Overgrowth Tutorial: Playing With BVH Animations
Add comment!July 24th, 2010
David already teased everyone with the new animation tech in Overgrowth with his initial motion capture tests video. However, this week I had a chance to really go into the nitty gritty details of the new features. So without further ado, I humbly present to you a new Overgrowth tech demo.
Be sure to check it out in HD!
In summary, BVH animation files can now be loaded into the engine and David has created an animation algorithm that can translate the orginal humanoid BVH data to suit the specific size and dimensions of the current humanoid character you have rigged (assuming it has the same core structure). Last but not least, once you have a BVH animation loaded, you can save it out as an ANM file which can then be utilized by the scripting layer.
Remember you can download all the CMU motion captured data I used in this video (as well as 2500 other animations I didn't use) from this web site. The animations come with a nice index explaining what actions each file contains.
Hopefully the video makes it pretty clear how everything is working right now. The tech isn't finished yet but I thought it was especially fun to see Robbert performing a high-detail boxing animation.
What do you guys think of the new animation technology?