Example USD Structure

Overview

Since a BVH animation file only contains skeletal animation data, the plug-in will translate a BVH file into a hierarchy of the following prims from the usdSkel schema:

• A SkelRoot prim containing:

  • A Skeleton prim that holds the bone heirarchy of the BVH file

  • A SkelAnimation prim that holds the skeletal animation data from the BVH file

Timing information is encoded into the metadata of the root layer, and relationships are set up to ensure the animation data drives the skeleton by default.

A Note About Timing Metadata

The plug-in uses the timing information in the BVH file to set the timeCodesPerSecond metadata on the root layer.

The plug-in deliberately does not set framesPerSecond on the root layer, as it is the responsibility of the consumer of animation content to specify the desired playback frame rate, and not the responsibility of the content itself to dictate this.

A Note About Extents

As recommended, extents for the BVH animation data are computed by the plug-in so that the resultant skelRoot contains extents that are valid at the time of authoring.

However, if later on in the pipeline, you plan on composing BVH animation data into a larger scene, and in particular, if you plan on either:

• Composing skinned meshes into the skelRoot and binding them to animation data

• Composing the BVH data into an existing skelRoot

then, these extents should be re-authored so that they reflect every prim that ends up parented to the skelRoot.

Example

To illustrate the prims produced by the plug-in, the following example is a direct result of running usdcat --flattenLayerStack data\test_bvh.bvh:

#usda 1.0
(
    defaultPrim = "Root"
    endTimeCode = 21
    startTimeCode = 1
    timeCodesPerSecond = 23.999808001535985
)

def SkelRoot "Root" (
    prepend apiSchemas = ["SkelBindingAPI"]
)
{
    float3[] extent.timeSamples = {
        1: [(0, 0, 0), (0, 0, 1)],
        2: [(0, -0.004576359, 0), (0, 0.008019, 0.99992067)],
        ...
    }
    prepend rel skel:skeleton = </Root/Skeleton>

    def Skeleton "Skeleton" (
        prepend apiSchemas = ["SkelBindingAPI"]
    )
    {
        uniform matrix4d[] bindTransforms = [( (1, 0, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0, 0), (0, 0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 0, 1) ), ( (1, 0, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0, 0), (0, 0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1, 1) )]
        uniform token[] joints = ["Root", "Root/Foo"]
        uniform matrix4d[] restTransforms = [( (1, 0, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0, 0), (0, 0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 0, 1) ), ( (1, 0, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0, 0), (0, 0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1, 1) )]
        prepend rel skel:animationSource = </Root/Animation>
    }

    def SkelAnimation "Animation"
    {
        uniform token[] joints = ["Root", "Root/Foo"]
        quatf[] rotations.timeSamples = {
            1: [(1, 0, 0, 0), (1, 0, 0, 0)],
            2: [(0.99998015, 0.0062978044, 0, 0), (0.99998015, 0, 0.0062978044, 0)],
            ...
        }
        half3[] scales.timeSamples = {
            1: [(1, 1, 1), (1, 1, 1)],
        }
        float3[] translations.timeSamples = {
            1: [(0, 0, 0), (0, 0, 1)],
            2: [(0, 0.008019, 0), (0, 0, 1)],
            ...
        }
    }
}