Where to find BVH files

There are several different formats that mocap files can be stored in. MakeHuman’s mocap tool can only deal with files in Biovision BVH format. BVH files can be bought from many commercial sources, but a large range of mocap files are also available for free download. Here are some sites I found useful.

CMU Graphics Lab Motion Capture Database


Hosted at Carnegie-Mellon University, this is a huge library of mocap files which can be downloaded for free. The web address is http://mocap.cs.cmu.edu.

CMU hosts mocap files in three formats: tvd, c3d and amc. However, the mocap tool can only read BVH files, so none of these files can be used directly.

Fortunately, B. Hahne at http://www.cgspeed.com has converted the CMU files to BVH. The converted files are located at http://sites.google.com/a/cgspeed.com/cgspeed/motion-capture.

Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD)


Hosted at the Ohio State University, this is another great source of free mocap files. BVH files can be downloaded from https://accad.osu.edu/research/motion-lab/mocap-system-and-data

Eyes Japan (mocapdata.com)


This is a Japanese company that sells mocap data commercially, but they also offer a huge number of motions for free. According to their homepage, mocapdata.com provides 744 premium motion data and 4197 free motion data. The only catch is that downloading requires registration. Not surprisingly, the homepage of mocapdata.com has the address http://www.mocapdata.com/.

The Trailer’s Park


Free mocap data can also be found at the Trailer’s Park, http://www.thetrailerspark.com.

This site does not offer original data, but offer repacks of mocap data from other free sites for download. Free download is limited to some five packs per day, so some patience is required here.

Hochschule der Medien, Universität Bonn (HDM)


http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/resources/HDM05/

The Perfume global site project #001


http://perfume-dev.github.com/