Ever wondered why you couldn’t just use (motion capture) Mocap data in After Effects? With the BVH Importer, you now can.

BVH Importer allows parsing joint skeleton structures and accompanying motion data, and transforming them into Solid/Null based skeleton animation for use in After Effects

Motion capture data is widely used in the 3D world, placing recorded motion onto skeletons in order to get a base for the animation pipeline. this can lead to some realistic motion and visual cues that otherwise could have been lost through the course of animation.

The BVH (Motion capture data file) contains hierarchy and skeletal intimation that can be recreated in another application, also including the motion data of the recorded performance. Using the BVH Importer for After Effects, you can now convert mocap data in After Effects and actually make use of it.

There are a wide variety of resources out there for motion capture data, both free and paid around the internet, which can open up a whole new set of possibilities with After Effects.

 

BVH Importer for After Effects

bvh_importer_gui

Tomas Sinkunas is the author of the BVH Importer for After Effects. In the past he has brought us some great tools such as Slice It Up which makes it easy to procedurally slice and animate clips in After Effects, the fun Kurulumun Curly Parametric Spline Generator for Cinema 4D and Umami which creates random parametric splines in Cinema 4D.

Tomas has created a tool that can support the BVH data file’s standard ZXY Euler rotations as well as mixed joint rotations. This means that any combination of XYZ, XZY, YXZ are acceptable. The BVH Importer has a built in compatibility check which will report any errors with the BHV files that you are trying to use.

BVH Importer also can work with mocap skeletons, allowing you to set options for how you want the skeleton in the scene, including pose and position – instead of arbitrary offsets that might be defined in the BVH file, and not really relevant for After Effects’ composition window.

 

BVH Importer Workflow

When you run the BVH Importer you are presented with a panel that will allow you to set options such as the frame rate, animation duration, and After Effects specific settings such as the comp size, skeleton scale, and what to create for each joint. You can have the tool automatically create a solid at each joint position or a null.

  • Run BVH Importer and import BVH file. Check for file compatibility if it’s your first run for that particular script;
  • Adjust files parameters such as FPS, duration, animation range. Enable rest pose if you are planning on rigging this skeleton;
  • Set composition parameters and geometry options;
  • Apply the Beam Effect in order to get visual lines between joints

 

Availability and Pricing

BVH Importer is available through aescripts + aeplugins as well as RenderTom.com both carry a price of $39.99, available immediately. Check out the tutorial for how the BVH Importer works and what it can be capable of.