README.md

---
license: other
license_name: truebones-terms-of-use
license_link: https://truebones.gumroad.com/l/skZMC
pretty_name: Truebones ZOO Annotations
language:
- en
size_categories:
- 1K<n<10K
tags:
- 3d
- animation
- motion
- animal
- fbx
- bvh
- skeletal-animation
- mocap
configs:
- config_name: animation
  default: true
  data_files: animation.csv
- config_name: species
  data_files: species.csv
- config_name: clips
  data_files: clips.csv
---

# Truebones ZOO Annotations

Text prompts, per-clip metadata, rest-pose renders and the exact build pipeline for
**Truebones ZOO** — **1,097 animal motion clips across 74 skeletons**: mammals, birds,
reptiles, insects, marine and prehistoric creatures. 1.02 hours, 111,158 frames, uniformly
30 fps. Rigs range from 9 to 143 joints; clips from 0.3 to 18.5 seconds.

**The motion files themselves are not in this repository.** Truebones ZOO is a commercial
library by [Truebones Motions Animation Studios](https://truebones.com) and may not be
redistributed. What ships here is everything around the motions — one text prompt per clip,
four-view renders of every clip, per-clip and per-species metadata, one rest-pose render per
skeleton, and the dependency-free
pipeline that rebuilds the exact per-clip dataset from your own purchased copy: buy the library
at <https://truebones.gumroad.com/l/skZMC>, unpack it here, run four scripts, and `animation/`
materialises byte-for-byte (sixteen clips excepted; see below).

## Structure

```
animation.csv                      one row per clip (1,097)
animation_prompts.json             one text prompt per clip (1,097)
animation_frames.json              clip -> frame count
animation_bones.json               species -> its joint names
species.csv                        one row per species (74)
species_tpose/<Species>.png        one rest-pose render grid per species (74)
animation_render/<clip>/           four-view render per clip: MP4 + camera JSON per view (1,097)
clips.csv                          one row per source file (2,447), mapped onto animation/
excluded.csv                       source files no importer reads (1)
scripts/pipeline|probes            the build pipeline and the format readers

animation/<Species>-<Action>.fbx   not included — rebuilt from your purchased copy (see below)
animation_glb/                     not included — the same clips as GLB, converted locally
Truebone_Z-OO/<Group>/…            not included — the original commercial download
```

## Rebuilding `animation/`

Purchase Truebones ZOO from <https://truebones.gumroad.com/l/skZMC> and unpack it next to
these files as `Truebone_Z-OO/`, one folder per animal group, layout and names as shipped.
Then run the pipeline — pure Python 3, no dependencies:

```bash
cd scripts
python3 pipeline/build_dataset.py         # 1. index the download  -> ../clips.csv
python3 pipeline/normalize.py             # 2. name every clip     -> ../clips.csv
python3 pipeline/build_animation.py       # 3. one file per motion -> ../animation/
python3 pipeline/build_metadata.py        # 4. measure animation/  -> ../animation.csv, ../species.csv, sidecars
```

The result is one flat folder, one file per motion, named `<Species>-<Action>.fbx`:

```
Cat-Walk.fbx     Trex-Big_Roar_Step.fbx     SabreToothTiger-Tired_Yawn.fbx
```

The species is a single alphanumeric token and the action never contains a hyphen, so
`name.split("-", 1)` always recovers both parts. Actions are underscore-separated capitalised
words with a trailing `_2` / `_3` for variants, matching the Mixamo convention.

Guarantees, each checked rather than assumed: exactly one animation per file, no clip repeats
another, every source motion is covered (one exception, `Lynx/Idle4`, ships only inside a
combined file), and 30 fps throughout, measured from key times.

Selecting and renaming only — nothing is ever re-exported. Every clip is a hardlink straight
into `Truebone_Z-OO/`, byte for byte, so no clip carries a rig that a round trip through an
editor has altered. Steps 1 and 4 regenerate `clips.csv`, `animation.csv`, `species.csv` and
the two JSON sidecars; apart from the sixteen repaired clips below they should match the files
shipped here, which is also how to verify a rebuild. Step 5, `build_prompts.py`, re-downloads
the captions from their source; its result already ships here as `animation_prompts.json`.
`scripts/README.md` documents each step.

**Sixteen of the 1,097 clips received a one-off binary repair** that the pipeline does not
re-apply: the four `Cat` clips had their missing texture embedded
(`probes/fbx_embed_texture.py`), and the twelve `KingCobra` clips had a duplicated co-located
mesh variant removed (`probes/fbx_strip_variant.py`); one of them, `KingCobra-Walk`, whose
source shipped no mesh at all, additionally received a sibling's mesh
(`probes/fbx_graft_mesh.py`) and had its material settings aligned with its siblings'
(`probes/fbx_align_material.py`). These edits touch textures and meshes only, never the
motion. All four probes are included and documented in `scripts/README.md`, each gated on a
byte-identical no-edit round trip and writing through a temporary file so the source keeps its
own bytes.

The GLB mirror, `animation_glb/`, is a one-to-one conversion of `animation/` — mesh, armature,
and the clip's single animation take, named after the action — for toolchains that read glTF
rather than FBX. Regenerate it from your rebuilt clips with Blender's FBX importer and glTF
exporter.

## animation.csv

| column | meaning |
|---|---|
| `file` | `animation/Cat-Walk.fbx` |
| `species`, `action` | the two halves of the filename |
| `take` | the animation stack's own name, as the source spelled it |
| `num_takes`, `num_actions` | animation stacks in the file, and how many carry curves; `num_actions` is 1 everywhere |
| `num_joints` | nodes in the FBX hierarchy (see *Data notes*) |
| `root_joint` | the topmost joint carrying animation |
| `frames`, `fps`, `duration_sec` | timeline, read off the key times |
| `fbx_version`, `bytes` | file version and size |
| `num_source_files` | how many files in `Truebone_Z-OO/` this clip accounts for |

## species.csv

Per species: `num_clips`, `num_joints`, `rig_variants`, `root_joint`, `total_frames`,
`total_duration_sec`, `mean_duration_sec`, `num_textures`, `source_fbx`, `source_bvh`,
`has_combined_all`, `has_tpose`.

`rig_variants` is how many distinct joint-name sets the species' clips use — 1 for 72 of them,
2 for `KingCobra` and 4 for `Monkey`.
Counts run from 70 clips (`Trex`) to 3 (`Chicken`, `Parrot2`), median 12.

## species_tpose/

One 1024×1024 PNG per species: a 2×2 grid of its rest pose — front and back on the top row,
left and right below — rendered (EEVEE) from the species' first clip in `animation/`. A visual
index of the 74 rigs.

## animation_render/

A four-view render of every clip, straight from its FBX (mesh and textures included). One
folder per clip, named after the FBX stem:

```
animation_render/Cat-Walk/
  v000.mp4  v000.json      front  (azimuth  -90°)
  v001.mp4  v001.json      back   (azimuth  +90°)
  v002.mp4  v002.json      left   (azimuth  180°)
  v003.mp4  v003.json      right  (azimuth    0°)
```

Rendered with Blender EEVEE at 512×512, 30 fps, elevation 0, and composed into one H.264 MP4
per view — the transparent-film frames flattened onto a light-grey background, since H.264
carries no alpha. The MP4s preview each motion directly on the Hub; the per-frame RGBA PNGs
behind them are not hosted (they would add over 400k files), so extract stills from the MP4s
(`ffmpeg -i v000.mp4 frames/%04d.png`) if you need them.

Rendering covers the first 200 frames of a clip (~6.7 s); 117 of the 1,097 clips are longer
and are truncated — `frame_start`/`frame_end` in the per-view JSON record the covered range.
Frame counts otherwise match `animation_frames.json` exactly.

Each `v00X.json` holds the camera in NeRF convention: `view`, `azimuth`/`elevation` (radians),
`resolution`, `camera_angle_x` (horizontal FoV, radians), the 4×4 camera-to-world
`transform_matrix`, the `scene_scale`/`scene_offset` that normalised the asset into frame,
and `frame_start`/`frame_end`/`fps`. The nine `inferred` prompts in
`animation_prompts.json` were written against these renders.

## clips.csv

One row per file in `Truebone_Z-OO/`, mapping every source path onto the dataset:
`status` says what the file is (`linked` into `animation/`, a BVH `mirror` of a linked clip, a
`duplicate`, a group's `combined` ALL file, a `static` pose, or an orphan), and
`animation_file` points at the clip that carries its motion. Use it to trace any clip back to
the exact source files it came from.

## animation_frames.json and animation_bones.json

Two flat sidecars, sorted by key:

```json
// animation_frames.json — 1,097 keys
"Alligator-Big_Mouth.fbx": 136

// animation_bones.json — 74 keys, one per species
"Pigeon": ["Hips", "LeftArm", "LeftForeArm", "LeftLeg",
           "RightArm", "RightForeArm", "RightLeg", "Spine", "Tail01"]
```

The skeleton is per species, so the bone list is keyed by species: the joint set its clips most
often carry, taken from actual files. For 72 of the 74 every clip matches it exactly; the
exceptions are `KingCobra` and `Monkey`, whose variants `species.csv` records as `rig_variants`.

## animation_prompts.json

One text prompt per clip — a flat map from filename to a small record, absent fields left out:

```json
"Trex-Death.fbx": {
  "object_name": "Tyrannosaurus Rex",
  "prompt": "A running tyrannosaurus rex loses balance and falls to the right.",
  "prompt_source": "t2m4lvo"
}
```

| field | meaning |
|---|---|
| `prompt` | what the clip shows, in one sentence. Median 12 words |
| `object_name` | the species as the annotator named it — `Tyrannosaurus Rex`, `Great White Shark` |
| `prompt_source` | `t2m4lvo` on 1,088 clips, `inferred` on 9 quiet clips captioned here instead |
| `alt_prompt` | on 20 clips only: the source shipped that motion twice, so it was described twice |

The captions come from [T2M4LVO](https://huggingface.co/datasets/1Konny/t2m4lvo-truebones-zoo),
the annotation set released with *How to Move Your Dragon* (ICML 2025). **T2M4LVO is
CC-BY-NC-4.0 — non-commercial use only, narrower than the rest of this repository.** Three
captions are shared by two clips each; retrieval metrics should group ground truth by caption
text so those pairs are not scored as misses.

## Usage

```python
import csv, collections

clips   = list(csv.DictReader(open("animation.csv")))
species = list(csv.DictReader(open("species.csv")))

# clips of at least a second, grouped by species
by_species = collections.defaultdict(list)
for c in clips:
    if float(c["duration_sec"]) >= 1.0:
        by_species[c["species"]].append(c)

# every walk cycle in the library
walks = [c for c in clips if c["action"].startswith("Walk")]
```

`scripts/probes/` bundles dependency-free FBX and BVH readers
(`fbx_probe.probe(path)`, `bvh_probe.probe(path)`) that return joints, keyframes, fps,
duration, root and joint names.

## Data notes

- **`num_joints` counts every node in the FBX hierarchy**, not only bones — the exporter types
  mesh and null containers as `LimbNode` too, so an FBX typically reports two to four more
  "joints" than the matching BVH, and for a handful of rigs `root_joint` is a container
  (`Null`, `EAL1_2`, `N_ALL`) rather than `Hips`.
- **Five species do not share one skeleton across their clips** — `Elephant`, `Fox`, `Monkey`,
  `KingCobra` and `PolarBearB` vary in rest offsets along authoring-batch lines, inherited from
  the source. Joint *names* agree everywhere; `KingCobra` additionally ships 19- and 20-joint
  variants. A clip's rest pose is its own first frame, so these are also the five species whose
  clips carry more than one rest pose.
- **Source spelling is preserved verbatim**, typos included (`Angery_Swat`, `Sqwak`, `Begg`),
  so the mapping back to `Truebone_Z-OO/` stays exact. Joint naming is not standardised across
  species.
- **Materials are 2014 Phong with no `ReflectionFactor` set**; Blender's importer defaults that
  to `Metallic` 1.0, so clips import fully metallic — set `Metallic` to 0 after import for a
  dielectric look.
- `excluded.csv` lists the one source file no importer reads
  (`Truebone_Z-OO/Crocodile/CrocodileALL.fbx`, not a binary FBX).

## Source

Truebones Z-OO by Truebones Motions Animation Studios, obtained from
<https://truebones.gumroad.com/l/skZMC>. `Terms of Use.txt` ships with the original download and
governs what may be done with these assets: they may not be resold or redistributed — which is
why no FBX, GLB or BVH is included here, and why `animation/` is rebuilt from your own
purchased copy. The metadata, sidecars and scripts describe and rebuild the library without
containing it; the renders — the per-clip multi-view videos and frames and the rest-pose
grids — depict Truebones assets and are included as visual reference. The captions
carry their own license (CC-BY-NC-4.0; see `animation_prompts.json` above).