BioVision Motion Capture (BVH)

Reference

Category:

Import-Export

Menu:

File ‣ Import/Export ‣ Motion Capture (.bvh)

Imports or exports bvh-files or files with BioVision Hierarchical data or data of a skeleton (rig) including its animation. Useful for importing data from motion capture devices.

Enabling Add-on

This add-on is enabled by default, in case it is not:

  1. Open Blender and go to Add-ons section of the Preferences.

  2. Search «BioVision Motion Capture (BVH) format» and check the Enable Extension checkbox.

Properties

Import

Target

The motion capture data type.

Armature:

The bvh-file contains an animated rigged skeleton such as a walking motion capture.

Object:

The bvh-file contains a static (not animated) mesh object such as a character model.

Transform

Scale

Factor to increase the physical size of the BVH.

Rotation

Rotation order of the BVH.

Forward / Up

Since many applications use a different axis for pointing upwards, these are axis conversion for these settings, Forward and up axes – By mapping these to different axes you can convert rotations between applications default up and forward axes.

Blender uses Y forward, Z up (since the front view looks along the +Y direction). For example, its common for applications to use Y as the up axis, in that case -Z forward, Y up is needed.

Animation

Start Frame

The start frame, in Blender, to start playback of the BVH animation.

Scale FPS

Scales the frame rate from the BVH file to the scene frame rate set in Blender, otherwise each BVH frame maps directly to a frame in Blender.

Loop

Cycles the animation playback.

Update Scene FPS

Set the scene’s frame rate to match the frame rate of the BVH file.

Update Scene Duration

Extend the scene’s duration to match the BVH’s duration.

Export

Transform

Scale

Factor to increase the physical size of the BVH.

Rotation

Rotation order of the BVH.

Root Translation Only

Only write the translation animation channels for the root bone.

Animation

Start / End

Sets the range of animation to export to the BVH file.