Traditional methods of Character animation usually takes a large amount of time and skilled artists who create frame-by-frame animation by creating poses for 3d characters every frame. But with advancement in computer graphics, new character animation techniques were used to create realistic 3d scenes in shorter span of time. One of them is Motion capture technology where character animation is recorded from actors performing the desired motion.

Today Motion Capture is used in television and movie productions. The motions performed by actors are tracked with sensors and translated into 3D representation. usually these motion capture data is stored into various formats like .bvh, .amc, .asf, .c3d, .bip etc. Though all these files may not be compatible with every 3d software, there are specific conversion tools that can be used to import and export motion capture data.

Some of them are.

3ds Max

3dsmax supports direct import and conversion of .bvh files, which can be later converted to .bip files.
Tutorial for bvh import and conversion within 3ds max.
Download or Video

MotionBuillder

Motion builder supports array of motion capture formats for import and export.

NaturalMotion Endorphin

Endorphin is a dedicated 3d software for creating character animation, also works with various motion capture formats.
www.naturalmotion.com/products/endorphin/

Available tools for BVH conversion and tweaking.

BVHplay:  a free, lightweight, Python-based, multi-OS, open-source playback utility for BVH animation files

ASF/AMC viewer

amc2bvh is a free asf/amc to bvh motion conversion tool.

bvhacker is a free .bvh tweaking / viewing tool that can export other formats.

 

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