your MEL script to create the text file, change the extension from .txt to .bvh after it's done, and that should do it (I think).

I must emphasize though that I have never done this, so I can't say for certain whether it's worth the effort. You could just break down and buy PolyTrans for $400, and that would certainly do the job (along with a lot of other useful features), or you could just get Poser for a lot less than that (although I can just about promise you'll really hate Poser coming from a Maya background). Beyond that, DazStudio will be a nice free alternative when it's done, but for now it's really quite broken, at least from what I've seen. Last time I tried it, it couldn't even save keyframes.

Anyway, let me know if you can get the method I outlined to work. I just made it up as I was writing this, so as I said, it's completely untested. I do believe the theory is sound though. Good luck.

Yeah. I'd already thought about doing that. I actually found a MEL script that will let me import BVH files and I found a whitepaper spec on the BVH format. I was just hoping someone else had already done it.

On the other hand, I suppose if I write it I will be worshipped as a goddess... So it's not all bad.

Well, you'd certainly have MY admiration, and that's certainly worthy of goodhood status

Speaking as someone that pretty much did that for Second Life proper, BVH is not all that hard to figure out. It works in much the same way rigid-joints work in most software applications.

However... there are subtle differences. In Milkshape, for example, bones may vary their length at any point... which is why there is no BVH export support for it at all.

On the other hand, speaking as someone with a fair deal of 3D experience under my belt and at least a few hours toying with the Maya PLE, writing something like this is technically quite feasible... especially if you understand the software's API. However, this sounds to me more like cutting off your nose to spite your face - especially when free tools like Blender can import some of the file types that Maya Full Version puts out (like .OBJ), functions like Maya does, and more importantly - can import and export .BVH motions.

If I recall, some folks had set up Blender at some point (on these forums) to handle .BVH for Second Life. I would look that up instead of going through the hassle of coding .BVH support for Maya/searching the ends of the Earth for an importer/exporter.

I did actually download DAZ and Blender both. Both allow Import of BVH but neither appear to allow export.


Like I said above. I'm lazy. I'd rather not re-invent the wheel if I don't have to.

On the other hand, I can't afford to shell out the $$$ for Poser right now.

Well, yes and no. Yes, Blender can import and export BVH files, which is one of its few nice features, and yes, it can import OBJ's (as can almost all 3D applications, which is why OBJ's exist), but no, it does not "function like Maya does" in the slightest. No offense if anyone actually likes Blender, but saying Blender functions like Maya is like saying MS Paint functions like Photoshop. Not only are the two programs lightyears apart in terms of sophistication, features, abilities, etc., but their interfaces and workflows are completely different. The differences outnumber the similarities a thousand to one.

In any event, Alexia, if you want to use Blender it should work (File->Export->Motion Capture BVH), but Blender has a pretty steep learning curve. I've been toying with it here and there for a few months now, and more often than not I just end up just getting angry with it after a few minutes and then quickly shutting it off. It's just not an intuitive program.

Besides, I was kinda hoping this thread would inspire someone to write the MEL script for Maya to BVH export. It's hard to believe there's not one out there, but I guess it makes sense since Maya is designed to be a central platform for other things to be brought to, and not so much a starting point to send things out from.