The latest version of Houdini recently has seen a rethinking of the crowd tools, becoming more artist friendly than previous versions. Houdini ships with a couple of mocap biped examples that can be used with the crowd tool.
one way to install external BVH mocap data into the default crowd agent that ships with Houdini 14.
The Basic mocap biped has a few embedded motions that are available from walking, running, standing and even a zombie mode. Did you know that it was possible to install more motion captured animations into the default crowd agent?
Here, Houdini user Atom, shows one of the ways that you can install more BVH mocap data animations into the default crowd agent that comes with Houdini 14.
This can be done by converting BVH to BCLIP/CMD files. Atom points to a resource that shows how you can view or convert BVH files to the Houdini compatible format. This is done using the mcbiovision converter.
The demonstrations shows how to run the script .CMD file in the Textport window using the source command to create a default skeleton. Then you will be able to link the resulting skeleton to the external .BCLIP file. This file will contain the animated bone information needed.
The mocap CHOP node can then be copied into the default Mocap Biped 1 HDA. Atom notes that through the use of a universal expression, chop(chsop(“../chop”)+”/$OS:$CH”), each bone can be switched to playback another mocap dataset by simply modifying the path to the CHOP.
Atom makes some pre-converted files available for download – simply download the converted BVH files here.
