I'm curious if anyone got this working using the SOFTIMAGE|XSI Mod Tool.

I've been looking at the Retargeting Mocap Data from C3D or BVH Files to Rig under the Softimage Motor (Motion Transformation) for Characters under the Character Animation section of the Softimage User's Guide.

When I follow the steps the application just crashes. I'm sure it is because I'm not tagging the skeleton correctly, but I'm unsure exactly what the appropriate mapping should be.

My guess is that my .tagt file I've created is off.  Of course, I'm using pre-built bvh files as well and so maybe it is something there? I have tried several and I'm getting the same results.

I'm sure I'm just not tagging the skeleton right, but was hoping that someone has already solved this problem (and might have a .tagt file to share ;-) )

Just so it is listed, here is the latest .tagt file I've saved.


Thanks!

Ugh, I found the same behavior (and then found your post by searching for an answer).  You can have my .tagt file if you want, but I'm not sure it will help you much, I'm not an animator and learned what I know about rigging in the last two days :)

One thing I thought (remember I'm an animation n00b) is that the movement in the .BVH file violated constraints set on the rig, I wonder if we get rid of all those constraints so all that was left were bones, and then mapped the movements to the bones, if it would work (and would still export correctly, yikes).

Before I conjecture any further, have you made any progress on this? 

-Dan

Thanks for the reply. No, I haven't made it any further -- ended up getting side tracked on something else. Been fooling with Blender some, but not exactly getting anywhere with that either.

I'd love to take a look at your .tagt file. Totally understand the disclaimer. If there is any light you can shed as to why you picked the settings you did, that would be great -- but if it was just trial and error then I totally understand that as well :)

I was hoping someone from MS or Autodesk would respond, but I'm assuming if was straight forward someone would have answered in the last month. I'd like to try to get my animations exported through XSI as I just can't afford a Maya license. I know the XNA team did it in Maya and then ported it to XSI so that is probably why they haven't responded. Still -- it is something that many people will ultimately want to do - so it would be good if we could determine the right way to do it.

Thanks again for offering to share your progress so far. I'd definitely love to benefit from it. Would be nice to get some professional users of XSI to explain why certain things will / will not work.

-Chad

I'm just gonna dump my entire TAGT file on mediafire, here's the URL.
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=9f13481e65ba1efd07258ee67c679e4a4456092d66e098a2ce018c8114394287

I'll paste in the the mappings below though - I chose to try to map directly to the bones I think, whereas you mapped to the controls.  Previously I had tried to map to the control objects, I think they're called (the floating circles and triangles outside the avatar), but there were too few of those and I didn't know exactly what effect that would produce, since it seems that mocap data should be mapped to bones. 

Finally, there is a thread on this on the autodesk forums.  I tried one workaround so far but it hasn't worked.
http://area.autodesk.com/forum/autodesk-softimage/animation/motor-in-xsi-7/page-2/


cog BASE
spineroot <EmptyFieldxsi>
chest SC_BACKB
pelvis <EmptyFieldxsi>
rthigh RT_H
rshin RT_K
rfoot RT_A
rclavicle RT_C
rupperarm RT_S
rforearm RT_E
rwrist RT_THUMB
rhand <EmptyFieldxsi>
lthigh LF_H
lshin LF_K
lfoot LF_A
lclavicle LF_C
lupperarm LF_S
lforearm LF_E
lwrist LF_THUMB
lhand <EmptyFieldxsi>
neck <EmptyFieldxsi>
head <EmptyFieldxsi>
rheel <EmptyFieldxsi>
rtoe <EmptyFieldxsi>
lheel <EmptyFieldxsi>
ltoe <EmptyFieldxsi>

Oh and if you're wondering why I mapped wrist to a thumb, it's because it forced me to map it to something and there were no bones left.  I should probably map it to the control object, Root.root16

Okay, I got it to work.  What I didn't understand was that you need to tag not only the avatar rig, but when you specify the BVH file you're loading (Under Motor-MocapToRig), you need to "create" a TAGT for that too.  To do this, you must click "create" in "Step 3: Load or Create Tag Template for your BVH file", and then tag the skeleton that is provided by the BVH file (it won't necessarily be in a T-pose, but it should be pretty obvious what parts are what). 

I was trying to use the TAGT file I'd created for the avatar rig in that step, instead of the one for the BVH file.

I used *your* TAGT file for the avatar rig, combined with a BVH file I tagged, and got what looked like pretty good motion (except the wrists of the model were collapsed and the head wouldn't turn - hopefully easy to fix).