Can DAZ Studio load animations via FBX?

Boingo the Clown

I believe I asked this question before, but I don't think I got an answer.

Is it possible to apply an animation to a figure by way of an FBX file?

I have been using animations from the Mixamo website and applying them to DAZ figure using BVH files, but Mixamo will be eliminating BVH support after August 22.

Will I be able to continue using Mixamo using FBX, or do I need to start downloading all the BVH files I can before they are gone?

mindsong

@firewarden graciously produced a great tutorial on migrating mixamo animations via FBX into DS - G2F I believe, but the concepts should work with other characters. It's in another thread (look for 'mixamo' in the forum search) They also relied on a freely available script my mjcasual (instructions on how/where in the tutorial). There's also a reference to a cool chrome 'select all' script that automates adding the animations to your assets, but the downloading process is still a bit onerous (2435-ish distinct base animations in all, I recall).

FWIW, regardless the source rig used at mixamo, I believe all of the BVH animations from mixamo come over to us as their standard skeleton, but may be scaled differently depending on the target rig you used to add them to your asset list (e.g. genesis vs A3). I wonder if that's the case with the FBX exports as well, because if so, then creating and downloading tons of animations for tons of characters isn't really as meaningful if they are all based on the 'same' (or very similar) skeletons, that have to be converted/scaled to K4, A3, V4, or ... whatever character anyway, right?

Personally, I'm pulling one of each animation as a BVH with the Mixamo XBot character rig, so I have a good simple mixamo reference BVH that I can retarget to anything later. I thought about doing Ybot too for the male posture, but that's a lot of clicking... maybe a few to compare posture when converting the Xbot BVHs to a male target later. I think we'll be able to download the FBX versions after the 22nd, so I'm not going to hassle with that right now. Note that the size of the Xbot/Ybot and 'passive marker man' rigs is very close to a genesis1 rig when comparing the bvh rigs in the free BVHhacker tool.

Anyone else trying to figure out how to optimize this last week of the current mixamo conversion process?

cheers,

--ms

Boingo the Clown

As of about half an hour ago, I have added all ~2500 mixamo animations to my asset list, a task that has taken me three days.

Now to (probably) spend another three days tediously downloading all of these animations one at a time ...

... unless somebody knows how to download them all at once.

 

wolf359

If you are using G3/G8
be aware that NONE of those BVH file will be of any direct  use in Daz studio
as those figures exotic bone rigs are not properly recognized by the BVH importer in 
Daz studio.
there are a few scripts available that require applying the BVH to G2 first and then retargeting to G3
and then G8.
 

nonesuch00

You can get all the BVH's and other formats already zipped up in a archive, just search google.

Boingo the Clown

wolf359 said:

If you are using G3/G8
be aware that NONE of those BVH file will be of any direct  use in Daz studio
as those figures exotic bone rigs are not properly recognized by the BVH importer in 
Daz studio.
there are a few scripts available that require applying the BVH to G2 first and then retargeting to G3
and then G8.
 

I am already aware the mixamo BVHs do not match up with DAZ figures. They have made my characters look like car wreck victims quite a few times.

To fix the problem, I just load up the BVH files in BVHacker (free program), and rename the bones.  That usually does the trick.

Graphmate also helps a lot for adjusting joints that are sticking out in odd directions.

Up until a year or two ago, Mixamo did actually have the option to use Victoria 4 and Michael 4 skeletal structure, but it was dropped for some unknown reason.

 

mindsong

Boingo the Clown said:

wolf359 said:

If you are using G3/G8
be aware that NONE of those BVH file will be of any direct  use in Daz studio
as those figures exotic bone rigs are not properly recognized by the BVH importer in 
Daz studio.
there are a few scripts available that require applying the BVH to G2 first and then retargeting to G3
and then G8.
 

I am already aware the mixamo BVHs do not match up with DAZ figures. They have made my characters look like car wreck victims quite a few times.

To fix the problem, I just load up the BVH files in BVHacker (free program), and rename the bones.  That usually does the trick.

Graphmate also helps a lot for adjusting joints that are sticking out in odd directions.

Up until a year or two ago, Mixamo did actually have the option to use Victoria 4 and Michael 4 skeletal structure, but it was dropped for some unknown reason.

 

appreciating @wolf359's (and many other's) frustration with DAZ's symbolic-only support of serious animation on their new characters, I'm still going to gobble these BVH versions up like the treasure they are. The quality of these animations and the flexibility of the skeleton they come with are amazing (the feet stick, the smoothness and cleanliness (?) of the motion is amazing (to my eye)). I can't imagine I won't be able to find some use for them, even if it means applying them to V4 and converting them (as needed) up through the silly DAZ character heirarchy. Tools like Danceforms, Ikenima webtool, Motionbuilder, BVhacker, and iclone 3DXchange (and other general-purpose apps like poser, blender, carrara, maya, C4D, etc.) can certainly be used to convert/leverage these motions... (i hope)

I say "I hope", because like @BoingoTheClown, before I found the scripts mentioned in @firewarden and @Arnoldc's great mixamo to DS via FBX conversion tutorial (search for mixamo in the Daz forums), I did a whole lot of manual clicking... lol...

best to all,

--ms

 

firewarden

mindsong said:

Boingo the Clown said:

wolf359 said:

If you are using G3/G8
be aware that NONE of those BVH file will be of any direct  use in Daz studio
as those figures exotic bone rigs are not properly recognized by the BVH importer in 
Daz studio.
there are a few scripts available that require applying the BVH to G2 first and then retargeting to G3
and then G8.
 

I am already aware the mixamo BVHs do not match up with DAZ figures. They have made my characters look like car wreck victims quite a few times.

To fix the problem, I just load up the BVH files in BVHacker (free program), and rename the bones.  That usually does the trick.

Graphmate also helps a lot for adjusting joints that are sticking out in odd directions.

Up until a year or two ago, Mixamo did actually have the option to use Victoria 4 and Michael 4 skeletal structure, but it was dropped for some unknown reason.

 

appreciating @wolf359's (and many other's) frustration with DAZ's symbolic-only support of serious animation on their new characters, I'm still going to gobble these BVH versions up like the treasure they are. The quality of these animations and the flexibility of the skeleton they come with are amazing (the feet stick, the smoothness and cleanliness (?) of the motion is amazing (to my eye)). I can't imagine I won't be able to find some use for them, even if it means applying them to V4 and converting them (as needed) up through the silly DAZ character heirarchy. Tools like Danceforms, Ikenima webtool, Motionbuilder, BVhacker, and iclone 3DXchange (and other general-purpose apps like poser, blender, carrara, maya, C4D, etc.) can certainly be used to convert/leverage these motions... (i hope)

I say "I hope", because like @BoingoTheClown, before I found the scripts mentioned in @firewarden and @Arnoldc's great mixamo to DS via FBX conversion tutorial (search for mixamo in the Daz forums), I did a whole lot of manual clicking... lol...

best to all,

--ms

 

@Arnoldc is the one who pointed me in the right direction for using Mixamo with DAZ. He helped me when I was floundering to get it to work at all, and he's done much more with those animations than I have. I haven't worked on animation in a while, but you've got me searching back through the forum to see what's new and maybe trying to get all those animations downloaded myself, just in case I need them. I've no idea what the cost will be to access the animations after the switch, plus the whole idea of having to upload your model and rig it every time... Just seems to add a needless step. Oh, well...

Boingo the Clown

Well, I'm half way there.

I have downloaded roughly half of the Mixamo animations in BVH format. I hope I can complete the task before time runs out.

firewarden

Here is a script that helps automate it. Not all the way. About to try it myself. Instructions are at the bottom:

https://github.com/ConflictedDev/MixamoAnimationsDownload ;

firewarden

Use the instructions above, but use this script. I can't get the original script to work, but this one does.

https://pastebin.com/v12t7rzX

So far it looks as if it is working. I'm not done, though, just in the beginning of the process. Conflicted notes that the script that I've linked above works better than his. Can't find the link to the reference...

Edited: I'm not sure this script works either. Right now it just seems to be adding animations... I may be just flailing here...

 

firewarden

Note regarding which scripts work are here: https://gist.github.com/loolo78/964294f0cd9c980947d7997c39843961

Still working at this, as I'd like these but don't have the time to do them one at a time. It may be hopeless.

 

mindsong

thanx! me too! trying miserably to edit the 'asset adder' to be a 'add-to-packager'... failing epically (sp?)

will go chase your links instead!

heh,

--ms

nonesuch00

If you do a search you will find them that someone else has already downloaded, zipped, and uploaded. Since it's been there over a year (not my upload) and neither Mixamo, Adobe, or the famous 'Do No Evil' G web business have removed that archive of all the animations I'm thinking it must be legal.

At any rate, go ahead and add them with the script as purchases to your account on Mixamo as then they won't be deleted as you having purchased them is my understading and you'll still be able to download later at the new Adobe site. The ability to purchase them though I think disappears if you don't purchase them by 21 Aug I think. You just won't have to fool with the hassle of individually downloading them if you download that archive instead of from your account.

firewarden

nonesuch00 said:

If you do a search you will find them that someone else has already downloaded, zipped, and uploaded. Since it's been there over a year (not my upload) and neither Mixamo, Adobe, or the famous 'Do No Evil' G web business have removed that archive of all the animations I'm thinking it must be legal.

At any rate, go ahead and add them with the script as purchases to your account on Mixamo as then they won't be deleted as you having purchased them is my understading and you'll still be able to download later at the new Adobe site. The ability to purchase them though I think disappears if you don't purchase them by 21 Aug I think. You just won't have to fool with the hassle of individually downloading them if you download that archive instead of from your account.

Adobe has actually said that you won't be able to store any assets or rigged characters. So it sounds as if you have to start from scratch after 8/21, which is why I think folks are worried.

nonesuch00

firewarden said:

nonesuch00 said:

If you do a search you will find them that someone else has already downloaded, zipped, and uploaded. Since it's been there over a year (not my upload) and neither Mixamo, Adobe, or the famous 'Do No Evil' G web business have removed that archive of all the animations I'm thinking it must be legal.

At any rate, go ahead and add them with the script as purchases to your account on Mixamo as then they won't be deleted as you having purchased them is my understading and you'll still be able to download later at the new Adobe site. The ability to purchase them though I think disappears if you don't purchase them by 21 Aug I think. You just won't have to fool with the hassle of individually downloading them if you download that archive instead of from your account.

Adobe has actually said that you won't be able to store any assets or rigged characters. So it sounds as if you have to start from scratch after 8/21, which is why I think folks are worried.

Oh, in that case I don't know what good purchasing will do except that they'll have a record of the puchase should question arise. 

firewarden

nonesuch00 said:

firewarden said:

nonesuch00 said:

If you do a search you will find them that someone else has already downloaded, zipped, and uploaded. Since it's been there over a year (not my upload) and neither Mixamo, Adobe, or the famous 'Do No Evil' G web business have removed that archive of all the animations I'm thinking it must be legal.

At any rate, go ahead and add them with the script as purchases to your account on Mixamo as then they won't be deleted as you having purchased them is my understading and you'll still be able to download later at the new Adobe site. The ability to purchase them though I think disappears if you don't purchase them by 21 Aug I think. You just won't have to fool with the hassle of individually downloading them if you download that archive instead of from your account.

Adobe has actually said that you won't be able to store any assets or rigged characters. So it sounds as if you have to start from scratch after 8/21, which is why I think folks are worried.

Oh, in that case I don't know what good purchasing will do except that they'll have a record of the puchase should question arise. 

It will be interesting to see what happens! It would be nice if it remained free or very low cost.

mindsong

nonesuch00 said:

If you do a search you will find them that someone else has already downloaded, zipped, and uploaded. Since it's been there over a year (not my upload) and neither Mixamo, Adobe, or the famous 'Do No Evil' G web business have removed that archive of all the animations I'm thinking it must be legal.

At any rate, go ahead and add them with the script as purchases to your account on Mixamo as then they won't be deleted as you having purchased them is my understading and you'll still be able to download later at the new Adobe site. The ability to purchase them though I think disappears if you don't purchase them by 21 Aug I think. You just won't have to fool with the hassle of individually downloading them if you download that archive instead of from your account.

Thanks for that pointer @nonesuch00, I was able to grab those a while back, but I recall the targets were a unity figure, and when I loaded them in BVHacker, the few I tested did the 'epileptic zombie' thing, where the stick figure sort of twitched on its hip bone. BVH-Veiwer worked alright, but I was wary of the set after that...

Just to be sure, and because I like these mocaps so well, I'm going to go ahead and keep grabbing the variations for as long as they'll let me... (multi-tasking while I do other things...)

@firewarden, I'm using the scripts from the first site you mentioned (https://github.com/ConflictedDev/MixamoAnimationsDownload) and just going through the 26 download click sequences with the Download script. Not as bad as 2443 x 2 clicks I did for another character a few years back...

Seems to be working well for me. I figure I can get FBXs later, and the FBX dowloads I tried were all rather large (2-3M fbx vs 60-200K bvh), and had bone errors that cause them to not load on my genesis1 character. I since figured that BVH is like OBJ and will always have the basic bones and converters available for the foreseeable future, and I know they work *before Aug 22*. So that's my plan so far.

FWIW, My read on Adobe's changes are:

After the 22nd of August, all of our assets will be cleared, and we'll probably have to upload FBX or OBJ figures on a per-session basis to apply, select, and produce downloadable FBX and/or collada animations. I expect those will only be available during that session. Probably still free, but not sure.

For that reason, as a Genesis1 animater, I've pulled, or am pulling 30fps BVH-s of Genesis1 generated from an OBJ (gives the mixamo skeleton), 30fps BVH-s of Genesis1 generated from an FBX (gives the original Genesis1 Skeleton), and this week I'm going to poke at getting BVHs of FBX-based V4, K4, and A3 so I can get the mixamo animations scaled and applied directly to these three skeletons. K4 gives me scaling, and A3 gives the Mil3 family bones, and of course V4 is the center of the conversion universe and can be 'mapped' to any Mil4 figure. I'd like to do a G2/G3/G8 series, but really expect that the Genesis1 obj series on the Mixamo skeleton will probably be mappable enough to be convertable with tools that exist or may be written.

How about you folks? Any luck with the scripts, and which figures/series are y'all hoarding this week?

cheers,

--ms

 

Padone

Since Blender can import and export the whole set of bvh dae fbx formats, I did some tests to see if it can be used to convert dae/fbx to bvh for DAZ Studio. This is just to let you know my results.

BVH - imports fine both in Blender and DAZ Studio and it works seamless with G2. It also includes the t-pose for retargeting.

DAE - imports fine in Blender, and it also exports fine to bvh. But it seems the dae animation exported from Mixamo doesn't have the t-pose as reference. So it plays fine but can't be used for retargeting on another character.

FBX - for some reason the fbx exported from Mixamo doesn't import fine in Blender. I played around with the options but didn't find any way to get it right. The fbx plays fine with the Autodesk viewer though, so I guess it should be a Blender issue.

 

EDIT: it seems that finally I found the correct parameters to import the Mixamo fbx in Blender. It's the default options with ignore leaf bones. Also the exported bvh works fine with DAZ Studio. So yes, Blender can be used to convert fbx to bvh for DAZ Studio. Below it's the hip hop dancing exported from Blender and imported to DAZ G2F.

nonesuch00

mindsong said:

nonesuch00 said:

If you do a search you will find them that someone else has already downloaded, zipped, and uploaded. Since it's been there over a year (not my upload) and neither Mixamo, Adobe, or the famous 'Do No Evil' G web business have removed that archive of all the animations I'm thinking it must be legal.

At any rate, go ahead and add them with the script as purchases to your account on Mixamo as then they won't be deleted as you having purchased them is my understading and you'll still be able to download later at the new Adobe site. The ability to purchase them though I think disappears if you don't purchase them by 21 Aug I think. You just won't have to fool with the hassle of individually downloading them if you download that archive instead of from your account.

Thanks for that pointer @nonesuch00, I was able to grab those a while back, but I recall the targets were a unity figure, and when I loaded them in BVHacker, the few I tested did the 'epileptic zombie' thing, where the stick figure sort of twitched on its hip bone. BVH-Veiwer worked alright, but I was wary of the set after that...

Just to be sure, and because I like these mocaps so well, I'm going to go ahead and keep grabbing the variations for as long as they'll let me... (multi-tasking while I do other things...)

@firewarden, I'm using the scripts from the first site you mentioned (https://github.com/ConflictedDev/MixamoAnimationsDownload) and just going through the 26 download click sequences with the Download script. Not as bad as 2443 x 2 clicks I did for another character a few years back...

Seems to be working well for me. I figure I can get FBXs later, and the FBX dowloads I tried were all rather large (2-3M fbx vs 60-200K bvh), and had bone errors that cause them to not load on my genesis1 character. I since figured that BVH is like OBJ and will always have the basic bones and converters available for the foreseeable future, and I know they work *before Aug 22*. So that's my plan so far.

FWIW, My read on Adobe's changes are:

After the 22nd of August, all of our assets will be cleared, and we'll probably have to upload FBX or OBJ figures on a per-session basis to apply, select, and produce downloadable FBX and/or collada animations. I expect those will only be available during that session. Probably still free, but not sure.

For that reason, as a Genesis1 animater, I've pulled, or am pulling 30fps BVH-s of Genesis1 generated from an OBJ (gives the mixamo skeleton), 30fps BVH-s of Genesis1 generated from an FBX (gives the original Genesis1 Skeleton), and this week I'm going to poke at getting BVHs of FBX-based V4, K4, and A3 so I can get the mixamo animations scaled and applied directly to these three skeletons. K4 gives me scaling, and A3 gives the Mil3 family bones, and of course V4 is the center of the conversion universe and can be 'mapped' to any Mil4 figure. I'd like to do a G2/G3/G8 series, but really expect that the Genesis1 obj series on the Mixamo skeleton will probably be mappable enough to be convertable with tools that exist or may be written.

How about you folks? Any luck with the scripts, and which figures/series are y'all hoarding this week?

cheers,

--ms

 

You recall incorrectly because the entire set in every format that Mixamo supports means that BVH format is included and I saw and extracted the BVH format not 2 weeks ago from that archive.

Also included besides FBX for Unity format, is FBX format, when various 'with each having various keyframe reduction or no keyframe reduction' as downloadable from the Adobe Mixamo site.

Only thing that you don't get are those animations skinned with various models from the Mixamo or uploaded personally to the Mixamo site. For that you do need to manually download after applying and saving the desired skin to all the animations in every format. 

firewarden

mindsong said:

nonesuch00 said:

If you do a search you will find them that someone else has already downloaded, zipped, and uploaded. Since it's been there over a year (not my upload) and neither Mixamo, Adobe, or the famous 'Do No Evil' G web business have removed that archive of all the animations I'm thinking it must be legal.

At any rate, go ahead and add them with the script as purchases to your account on Mixamo as then they won't be deleted as you having purchased them is my understading and you'll still be able to download later at the new Adobe site. The ability to purchase them though I think disappears if you don't purchase them by 21 Aug I think. You just won't have to fool with the hassle of individually downloading them if you download that archive instead of from your account.

Thanks for that pointer @nonesuch00, I was able to grab those a while back, but I recall the targets were a unity figure, and when I loaded them in BVHacker, the few I tested did the 'epileptic zombie' thing, where the stick figure sort of twitched on its hip bone. BVH-Veiwer worked alright, but I was wary of the set after that...

Just to be sure, and because I like these mocaps so well, I'm going to go ahead and keep grabbing the variations for as long as they'll let me... (multi-tasking while I do other things...)

@firewarden, I'm using the scripts from the first site you mentioned (https://github.com/ConflictedDev/MixamoAnimationsDownload) and just going through the 26 download click sequences with the Download script. Not as bad as 2443 x 2 clicks I did for another character a few years back...

Seems to be working well for me. I figure I can get FBXs later, and the FBX dowloads I tried were all rather large (2-3M fbx vs 60-200K bvh), and had bone errors that cause them to not load on my genesis1 character. I since figured that BVH is like OBJ and will always have the basic bones and converters available for the foreseeable future, and I know they work *before Aug 22*. So that's my plan so far.

FWIW, My read on Adobe's changes are:

After the 22nd of August, all of our assets will be cleared, and we'll probably have to upload FBX or OBJ figures on a per-session basis to apply, select, and produce downloadable FBX and/or collada animations. I expect those will only be available during that session. Probably still free, but not sure.

For that reason, as a Genesis1 animater, I've pulled, or am pulling 30fps BVH-s of Genesis1 generated from an OBJ (gives the mixamo skeleton), 30fps BVH-s of Genesis1 generated from an FBX (gives the original Genesis1 Skeleton), and this week I'm going to poke at getting BVHs of FBX-based V4, K4, and A3 so I can get the mixamo animations scaled and applied directly to these three skeletons. K4 gives me scaling, and A3 gives the Mil3 family bones, and of course V4 is the center of the conversion universe and can be 'mapped' to any Mil4 figure. I'd like to do a G2/G3/G8 series, but really expect that the Genesis1 obj series on the Mixamo skeleton will probably be mappable enough to be convertable with tools that exist or may be written.

How about you folks? Any luck with the scripts, and which figures/series are y'all hoarding this week?

cheers,

--ms

 

@mindsong

I can't get the download script to work.  I get the console error "undefined." It might be because I can't get Chrome to quit asking where I want to download file to every time I download, even though I have Chrome set not to ask in advanced settings. I don't have any clue otherwise to why it won't work.

I've got some time to work on this now, so I'm about to see if I can get any animatiosn from the pack to work in DS. Reading backward through the thread looking for info.

firewarden

Padone said:

Since Blender can import and export the whole set of bvh dae fbx formats, I did some tests to see if it can be used to convert dae/fbx to bvh for DAZ Studio. This is just to let you know my results.

BVH - imports fine both in Blender and DAZ Studio and it works seamless with G2. It also includes the t-pose for retargeting.

DAE - imports fine in Blender, and it also exports fine to bvh. But it seems the dae animation exported from Mixamo doesn't have the t-pose as reference. So it plays fine but can't be used for retargeting on another character.

FBX - for some reason the fbx exported from Mixamo doesn't import fine in Blender. I played around with the options but didn't find any way to get it right. The fbx plays fine with the Autodesk viewer though, so I guess it should be a Blender issue.

So you're importing the BVH file from the animations archive pack to Blender then exporting it to DAZ Studio?

Padone

@firewarden

No, that would be unuseful since DAZ Studio can already import BVHs. What I did is to import FBX into Blender and to export BVH from Blender for DAZ Studio. This is useful because this way you don't need to dowload the whole BVH set from Mixamo since you can always convert FBX to BVH using Blender.

mindsong

firewarden said:

mindsong said:

nonesuch00 said:

If you do a search you will find them that someone else has already downloaded, zipped, and uploaded. Since it's been there over a year (not my upload) and neither Mixamo, Adobe, or the famous 'Do No Evil' G web business have removed that archive of all the animations I'm thinking it must be legal.

At any rate, go ahead and add them with the script as purchases to your account on Mixamo as then they won't be deleted as you having purchased them is my understading and you'll still be able to download later at the new Adobe site. The ability to purchase them though I think disappears if you don't purchase them by 21 Aug I think. You just won't have to fool with the hassle of individually downloading them if you download that archive instead of from your account.

Thanks for that pointer @nonesuch00, I was able to grab those a while back, but I recall the targets were a unity figure, and when I loaded them in BVHacker, the few I tested did the 'epileptic zombie' thing, where the stick figure sort of twitched on its hip bone. BVH-Veiwer worked alright, but I was wary of the set after that...

Just to be sure, and because I like these mocaps so well, I'm going to go ahead and keep grabbing the variations for as long as they'll let me... (multi-tasking while I do other things...)

@firewarden, I'm using the scripts from the first site you mentioned (https://github.com/ConflictedDev/MixamoAnimationsDownload) and just going through the 26 download click sequences with the Download script. Not as bad as 2443 x 2 clicks I did for another character a few years back...

Seems to be working well for me. I figure I can get FBXs later, and the FBX dowloads I tried were all rather large (2-3M fbx vs 60-200K bvh), and had bone errors that cause them to not load on my genesis1 character. I since figured that BVH is like OBJ and will always have the basic bones and converters available for the foreseeable future, and I know they work *before Aug 22*. So that's my plan so far.

FWIW, My read on Adobe's changes are:

After the 22nd of August, all of our assets will be cleared, and we'll probably have to upload FBX or OBJ figures on a per-session basis to apply, select, and produce downloadable FBX and/or collada animations. I expect those will only be available during that session. Probably still free, but not sure.

For that reason, as a Genesis1 animater, I've pulled, or am pulling 30fps BVH-s of Genesis1 generated from an OBJ (gives the mixamo skeleton), 30fps BVH-s of Genesis1 generated from an FBX (gives the original Genesis1 Skeleton), and this week I'm going to poke at getting BVHs of FBX-based V4, K4, and A3 so I can get the mixamo animations scaled and applied directly to these three skeletons. K4 gives me scaling, and A3 gives the Mil3 family bones, and of course V4 is the center of the conversion universe and can be 'mapped' to any Mil4 figure. I'd like to do a G2/G3/G8 series, but really expect that the Genesis1 obj series on the Mixamo skeleton will probably be mappable enough to be convertable with tools that exist or may be written.

How about you folks? Any luck with the scripts, and which figures/series are y'all hoarding this week?

cheers,

--ms

 

@mindsong

I can't get the download script to work.  I get the console error "undefined." It might be because I can't get Chrome to quit asking where I want to download file to every time I download, even though I have Chrome set not to ask in advanced settings. I don't have any clue otherwise to why it won't work.

I've got some time to work on this now, so I'm about to see if I can get any animatiosn from the pack to work in DS. Reading backward through the thread looking for info.

Hi @firewarden,

From my 'hacking', that 'undefined' response is simply saying that the 'return' value of *entering that script* isn't meaningful. But that's actually OK, as the new code is now available for later running. In the case of the downloads, the author chose not to run the script yet, but rather to simply define it for later use with our manual intervention. This differs from all of the other Mixamo js scripts I've played with so far, but there's logic to it.

To use his system (repeating some stuff for clarity), you first use the 'add' script to be sure you've got all of the animations for your character available. I assume you've been doing this all month too, and that's working for you...

At the author's advice, once the desired animations are 'added' and known-to-be available in your account, start a brand new chrome session - logout, close *all* chrome windows - not just the mixamo windows - and open chrome, log back into mixamo, and open the console again. This clears all of the other scripting/settings that may have accumulated in the chrome engine while we were 'adding' items earlier. Fresh start...

you then 'define' the 'download' script to the browser by pasting that download script into the console like we've been doing so far.

start manual repeat loop:

we have to manually get a page of downloads ready and waiting (any items you like, any format you like) on the 'my assets->downloads' page. (select, queue, pick formats, wait for doggy...)

then while on the populated downloads page, in the console prompt, type "tryDownloading(96)"   - where '96' is the number of downloads available on that page.

my BVH downloads go fast! Only with a new chrome instance do I get the 'multiple download' question (yes) mentioned.

the author goes on to detail that you should clear out the available downloads, and select/prepare a new set and download those by typing in the "tryDownloading(96)" in the console each time you have a new download set ready... until you've got them all. The up-arrow works in the console to re-type that command...

end of the loop -

so yeah, clear the browser, load the DL script, then repeat the: manual select/pick format/wait for DL page to settle/paste command/wait for DLs/clear downloads page/go get some more.

Note that eventually we will have to do this 26 times at 96 per page, to get a complete set, so it's not super automatic, but 26 loops of that are far better than 2443 download clicks...

I hope this helps clarify the logic/sequence, and I hope it works better for you. Pasting the command each full DL page is the trick I hope you missed. If not, I have no idea what's going on! urg.

Let us know how it goes!

--ms

ETA: sometimes a manual 'refresh' or page change in my sessions would 'clear' the google internals such that they forgot about the script I'd pasted into the console (I'd get an undefined error when typing tryDownloading(96)). I just paste the script in again, and the tryDownloading(96) seems to work again just fine.

mindsong

nonesuch00 said:

mindsong said:

nonesuch00 said:

If you do a search you will find them that someone else has already downloaded, zipped, and uploaded. Since it's been there over a year (not my upload) and neither Mixamo, Adobe, or the famous 'Do No Evil' G web business have removed that archive of all the animations I'm thinking it must be legal.

At any rate, go ahead and add them with the script as purchases to your account on Mixamo as then they won't be deleted as you having purchased them is my understading and you'll still be able to download later at the new Adobe site. The ability to purchase them though I think disappears if you don't purchase them by 21 Aug I think. You just won't have to fool with the hassle of individually downloading them if you download that archive instead of from your account.

Thanks for that pointer @nonesuch00, I was able to grab those a while back, but I recall the targets were a unity figure, and when I loaded them in BVHacker, the few I tested did the 'epileptic zombie' thing, where the stick figure sort of twitched on its hip bone. BVH-Veiwer worked alright, but I was wary of the set after that...

Just to be sure, and because I like these mocaps so well, I'm going to go ahead and keep grabbing the variations for as long as they'll let me... (multi-tasking while I do other things...)

@firewarden, I'm using the scripts from the first site you mentioned (https://github.com/ConflictedDev/MixamoAnimationsDownload) and just going through the 26 download click sequences with the Download script. Not as bad as 2443 x 2 clicks I did for another character a few years back...

Seems to be working well for me. I figure I can get FBXs later, and the FBX dowloads I tried were all rather large (2-3M fbx vs 60-200K bvh), and had bone errors that cause them to not load on my genesis1 character. I since figured that BVH is like OBJ and will always have the basic bones and converters available for the foreseeable future, and I know they work *before Aug 22*. So that's my plan so far.

FWIW, My read on Adobe's changes are:

After the 22nd of August, all of our assets will be cleared, and we'll probably have to upload FBX or OBJ figures on a per-session basis to apply, select, and produce downloadable FBX and/or collada animations. I expect those will only be available during that session. Probably still free, but not sure.

For that reason, as a Genesis1 animater, I've pulled, or am pulling 30fps BVH-s of Genesis1 generated from an OBJ (gives the mixamo skeleton), 30fps BVH-s of Genesis1 generated from an FBX (gives the original Genesis1 Skeleton), and this week I'm going to poke at getting BVHs of FBX-based V4, K4, and A3 so I can get the mixamo animations scaled and applied directly to these three skeletons. K4 gives me scaling, and A3 gives the Mil3 family bones, and of course V4 is the center of the conversion universe and can be 'mapped' to any Mil4 figure. I'd like to do a G2/G3/G8 series, but really expect that the Genesis1 obj series on the Mixamo skeleton will probably be mappable enough to be convertable with tools that exist or may be written.

How about you folks? Any luck with the scripts, and which figures/series are y'all hoarding this week?

cheers,

--ms

 

You recall incorrectly because the entire set in every format that Mixamo supports means that BVH format is included and I saw and extracted the BVH format not 2 weeks ago from that archive.

Also included besides FBX for Unity format, is FBX format, when various 'with each having various keyframe reduction or no keyframe reduction' as downloadable from the Adobe Mixamo site.

Only thing that you don't get are those animations skinned with various models from the Mixamo or uploaded personally to the Mixamo site. For that you do need to manually download after applying and saving the desired skin to all the animations in every format. 

No problem then - I've got 'em too and have no problem recommending that anyone interested save lots of time by finding/downloading that set. I hope I didn't mislead anyone by 'dissing' that collection. That said, I did find that the bvh-s in that didn't checkj-out as expected in in one of my goto tools, which inspired my fail-safe download efforts... I thank you for trying to save me from myself. I will go take a look at that set again, and re-assess, especially now that I'm a bit more savvy as to what I'm looking at. I also assume we can get the FBX motions after the 22nd. If not, that particular set will probably take on a whole new importance in any FBX-based projects I do in the future...

For my own (OCD) reasons, I wanted to have a complete set from the Genesis1 character (mixamo-obj-bvh and mixamo/daz-fbx-bvh) that I was certain were scaled and tuned to that character directly from the mixamo engine. Given I have a window on the edge of my system that I click through a page every-so-often, it seems easy/cheap enough to do as I work on other things.

cheers and thanks,

--ms

mindsong

@nonesuch00 - have you done any quality/motion comparisons between the keyframe reduced and non-reduced versions?

I'm not worried about file-sze.

I figure if they've skipped unnecessary keyframes across the character, that those motions will be easier to adjust/tweak in a graph editor - having less keys and good gaps where bones aren't moving.

I've gone with the non-reduced versions to be 'safe' but wonder if that's missing out on a useful mixamo processing feature...

Thoughts?

--ms

nonesuch00

I've always used the non-keyframe reduced version in Unity but the one time I did compare I couldn't see a visual difference.

mindsong

Padone said:

Since Blender can import and export the whole set of bvh dae fbx formats, I did some tests to see if it can be used to convert dae/fbx to bvh for DAZ Studio. This is just to let you know my results.

BVH - imports fine both in Blender and DAZ Studio and it works seamless with G2. It also includes the t-pose for retargeting.

DAE - imports fine in Blender, and it also exports fine to bvh. But it seems the dae animation exported from Mixamo doesn't have the t-pose as reference. So it plays fine but can't be used for retargeting on another character.

FBX - for some reason the fbx exported from Mixamo doesn't import fine in Blender. I played around with the options but didn't find any way to get it right. The fbx plays fine with the Autodesk viewer though, so I guess it should be a Blender issue.

 

EDIT: it seems that finally I found the correct parameters to import the Mixamo fbx in Blender. It's the default options with ignore leaf bones. Also the exported bvh works fine with DAZ Studio. So yes, Blender can be used to convert fbx to bvh for DAZ Studio. Below it's the hip hop dancing exported from Blender and imported to DAZ G2F.

Thanks for that info/update! now's the time to know this stuff!

--ms

mindsong

Has anyone else run into the

'Errors:

Rigging limiataion: bones without root skeleton

Rigging limitation: pre and post rotation must match in current implementation.'  (then it doesn't work...)

error when importing a obj-uploaded figure exported as mixamo fbx into DS (4.9)? I assume this is because the original obj-based character isn't complete enought for mixamo to generate a DS useful FBX export? google/forums mention it but offer no help with this particular import process.

An fbx-uploaded figure also generates a loading error: 

'Errors:

Transform difference: non uniform scale detected. Results will likely be different.'

(which is a bit tough to decipher...) but works, leaving the character looking like a porcupine (colored vector lines shooting out of the center of the figure in all directions) in the preview window. I think I can copy/paste the animation fine from there to another character, just curious about that one.

FWIW, the obj sourced fbx is ~2M, and the fbx-based fbx export is about 4M.

--ms

mindsong

nonesuch00 said:

I've always used the non-keyframe reduced version in Unity but the one time I did compare I couldn't see a visual difference.

tnx for the info. My quick tests (back when mixamo went 'free') didn't seem to indicate much difference either. I'll have to check file-size now just to see how much they can reduce a motion by.

--ms

Boingo the Clown

I did it.

I downloaded them all.

No when Mixamo fades into the distance, I will not be stuck.