Exporting BVH Motions to Shade

Shade brings together advanced 3D modeling, rendering and animation into an integrated whole. By exporting iClone character motions via 3DXchange, your Shade characters can be connected to a library abundant with motions.

Before starting this pipeline, you need to prepare a biped bone structure in FBX format from Shade.

Step 1: Loading and Characterizing Shade Bone

  1. Load the prepared Shade bone structure (in FBX format) into 3DXChange.
  2. Characterize the character into an iClone non-standard character.

Step 2: Adding Desired Motions to Perform Editor

  1. Scroll the Modify panel to Animation section.
  2. Manually drag and drop standard character motion files into the Motion Library; select one of the motions and click the play button to preview. Please refer to the Using Motion Library section for more information.

    Note:

    • Click the Explore button to browse to the default folder for storing the iClone standard characters motion files.
      Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\Reallusion\Template\iClone 5 Template\iClone Template\Motion
      Windows 7 or above: C:\Users\Public\Documents\Reallusion\Template\iClone 5 Template\Motion\
    • IMPORTANT: If you drag and drop motion files in FBX or BVH format to the Motion Library, then you MUST characterize the character again so that these motions will be automatically converted into iClone compatible standard motions.
  3. Add desired motions into the Perform Editor. Only the motions added into the Perform Editor are candidates for FBX export. Please refer to the Using Perform Editor section for more information.

Step 3: Exporting Motions in BVH Format

  1. Execute the File >> Export to Other 3D Format >> Export BVH... command. Alternatively, you can click the Export BVH... button on the tool bar.
  2. Adjust the settings in the Export BVH panel and click the OK button to export all motions listed in the Perform Editor into individual motion files (*.BVH).

    Note:

    • You must click the button to designate one bone as the motion root in the Scene Tree panel. Basically, you need to select the bone that is mapped to the Hips node of the dummy in the characterization mode.

Step 4: Loading the BVH Motion to Shade Character

  1. Go back to Shade, execute File >> New to new an empty scene.
  2. Execute the File >> Import >> BVH command to import the exported FBX motion file to the new scene.
  3. Select the motion root node (in this case, the Pelvis) of the structure from the Browser panel.
  4. Open the Motion panel.
  5. Drag to select all keys on the timeline.
  6. Click the Save button at the right-top of the panel to save the animations of each bone into a Shade motion file (*.shdmtn, *.mtn).
  7. Switch back to the scene with the original bone structure.
  8. Select the motion root node (in this case, the Pelvis) of the structure from the Browser panel.
  9. Click the Load button in the Motion panel and load the saved motion file in the previous step. Only the first pose is loaded to the bone.
  10. Click the Load button to load the file again. The motion is then applied to the bone.