Download 3,000 free mocap moves from Bandai Namco
Bandai Namco Research, the R&D division of game publisher and developer Bandai Namco, has released a massive library of free motion-capture data for research and personal use.
The data, recorded at Bandai Namco’s own mocap studio, comprises over 3,000 individual moves.
The files are provided in BVH format and cover a range of activities, including walking, running, fighting and dancing, and a range of motion styles, including active, tired and happy.
The library is accompanied by a free script for visualising the data in Blender.
Over 3,000 free mocap moves in BVH format, recorded for animation research
Bandai Namco recorded the moves to create a data set for research into motion style transfer (MST).
MST transfers the style of one motion – such as the character’s emotional state – to the another, while preserving the second motion’s content: for example, to turn a happy walk cycle in to a sad one.
The library consists of two separate data sets, the first consisting of 175 individual moves spanning 17 motion types, including fighting and dancing, and 15 styles, mimicking the motion of humans, giants and apes.
The second is much larger, containing 2,902 individual moves, but focuses on walks, runs and waving, in 7 core style: normal, active and exhausted; youthful and elderly; masculine and feminine.
Together, they comprise 3,077 individual moves, and a whopping 421,604 frames of motion.
The movements were captured from three professional actors, with Bandai Namco post-processing the raw data to remove noise and align proportions to a standard character skeleton, and are supplied at 30fps.
Compatible with most DCC applications and game engines
The files are provided in BVH format, supported natively by many DCC applications, including 3ds Max, Blender, Cinema 4D, Houdini and MotionBuilder, and in Maya via free import scripts.
The animation can then be exported in FBX format for use in game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine.
In addition, Bandai Namco has provided its own free Python script for visualising BVH data in Blender.
System requirements and licensing
Bandai Namco’s motion data set is provided in BVH format. The files are available free for research and personal use under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives licence.
The Blender script is available under a MIT licence.
Download over 3,000 BVH motion-capture moves from Bandai Namco Research’s GitHub repository