Mixamo & CMU mocaps working with DAZ Studio - solutions in thread
firewarden
Posts: 1,488
Mixamo has great promise to help with animation sequences, and the animations on sale today reminded me of that. However, I've never gotten the animation imports to work, even when following the directions on the Mixamo website.
Has anyone managed to get Mixamo to work with DAZ, importing animations to Studio and using them?
Just curious if it no longer works as advertized or if there's a different method to use Mixamo animations in DAZ studio.
Edited to change title to indicate solutions in the thread, thanks to Arnold C, wolf359, nonesuch00, DigiDotz, etc.
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It's been a while, and I can't tell you how I did it, but I remember it working quite well with Genesis 2 figures.
I can't get it to work at all. Did you happen to join when they still had V4/M4 as target figures? (They've been removed.)
No, I joined recently, when they went free with Adobe. I followed their tutorial for Daz Genesis 2, and after a couple trial and errors I found the options that work fine when imported into Daz Studio.
Do you happen to have a link to the specific tutorial that you used? The ones I'm finding don't work. Do you have any notes on what options work?
It may be this, not sure: https://community.mixamo.com/hc/en-us/articles/203314886-Tutorial-Upload-a-Rigged-Character-to-Animate Once you upload a daz character, you can make the animation for this character specifically, then import that into daz.
https://community.mixamo.com/hc/en-us/articles/203984136-DAZ-Mixamo-and-DAZ-3D
Hi
is it legal to upload a Daz genesis FBX to Mixamo??
are you not technically Distributing a Daz Figure geometry??
even if so you get back an animated FBX version thus wont you lose autofit and many other genesis2 native features.??
Ati, that doesn't really seem to be a tutorial with steps or settings
Wolf359, those instructions don't seem to work. I followed that tutorial back in July and again today. The animation/fbx is just garbage that crashes DAZ Studio.
I had also followed steps using obj file back in July that didn't work. Looking for other tutorials to try. May try the obj tutorial again today when I get back to my computer, think I bookmarked it when I tried it last time.
The tutorials I tried previously were from Mixamo itself. Not sure if I used any from their forums. It would be great if Mixamo worked with DAZ tho.
Sorry, it's the best I could find now. The site looked a little different back then.
It shows you how you can upload a Daz character that you can then use as the base for the Mixamo animations. Make the required animations for the uploaded character, download the bvh files and import into Daz.
No. Desperate for more animation sequences out there I tried Mixamo last week, but it wouldn't upload my Gen 1 character, even after using the Decimator and also trying to reload the character with no clothing or hair. I got an error message.
Ati, that's kinda the point. I followed multiple of their tutorials and the animations do not work. If you have a tutorial that actually works or know the settings that do, I'd really like to try it.
Aiijuin Graphics, I'm hitting walls also. About to try different variations. I got V4.2 to upload today and looked as if all was working as an .fbx, but importing the dowloaded animation crashed DAZ. Going to try some more experiments right now. But based on some other comments, it looks as if Ati is one of the very few that got it to work, which is why I'm wondering what the settings were, what instructions he followed, etc.
I'm also experimenting with these -
The Daz-friendly BVH release of CMU's motion capture database:
https://sites.google.com/a/cgspeed.com/cgspeed/motion-capture/daz-friendly-release
Hi My animators curiousity overtook me so I uploaded a default genesis 1 as FBX.
I chose to retrieve my free animation Data as BVH instead of FBX and still the results vary because the mixamo rigs have proper IK for the feet but the Daz internal IK solver is rubbish so any hard foot contact motions will FAIL
But basic walk cycles seem to work
YMMV
Good info, wolf359! I'll try that when I get back to my computer here in a bit. Edited to add... for some reason, your video didn't show on my phone. Looks good! :)
Yes, on Reddit you can find a link to some 3rd party file share site that has every single Mixamo animation as (unskinned) FBX and BVH to download. Something like 4.7GB in total.
Thank you, nonesuch00! I found the link on Reddit, plus a script that adds the animations to one's Mixamo account. Very nice!!! More stuff to experiment with. Awesome! Ty! :)
Oh, I missed the script to add those animations to your Mixamo account. I have only a sub-set attached to my Mixamo account as it's a chore adding them manually. Could you give a better hint what that script is called and post it here for us?
You can find the script and instructions how to use it on this Twitter account; you have to use it from the console in Chrome. It snagged me about 2500 animations. It was a great help, as I had added a couple of hundred manually before I gave up.
Today was crazy, but I hope to be focussing on more testing in the morning. Don't forget to grab the Daz-friendly BVH release of CMU's motion capture database:
https://sites.google.com/a/cgspeed.com/cgspeed/motion-capture/daz-friendly-release
It looks like it has tons of good stuff also. There's also an excel spreadsheet that shows what animations are in the various files.
And now to see what's on sale today, because I really need some GoFigure stuff, like GraphMate and KeyMate.
Thanks very much.
Hi nonesuch00... Trying again, as the first link I pasted isn't working for me at the moment. Here's the Reddit thread. Click on the word script and it will take you to the discussion and script link/instructions. This is a direct link, just in case it works this time.
Hi Someone in the Reddit thread has all 4.5 GIGS!!
on his Google drive.
If you have your own Google drive you can instantly transfer the archive to your drive which is what I did but its too big for google to preview the contents.
I am only interested in the BVH files as Iclone pro has a BVH converter for me to retarget them to Genesis figures In Iclone
Is there a manifest somewhere listing all the files??
wolf359, there is for the files I linked from CMU, but for the Mixamo files, I had no luck trying to Google for a list. If you find anything, please post!
Yeah... me.
Furtunately, I've been a Mixamo customer since 2013, and so one of the lucky ones who still owns the old DAZ Victoria and Michael figures which Mixamo added to their catalogue in Oktober 2010 but sadly dropped last autumn.
Seems the partnership ended when Adobe took the ownership. 
Motions rigged on Mixamo's DAZ Victoria and Michael work for me on V4, M4 (out-of-the-box), and on Genesis & Genesis 2 (with adjustments), and with the use of DraagonStorm's Animation Conversion Genesis 2 to Genesis 3, on Genesis 3, too, by "Create aniBlock from Studio Keyframes".
After Mixamo dropped the DAZ figures I exported mine in FBX format to have a backup copy in case I accidentally delete one (or both) of them eventually. Motions rigged on them work as nice as with their originals, and it also works nicely using just the "bare bones" T-Pose saved in BVH format, without any geometry.
The reason why export/re-import doesn't work flawlessly I guess lies within DAZ Studio's importer/exporter plugins. Importing the Mixamo DAZ Victoria into Studio gets you some weird behaviour and distortions, as shown on the screenshot I added.
Okay, that doesn't help you that much, I know. I really wish I could help you guys and gals by providing the fbx's for those old abandoned figures.
I just contacted Mixamo if it would be of any harm if someone would publish the plain node data from a figures Zero-T-Pose BVH in a forum post. For it wouldn't contain any mesh or animation data it would be IMO useless for anyone who doesn't own the figure, too, to make any use of it.
If they don't see that as a copyright violation and don't disagree I'll post the node data in the Free Animations for DAZ People... topic as code snippets to let you build your own Zero-T-Pose BVH's from.
The 4.7 GB Mixamo animation collection includes all their animations in both FBX & BVH format but I don't know of a download that is BVH or FBX only except manually going through their colection and adding them to your download list in the format you prefer.
Honestly, for genesis 2 anyway -just follow the mixamo instructions using the default genesis (or even a morphed genesis) then use mcasuals copyposeanime script to a separate (maybe clothed) Genesis 2 in daz studio
DigiDotz, what directions are you referring to? Can you link them? I've used two different sets on the Mixamo website and they didn't work. I'm about to try wolf359's workflow. (I was planning to have more time this week for working on all this...)
https://community.mixamo.com/hc/en-us/articles/203984136-DAZ-Mixamo-and-DAZ-3D
That collection isn't of any use to get the Mixamo motions onto one of the DAZ figures. The figure that they were originally rigged on seems to have a largely different bone layout compared to those of DAZ's figures. Without a huge amount of work you won't get them to work. For our (your) purpose it's not more than a huge waste of disc space.
I guess you're talking about this one... That's an excellent suggestion, DigiDotz!
Works nicely without the neccessary detour over V4/M4 (and using a pose adjustment), like one would have to when using the now abandoned Mixamo DAZ Michael and Victoria figures.
I just tested it with a Victoria 6 FBX exported from DS and imported into Mixamo. The there exported animated FBX works even on the basic Genesis 2 Female and Male when using mcasuals script. And in some way on Genesis, too. Except for the hands, which have a too different zero pose. It doesn't work on Genesis 3, though, but that's what I suspected anyways.
Thanks a LOT, that's a nice improvement to my workflow!
WierdDigiDotz. I followed those directions using V4.2 and the .fbx import was garbage that crashed DAZ. Tried with G2F and I get an error from Mixamo after uploading, while it says it's generating assets. Well, off to try the fbx and bhv files that someone downloaded from Mixamo.
Those Mixamo animations are supposed to be retargetable in Unity to Mecanim compatible rigs, which so far for me has included Poser characters and DAZ characters and a couple I modeled myself but I guess that doesn't mean DAZ's animation system can use them or the DAZ Studio plugins animate2 / keyMate / graphMate combination can use them. As I've only used a few of the animations from Mixamo directly in Unity, nothing near the thousands they have, I'm not sure of their utility in DAZ.
The huge amount of work must be consistantly the same sort of similar adjustments that Mixamo had to have automated with scripts on their back end for V4 and M4 before they pulled those from their store.
Anyway maybe Mixamo will be kind enough to allow you to post those that you have already that they used their scripts to convert to V4 / M4 rigs.