RESOURCE: Animation Street

[cdxbow]

Animation Street is another online animation service, try the beta: http://www.animstreet.com/
Not free, but do have free animations. I think the site is based on the 'Truebones' people, who used to give away 500 free animations out of the open mocap set. These are bvh format.

Uses a credit system, the base price for a 'non free' animation is 40 credits. 10 credits = $1USD You can upload and sell your own as well.

You have to search to find the free ones, in the search box type a search phrase and price eg: swim price<1 , you will find about 48 free swim animations.

In previous posts I have mentioned how many models miss out on the RE needed crouch forward, so I thought I would have a look and see what they had. None free, so crouch price<50 brought back a lot. This one http://www.animstreet.com/animations/15145 is an fps bent over walk, searching crouch forward price<50 gets mainly what I would call 'crawl' (on belly) and roll forward.

I will try a few and report back.

ADDENDUM.
Mixed results.
From the Biped compatible model in Max we have previously been able to import bvh and export from it mangled
Into a new Biped model it worked, but with errors.
Importing the bvh into Milkshape caused it to crash

Not a good start.

[Dratz-_C]

Can one make some of these animations with a neutral background, pickups on your clothing and, for example, two Kinects?
Cheers

[cdxbow]

Probably. But there are so many free human mocaps around now it's probably not needed, certainly for an fps.

[Dratz-_C]

I meant this for the rare, necessary animation that could not found in a practical form--not for everything. An example would be a cutscene.
Cheers

[cdxbow]

Yes, but there are 1000+ motions CMU motion database in bvh format, so even for cut scenes there probably something there you can use. I really would like to be able to use those bvh directly, rather than the cut down bip converted set.

There are less mocap files around for animals, so perhaps you should stick your markers on a dog or a cat. I think it is still mostly done optically, and I am pretty sure the CMU files were done that way

ADDED The att. text file lists the files converted from the CMU motion database in to an allegedly Max friendly bvh format. There are over 2500 animations. I don't know if this is the complete CMU library, it may be. See

cmu-mocap-index-text.txt

(66.8 KiB) Downloaded 310 times

Many of the online services may be built around the CMU library.

[Dratz-_C]

Cdxbow,
If I remember correctly, a maximum compatibility skeleton can be used or created that has more possibilities than the biped for other creatures yet still works for biped. Most if not all of non-purely-biped monsters in, for example, "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion would then be able to share animations with the biped player character in a user modification that told the game to do so. There is an overhead associated with keeping all of this extra stuff on the skeleton in the game, but it might still be worth it ... or I could be out in left-field, somewhere.

coronerras_maximum_cimpatibilty_skeleton.jpeg

Cheers