[ANSWERED] LEFT_HANDLE and RIGHT_HANDLE ?

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

I finally took some time to make a correctly scaled and rigged fitted mesh avatar for 3ds Max. So far so good, except for one thing.

I downloaded the files from the wiki. Then I noticed two bones were missing in the dae and fbx files, as the title already said, the LEFT_HANDLE and RIGHT_HANDLE. I even downloaded Blender to see if the blend file had those bones, they are missing there too. I won't go as far as downloading a Maya trial to look at that file, but I suspect it's the same there.

So, I have some questions:

Are the bones not used at this point? (I doubt that)

Does anyone know why they are missing from the files?

Does anyone actually have a complete rig (weighted like SL) with them?

Can we have it?

Are the problems people are experiencing with the BUTT sizes caused by it?

Thanks in advance.

[ObviousAltIsObvious]

the bones are in the skeleton but they were thought to be redundant and not used in the example meshes. more at https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-1985

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Thanks, so it is on purpose.

Then the remaining question is... what do these two bones actually do? Are they only there for attachment points?

I didn't take the time (yet) to see if any sliders will affect these two bones indepentant from the hip bone. If they do, that means you can never rig the lower torso correctly with fitted mesh (unless you add the bones to the rig of course).

[Gaia Clary]

These bones are affected by sliders. So they work in principle. However i found that in all my tests so far i ended up with these 2 bones unweighted. So indeed, they seem to be redundant and make more trouble than help.

btw: Collsion Volumes can not be used as attachment points.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

If they are not weighted, how can they possibly be affected by the sliders?

Anyway, I'll leave them out, which will save some work

[Astrid Kaufmat]

What Obvious said is right and no you wouldn't find them even in the maya file either.

the behaviour of belly bone, if you work with a gradient of distributuiin  of weights,blending  good the belly area with lower back, is not bad

Those two bones rather than redundant are also (if used) more pain to blend properly the weight then between belly and lower back.

I had your same doubts when first avastar avatar for blender were released and they had those bones too,while the wiki files have always missed them.

 

[Gaia Clary]

The weights only tell how much the meshes get influenced by each bone movement.

The bone movements and the influence of the sliders on the bones is a related but different thing.

You can see that when you enable the display of collision volumes (either from the advanced menu or the developer menu (i always forget where it is :matte-motes-impatient:) Then you can verify that the bones move with the sliders.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Gaia Clary wrote:

 

You can see that when you enable the display of collision volumes (either from the advanced menu or the developer menu (i always forget where it is :matte-motes-impatient:) Then you can verify that the bones move with the sliders.

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As I said, I hadn't done that yet (dev menu, render metadata). Still, if a moving bone, a HANDLE in this case, affects the skin/avatar shape, I don't see how there can't be any weights involved.

[Gaia Clary]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

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Gaia Clary wrote:

 

You can see that when you enable the display of collision volumes (either from the advanced menu or the developer menu (i always forget where it is :matte-motes-impatient:) Then you can verify that the bones move with the sliders.

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As I said, I hadn't done that yet (dev menu, render metadata). Still, if a moving bone, a HANDLE in this case, affects the skin/avatar shape, I don't see how there can't be any weights involved.

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• The sliders change the scale and location of the bones. There are no weights needed so far.

  How the sliders change the bones is fixed and defined in the Avatar lad files (which come with the viewer)

• The SL animation system moves the bones (via animation data). Also no weights are involved here.

  The bones get animated.

• The meshes are attached to the bones via weight maps. Here you have weights which define how the meshes get affected by bone movements.

Now if you have bones for which there are no weight informations available, these bones still get affected by the shape sliders and by the SL animation system.  But since there are no weights on the meshes for these bones, the meshes do not get affect by the bone movements.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Gaia Clary wrote:

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

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Gaia Clary wrote:

 

You can see that when you enable the display of collision volumes (either from the advanced menu or the developer menu (i always forget where it is :matte-motes-impatient:) Then you can verify that the bones move with the sliders.

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As I said, I hadn't done that yet (dev menu, render metadata). Still, if a moving bone, a HANDLE in this case, affects the skin/avatar shape, I don't see how there can't be any weights involved.

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• The sliders change the scale and location of the bones. There are no weights needed so far.
  How the sliders change the bones is fixed and defined in the Avatar lad files (which come with the viewer)
• The SL animation system moves the bones (via animation data). Also no weights are involved here.
  The bones get animated.
• The meshes are attached to the bones via weight maps. Here you have weights which define how the meshes get affected by bone movements.

Now if you have bones for which there are no weight informations available, these bones still get affected by the shape sliders and by the SL animation system.  But since there are no weights on the meshes for these bones, the meshes do not get affect by the bone movements.

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Exactly (part in red)

I think I'm just not making myself clear. Wouldn't be the first time. By moving bones, I mean moving within the rig, affecting the size/shape of the mesh. I'm not talking about rotating arms or legs. If a moving bone within the rig affects the skin (why else would it move?), it means the skin and bone are connected through the weight table/map. So if a slider moves the HANDLE bone, which through the weight table deforms the avatar skin, but doesn't move the attachment one builds (since the rig for that has no HANDLES), it means the attachment won't deform the same way as the avatar.

From what I understand the difference is so small and the potential problems of having the HANDLEs in the rig so big, it's best to leave the rig as is.

Anyway, here's the rig:

If anyone needs it for their 3ds Max adventures, I don't mind sharing it.

 

[ObviousAltIsObvious]

yes, if you play with the shape editor, you can see that the *_HANDLE volumes pretty much follow whatever the BELLY and LOWER_BACK are already doing. where it differs, especailly on the male shapes, there is some interference at fat and handle extremes that does not follow the body very well.

[Cathy Foil]

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Hi Kawakkelde,

My responses are in BOLD and Black.

Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

I finally took some time to make a correctly scaled and rigged fitted mesh avatar for 3ds Max. So far so good, except for one thing.

I downloaded the files from the

wiki

. Then I noticed two bones were missing in the dae and fbx files, as the title already said, the LEFT_HANDLE and RIGHT_HANDLE. I even downloaded Blender to see if the blend file had those bones, they are missing there too. I won't go as far as downloading a Maya trial to look at that file, but I suspect it's the same there.

So, I have some questions:

Are the bones not used at this point? (I doubt that)

The bones are supported and I believe are supposed to be used by the Avatar Physics like the LEFT_PEC and RIGHT_PEC do for making the breast bounce.  So if you want the love handle area of your mesh to be able to jiggle you weight the vertices in that area to them.

Does anyone know why they are missing from the files?

LL has not let us know why the HANDLE bones are missing from the wiki files to the best of my knowledge.

Does anyone actually have a complete rig (weighted like SL) with them?

The wiki page download zip file contains rigged and weighted Male and Female mesh avatars rigged to the Collision Bones though they are not weighted to the HANDLE bones.  To the best of my knowledge no one has been able to rig and adjust the weights of an avatar mesh so that it follows the size and shape of the real avatar when you change your shape in SL using the Editing Appearance sliders.

 

I am sorry to say I think it is probably impossible to get a mesh avatar rigged to the collision bones to change shape in the same exact way that the real avatar does in SL.  Might be able to get fairly close and maybe even acceptable under most circumstances.

 

If we could get an avatar mesh rigged to the collision bones that would follow the shape of the real avatar then it make Fitted Mesh a whole lot easier because we could then just copy the weights from such a mesh to our mesh clothing.

Can we have it?

Like I said there are rigged Male and Female avatars in the wiki zip file.

Are the problems people are experiencing with the BUTT sizes caused by it?

I am not 100% sure what BUTT sizing problem you are talking about.  My impression is that LL spent very little time fine tuning how much the Editing Appearance sliders affected the scales of the Collision Bones.  Take the leg musculature slider.  It does OK when making the legs more muscular but when you make them very skinny it makes the scales of the R_UPPER_LEG and the L_UPPER_LEG Collision Bones scale too small.  It is probably the same with the BUTT Collision Bone.

Thanks in advance.

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If you need a skeleton that has the Left and Right Handels I uploaded mine on Wikisend as a FBX file.  I made it from scratch and thoroughly tested it.  

Here's the link: Wikisend Cathy Foil Skeleton

Hope that helps.

Cathy

[Gaia Clary]

yes, fitted mesh will always be an approximation. And fitted mesh will almost ever need alpha masking as well. So, for mostly closed garments (shirts, sweaters, coats, pants, etc.) fitted mesh can work nicely because there it is not so important to get a best approximation to the avatar mesh, and it is easy to add alpha masks to those garments.

But making for example a fitted mesh dress with a low neckline will be a challenge. It can most probably work for one shape, but for many slider changes it will  just break.

[Astrid Kaufmat]

I made several tests

The key for getting a good liquid seems to be gradient of distribution of weights.

You can move all the weight 100% on collision bones from the mbones it works perfectly on butt, if there is a good gradient  of weights covering it.

 Same is for belly. Say my weights over them look like more and less those circular gradients that you could do with photoshop more in the center then gradually goind down in periferal part till but properly blending with the neighbors weights

I didn't use the  love handles in my skeleton, just properly blended weight of belly with lower back and as surprise in world moving those handles the dress was deforming harmonically also there.Why moving the handles in world the dress followed the shape Idk

This time even on tube dress the edge on the edge covering the breast was working good, not going through the SL avatar bone.

The breast deforming and jiggling even with that tube was doing good.

the only iussue as you can see is the breast still going through it (hence alpha is a must).

The iussues on butt  are easily worked out.

It seems to work quite nice also when all the weight are moved 100% on the collision bones, so it's not matter of how you distribuite the weightbetween mbones and collision bones for butt iussues.

Using an appropriate gradient of weight the butt as oyou can see in photos below deforms good (not always following the SL avatar shape , alpha layer would stillbe a must this is not a new)

What is still giving me iussues, even if It modifies perfectly if you apply an alpha is the breast. it seems that there is no way to get a dress without an alpha.At least this kind of dresses too much exposing your body

My impression is that more than focusing on finding a way to move the SL avatar weight to dresses that can have a different geometry, the tests should be focusing on getting  as much harmonic weight distribution as possible.

 

Then again some sliders like those that Cathy showed us in that thread where she tested the sliders made as Medhue thought would help a lot

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Since the butt can take the full weight from the mPelvis (the HANDLEs didn't seem to have a whole lot of impact), I wouldn't expect any big problems there. It's just that I thought I read about some issues here on the forum.

The breasts are another story, since you can't move the weights from the chest to the PECs.

I haven't had any time to have a serious look yet, so far I just built a new rig with all the collision bones appearing as they do in SL. The weights I just copied from the DAE or FBX file from the wiki. That seems to have more issues in the chest than the butt area. All in all it's not bad as a base though. I hope I can free some more time soon.

Regarding the HANDLEs. what Cathy said could be easily verified. It would be very possible that they are mostly used for the physics, not so much (if at all) for the avatar shape.

[Cerise Sorbet]

There is no physics driver on the handle volumes.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

ok:) then one has to wonder why on earth LL made those two bones.

[Cathy Foil]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

ok:) then one has to wonder why on earth LL made those two bones.

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If Cerise is right and she probably is I can think of a few possible reasons for the handle bones.

1.  Vertices weighted to them conform to the real avatar's shape more closely than just weighting vertices to the PELVIS collision bone.  I am not saying this is the case just conjecture on my part as to a possible reason.

2. When creating the extra collision bones during beta testing LL mistakenly thought they were needed but because of time constraints imposed by upper management the LL Fitted Mesh team did not have time to remove them from the skeleton.  Now since Fitted Mesh has gone live LL will not remove them because it would break content.  It would also explain why the official skeleton files from LL do not contain these bones.

It is really sad that LL has, to the best of my knowledge, not explained either the purpose of the handle bones and or why they are not in the official Wiki files skeletons.

Some good news LL newest release of the LL standard viewer 3.7.5 (288464) has fixed the major Fitted Mesh bug where Fitted Mesh clothing and some normally rigged clothing was being stretched off into infinity.

[Cerise Sorbet]

2. is closest. See FITMESH-5, first comment.  Also, highlighted comment from Jeremiah Linden in FITMESH-2.

And wikified that since this is becoming a FAQ.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Ah, SL relics That's final then, no need to fiddle with them, not that I was going to anyway.

One "why on earth" question remains though. Why didn't/doesn't LL release a dea/fbx (or blend/ma/mb/max) file with their weights, so the community doesn't have to reverse engineer them?

[Cerise Sorbet]

I remember this came up years ago, and the problem has been the LL are in the same boat, they are reverse engineering too. VWR-6199 has the story.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

That looks like it's about morphs at first glance. I don't see anything mentioned about weights.

Something makes our avatar skin move, probably a local file. So the weights have to be hidden in there. How hard can it be to extract them?

Or....are the weights in the .llm files and did LL lose the ability to open them without a viewer? That would be something.

EDIT..just found an old thread (in which you posted too). Someone converted the .llm files to readable txt files. Yes there are weights in there, but as far as I can see only the mBones are in the file, no collision bones. So I would say...there's another file.

[Cerise Sorbet]

Yeah, the weights are in the llm files. The weight changes being tried in STORM-1800 are being made by hand 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

And again, as far as I can find, no collision bones there...

[Cerise Sorbet]

Oh, yeah, the collision volumes aren't really a weighting story, they're just bones and the avatar body doesn't use them directly. Their legacy use is for detecting mouse touches. avatar_skeleton.xml for the definition and avatar_lad.xml for how the shape params affect it.