There was a Blitz3D demo someone wrote in the BlitzCoder code archives for loading .bvh files straight into Blitz3D. It would just render them out as bones (or lines actually), but seemed to work quite nicely. With a little (or maybe a lot) of coding, I'm sure it would be possible to animate models directly in Blitz3D using .bvh files, even blending animation and doing other fancy stuff. Though I'm not sure how fast it would be.
As I understand it, Poser uses a standard skeleton with fixed naming conventions, and there are lots and lots of .bvh files available that match these. A lot of different animation packages can export .bvh files, and all you need to do to make the compatible with the Poser .bvh files is follow the same basic naming convention. No big deal really. I've done it with Animation Master, for creating animations to use in Second Life (a game that uses Poser style .bvh files).
.bvh files are very simple. They contain a the names of bones, what is parented to what, and their position and rotation on each frame. That's it. If you open it up in a text editor, it's relatively easy to read. There is a less common format called .bva, which is basically the same as .bvh but drops the hierarchy info, only including the animation data. Just note that .bvh does not include any kind of IK or way to stick the feet to the ground, so if your model has very different proportions from the original .bvh file, you'll get slipping feet and other ugly stuff. If you stick to more or less average human proportions, which most .bvh files are in, you're good though.
The .fbx format, as far as I know is a lot more complex and can include things like skin weights, polygons and more. I think the idea behind it was that it could be used to move fully deformable and animated models between different software.
Ragnar
As I understand it, Poser uses a standard skeleton with fixed naming conventions, and there are lots and lots of .bvh files available that match these. A lot of different animation packages can export .bvh files, and all you need to do to make the compatible with the Poser .bvh files is follow the same basic naming convention. No big deal really. I've done it with Animation Master, for creating animations to use in Second Life (a game that uses Poser style .bvh files).
.bvh files are very simple. They contain a the names of bones, what is parented to what, and their position and rotation on each frame. That's it. If you open it up in a text editor, it's relatively easy to read. There is a less common format called .bva, which is basically the same as .bvh but drops the hierarchy info, only including the animation data. Just note that .bvh does not include any kind of IK or way to stick the feet to the ground, so if your model has very different proportions from the original .bvh file, you'll get slipping feet and other ugly stuff. If you stick to more or less average human proportions, which most .bvh files are in, you're good though.
The .fbx format, as far as I know is a lot more complex and can include things like skin weights, polygons and more. I think the idea behind it was that it could be used to move fully deformable and animated models between different software.
Ragnar