The Motionbuilder-friendly BVH Conversion Release of CMU's Motion Capture Database

Daz Studio / Poser / Carrara users: you probably want this page instead.
3dsMax users: you probably want this page instead.

June 26, 2010: I've now re-released the Motionbuilder-friendly BVH conversion of the CMU motion files with some minor improvements to the frame-1 T pose. I recommend the 2010 release over the original 2008 release, however links to both data sets are available below. Please see the 2010 README file for details of the minor changes. There have been no changes to the actual CMU motion data or to the bone structure or names -- only the initial T pose, which isn't part of CMU's original dataset to begin with, has changed.

March 22, 2011: all download links on this page were broken because MediaFire deleted all files without notifying me, but should be fixed now.

- Bruce

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Announcement: Over 2500 free human

motion BVH files now available at cgspeed.com

Aug. 30, 2008: see also my followup blog post about animation retargeting.

July 22, 2008

I'm happy to announce the free release of an enhanced BVH conversion of the entire set of 2548 human motions from the Carnegie-Mellon Graphics Lab Motion Capture Database. This is a large set of professionally-captured human motions of a wide variety of types, suitable for use in animation software, which has not previously been available in BVH format. The emphasis on this release is to produce BVH files that can rapidly be used in MotionBuilder for motion retargetting. The files are free to use worldwide for any purpose.

Advantages of this BVH release over the original Carnegie-Mellon data:

- This release has the motions in the more commonly used BVH format rather than the original ASF/AMC format.

- T-poses: Every BVH file has a T-pose added as its new first frame. The T-pose faces the positive Z axis and therefore is MotionBuilder compatible.

- Joint renaming: As many joints as possible have been renamed to be compatible with MotionBuilder's joint naming conventions. This renaming makes it much easier (faster) to use the BVH files in MotionBuilder.

- Index/information files: The release includes consolidated indexes that list the motion filenames and their descriptions. Both spreadsheet and word processor friendly index files are available. This means that you don't just get a pile of 2548 .bvh files where you don't know anything about the motions. Almost every .bvh file has a text description, and those descriptions are all in a single reference file that you can print or sort.

- MotionBuilder-friendly: the joint renaming and the addition of the T-pose make it possible to use these motions for animation retargetting within MotionBuilder in seconds rather than minutes.

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2010 RE-RELEASE DOWNLOAD LINKS AND CAVEATS:

The BVH Conversion Release is available as several separate .zip files. Because Google Sites, where I host much of the cgspeed.com content, incredibly doesn't allow file hosting larger than 10MB per file (!) , I've hosted the files at MediaFire, which requires that you download each file from one of their ad display pages. MediaFire also unfortunately sometimes launches pop-up windows with ads, so please be prepared to close down the desktop window spam that their site creates.

Please note that the directory numbers aren't necessarily sequential - sometimes the CMU dataset skips some numbers. So when you unzip the following files, you won't always end up with individual directories for every integer in the numeric range.

The links immediately below are for the 2010 re-release of the Motionbuilder-friendly BVH files. These are presently (June 2010) the recommended release. See the 2010 README file for a description of the minor changes since the 2008 release.

Other files:
- New 2010 READMEFIRST file
- Here's the full motions list (word processor version), also included with each of the above .zip files

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Original 2008 Motionbuilder-friendly release files

I currently recommend the 2010 release files linked above, however I'll maintain the links to the older 2008 Motionbuilder-friendly release here in case people really want the older frame-1 T-poses.

Other files:
- Original 2008 READMEFIRST file included with each of the above .zip files
- Here's the full motions list (word processor version), also included with each of the above .zip files

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Contact information:

Bruce Hahne, site editor, cgspeed.com
"Making hobbyist animating easier, cheaper, and faster"
Email: hahne at prismnet dot com

(Disclaimer: I don't work for AutoDesk, nor am I affiliated with Carnegie-Mellon University. The BVH conversion release is provided as-is, without support or guarantees.)