Questions about XNA, bvh, 3dsmax, FBX, biped, CAT objects, Poser, makehuman, lip sync etc

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Questions regarding XNA and skinned animations.

My main objective is to create a biped with my wifes face on it and apply bvh files to it to use in some wp7 game/app... So I have gotten confused about some thing on the way..

I notice some programs like poser, makehuman, turbosquid free characters can export characters with 'bones'... How do you apply a bvh to bones? Do the bones need to be set up in some specific way? Do you load the bones and load the bvh file and somehow map them together?? I know 3dsmax bipeds are more ready for .bip files and .bvh but nothing exports in that format.. so unless I am creating it from scratch it seems I need to find a way to get these bones to work with bvh files...

What about Biped and CAT objects? When I export ythose as a FBX file can I use the with the 'skinned animation' XNA sample? Or must it be 3dsmax 'bones' ?

I tried Poser but when I got from .DAE -> 3ds max -> fbx -> 'skinned animation' the geometry is all messed up for some reason... but the nice thing about poser is the ease I can add bvh files plus I can map a face photo and easily texture the face...

Morph target possible in XNA? I don't think so.. So I guess the easiest way to lip sync is create a bone in the mouth and programmatically move it during audio playback ?

Any other tools out there that would be helpful or samples ?

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c#animationwindows-phone-7xna
Does your wife know about this? :) – Tim Lloyd

1 Answers

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I've never had any experience with what you're trying to attain, but I did come across this extensive thread on the AppHub forums about facial animation and morph targets:
http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/32219.aspx

Here's an interesting quote from Jon Watte:

The XNA Model content format does not support morph targets. The X file format does not support morph targets. The XNA importer for FBX and X geometry does not support morph targets. Thus, anything you do will have to be custom at some level.

Thread goes on for 75 posts, so hopefully you'll find something of interest in there ... good luck!