Transfering a .bip onto your Puppetshop rig

This is sort of little more advanced, but can be really helpful when you need a basic mocap animation to work from. However, first and foremost I write this down for myself, so I don't forget it again.

What do we want to do?

We want to transfer an animation from a Character Studio Biped (.bip) onto our customized/extended human Puppetshop Rig.

Huuhh?

Puppetshop is a cool and powerful rigging plugin by Lumonix. They also developed some other fine plugins like ShaderFX or SkinFX.You can download a demo full version from their homepage by entering your email adress. For this tutorial, however, you need a registered version of Puppetshop (cause we use the Export function).

What do I need?

1. 3DS Max 8+
2. Registered version of Puppetshop (well, not anymore - it's free)
3. Some .bip animation files
4. A character rigged with the default human skeleton from Puppetshop. It also works when you use the default human rig as a starting point and modify it from there. Be sure not to make any big changes to the hierarchy, though.

Let's get started

1. Drag up a fresh Biped next to your rigged character
2. Create a new Puppet and load the default human rig (Human_v101.XMP)
3. Press Setup to create the rig
4. Select any Puppetnode (there should be 2 in the scene at this point: 1 from the puppet we just created and 1 from your own rigged character)
5. Under File => Mocap Advanced hit the export button and chose Export a Biped to BVH
6. This brings up Puppetshops "Biped Thief". Select the root-node of the biped in the 3ds Max Hierarchy-List (press H)
7. Save the BVH
8. Under the normal Motion Capture tab press Import and chose Import Human BVH
9. Select the BVH you saved 2 steps before and import it