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30FPS only?


JackRipper666
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Hey guys just was curious, I been messing around with poser building some small animatoins. But I'm kinda disappointed with this 30fps limit. Seems that most fluid animations or mocap animations even are much longer then this. I tend to only be able to pack in about some decent looking stands for animations. Are animations usuall done by scripting 30FPs parts together? I'm just curious to anyone who activately builds AO's if you wouldn't mind sharing a good way to get started with very animated animations and workarounds to make that possible in SL. Anyway thanks for reading guys!

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I am talking about the number of frames you get to have per animation. The limit is 30 Frames but that's what puzzles me. I'm guessing others are creating animations by stringing them together in order to get a large animation with lots of frames. Otherwise I'm not sure how you get smooth animations similar to mocaps but just working off default avatar in Poser. Hopefully that's more clear lol? 

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I'm a bit confused about your usage of the term Frames in this context.

If you are asking about the maximum number of frames per SECOND of SL animation, that is 30 (ie: 30 frames of animation per second of time).
If you are referring to the maximum number of SECONDS or DURATION of a single SL animation, that is 30 SECONDS.

So if you maxxed out everything for a SL animation file, that would be 30 frames per second MULTIPLIED by 30 seconds of time/duration, which would equate to 900 frames of animation (although I think the SL animation uploader won't accept that exact figure, probably more like 890 frames or something).

Smooth mocap animations are probably running at 30 frames per second, for whatever duration they run for. IF these animations you are referring to run for LONGER than 30 seconds in total (mayhaps 2 minutes), then these would have been the original animation file split into chunks that the SL animation uploader will accept, and then "spliced" together via a scripted sequence within SL itself (basically, the script will play each of these animation files one after the other etc, and if cached up properly the joins won't be visible). Of course, if these individual animations are heavy in file size, there will be the issue of lag to consider for them to cache up in the first instances of playback.

...................

You say that you are using Poser. I would strongly recommend grabbing the default SL avatar figure file and setting that up (I don't have the link handy; someone will hopefully point the location out to you (it's here in the SL wiki somewhere). This will be far more accurate than animating the default Poser figure. You will need to extract it to the relevant Poser folders for Poser to recognise it as a figure (LOL, Poser is a pain in that regard).

You can also adjust the framerate of animations in the Poser Animation Palette. In the Keyframes tab of this palette, there is a RATE option - this sets the number of FRAMES per SECOND of animation. If you only have slow movements in your animations, it is often better to reduce this from 30 down to something like 20 or so, to keep down your eventual SL filesizes (probably without sacrificing much in animation quality).
To increase the NUMBER of frames in total for the animation timeline (thereby increasing the TIME the animation plays for) just click in the second number box beside the word FRAME. By default it is set to 30, but you can increase this simply by clicking and typing in the number of frames you want the animation to contain. So for example, if your animation is set to 30 frames per second, and you input 300 frames in this section, your animation will run for 10 seconds (30 frames per second multipled by 10 seconds).

I hope this helps clarify things for you. :matte-motes-smile:

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That's a very thorough description focused on poser:)
Have a look at this article: BVH Frame Rate for completeness

It is worth noticing that the final frame rate on your screen is not what you set in the BVH file
A viewer using a fast video card shows more frames per second compared to a cheap video card.
It will insert (interpolate) frames and discharge frames to match it's capabilities and still play in real time.

Animations with a small BVH frame rates don't get choppy since interpolation is done on the client side.
I have made animations with four BVH frames per second and they are smooth as silk when viewed on a decent computer:)

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Hey JackRipper

I can only guess that your frame rate is 1 frame per second. That is the only way that you can only use 30 frames. The limits to animation is 30 seconds, with a max frame rate of 30fps. There are good proposals to make the total seconds longer, but LL must not like working on the animation system, as they have only fixed about 2 animation bugs in the almost 6 years I've been in SL.

My advice is to change your frame rate to something reasonable. I upload motion captures on a regular basis and usually they are from 2 seconds long, to 30 seconds long, with a frame rate between 5-30.

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Out of curiosity, where does the limit of 30fps come from? I've not come across this in the code.

Internally, animations don't have a fps, they have specific times at which keyframes are recorded. The viewer then samples the motion and interpolates to get what the pose should be at a particular instance. This means that two viewers refreshing at different rates can stay in sync with an animation. 

But what is the maximum effective rate? I always understood that it heavily depended on your graphics card. Is there a hard cut off somewhere in the code? Or is it that there just is not much point driving the graphics at higher than about 60fps?

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Hey guys just reviewing what everyone wrote lol! But so far to Freston the cap I was looking at was Poser specific I suppose but when I tried to do a 60 second animation with only 60 frames in the animation it was rejected by second life which I know why because of 30 seconds max. As for exploring and being inside the world of Second Life that all depends on your hardware. I effectively get on ultra settings with SL viewer and Exodus any where from 30-60FPS max. I don't know if there is actual limit for SL I don't think there is should just be dependent on your hardware the way it would work with a PC Game. Only time it would get capped is if you're using V-Sync in settings to cap your FPS to your monitors refresh rate if I can remember correctly that's how it works. I didn't bother to even look to see if that's in graphic settings even though I'm there quite often LOL! 

Hey there MedHue!  So if I was trying to script two animations together to play say animations broken up into chunks example 60 Frames in two parts 30-30 in a script to make these play one after another for a 60 second animation is that possible? I am just unfamiliar and wouldn't even know what script function to start with on scripting two animatons together like that in a AO by say ZHAO II or trying to make my own. But Medhue I bought one of your AO's awhile ago so I think you'd definitely be the guy to point in the right direction on that lol. Cause your stuff is pretty complex looking really nice UI an animations.

 

*Edit

Thanks for the link Dora I'm just seeing now, I guess there is no 30FPS cap according to your link says BVH animations for use in Second Life can have a frame rate between 1 and 2184 FPS. Also it can be up to 30 seconds long. So scratch what I just said above sorry Medhue lol! Are you able to get more Frames packed into 30 Seconds? Because yea that's my only guess 30 seconds and 30FPS is what I am getting. I'm trying to put more data in 30 seconds or some how break a large animation into chunks and script them together if I can't put more frames in 30 seconds.

An I also don't mind doing a 10FPS max with a bunch of these 30 second 10FPS animations stringed together to play through many animations. I just want to try and make smooth animations but with more action in them I really can't do much with only 30FPS. An it seems most animations are being done with more frames to pull off this smooth looking and very animated animation. So again thinking everyone building animations would be possibly scripting these together to play one after another for a walk animation etc. 

Anyway If it's to hard to explain no big deal I might be asking too much. Thanks a lot so far guys appreciate it!

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lol, even I'm getting confused now.

 

Let's put it this way. The limits to animations are 30 fps, with the total time being 30 seconds. This means, if you make an animation 30fps and 30 seconds long, then you will end up with 900 total frames. You might have to go down to 899 total frames to upload it.

You should also think about efficiency too tho, as every frame is more data to download when you need to see the animation inworld. I'm going to post 2 videos here. They might not be directly on topic, but they might help you understand what is going on.

 

 

OH, and thanks for the compliment.

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Hi Medhue, why do you say 30fps is a limit? Internally the time of the keyframe is stored as an unsigned short, so even for a 30s long animation that's a maximum frame rate of 65536/30=2185fps! Of course that's a ridiculous number, but the point is that there's no inherent limit to 30fps. I'd expect the graphics card to max out at 60fps or so, but there might be another throttle somewhere. Is this a limitation in the BVH import routine?

Jack - there's a bunch of different rates or limits in play:

Animation length - this is hardcoded to 30s. To get longer you have to string together separate animations with a script, or loop the animation. Something like a walk is looped so it can cycle indefinitely. The looped section can be in the middle of the animation though, so you can have a lead in and lead out section that takes you to some neutral pose. That way you can string different animations that transition well from one to the other (though lag stomps on this). 

Animation 'rate' - this doesn't exist. Animations are stored by time and it's perfectly legitimate to have an animation with a frame at 0s, one at 0.1s, and one at 29s. The viewer looks to see where it is in time and interpolates the joint rotations as necessary. Here, what's important is the smallest time separation two frames can have (30fps = 0.03s separation). Of course if your animation is not changing at that time scale it won't make any difference. If you are uploading via BVH, that does have a frame rate, and the uploader analyses the frames and remove any redundant motion leaving a nonlinear timeline like the example. 

Viewer reported FPS - a ton of things affect this including network lag, graphics card and wether SL is just feeling grumpy. You can get high values, certainly higher than 60fps but I have no idea how that affects the smallest resolution you can see in an animation. 

 

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Yeah, you are probably right and I just assumed it was 30fps. In any case, it is extremely rare to ever need more than 30fps. Plus, more fps just means more data and more downloading time, leading to longer delays before you actually see the animations. More data also means that they take up more room in your cache, meaning less items can fit in your cache, meaning your pc spends more time downloading things over and over. So, whenever possible, you want to use as few fps as you can get away with.

There is another reason to lower your fps, as more fps means that there is less movement inbetween 2 frames. This will result in the uploader dropping more of your frames as the difference is not far enough. The end result will not likely resemble what you might desire, especially if the animation does not require that high of a frame rate.

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Thanks guys! I'll check the videos MedHue.

 

@ Freston, Yea I thought that was very possible to string them along with a script in 30s/30FPS chunks. I'll have to see if I can figure that one out lol!  Oh an yea I know a lot factors in on actual performance in world. I was just giving my genereal FPS I get with my current rig and connection which is about 25mbps/10mbps. Which isn't bad at all considering the quality I'm seeing all over SL some of the sims are insanely detailed. Anyway again thanks for the help!

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Ok so I figured out what my problem was lol. I thought I'd just post again and explain show a screen shot of Poser. When I first loaded poser I did not get the window I needed to change FPS rate which is hot key ctrl + shift + v to bring up animation pallet show in my screen shot. Before all I seen was Animation Controls and that restricted me to 30 Frames @ 30 seconds. So if I increase my FPS how many frames you're seeing per second to 10 I can now do 300 frames under 30 seconds shown in picture. If you want more frames as I was wondering how to get in poser at least you have to increase your FPS Rate again to say 20 for example and then you could increase your frames to 600 and be under 30 second limit for animation. I uploaded the one at FPS Rate 10 and it seems to play smooth and fine in SL. So now I understand what you meant by Frame Rate Medhue. This whole time I'm thinking there is only 30FPS and 30 seconds. It's FPS Rate + Seconds + Frames lol. Hopefully the picture makes more sense. The image is larger then displayed so just ctrl+middle mouse wheel your browser window to make picture bigger so you can see my numbers. But again took me awhile for my brain to comprehend how that works which is simply add more FPS Rate and it's shooting 10 frames at my screen of the animation in a second allowing me to increase frames for more animation keys but keep me under 30 seconds. Where as before I thought some how poser doesn't let you adjust that and it was set to FPS Rate 1, shooting only one Frame for each second of the 30 seconds of animation. Giving me that FPS Rate 1 + 30 seconds + 30 Frames max. Anyway that's how I think it works. =/

PoserFPSRate

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