Custom fitted mesh avatar, eyes problem

[Mac Ayres]

Working on a custom fitted mesh avatar (a very long time now). I use the SL eyes but the eye bones do not correctly follow appearance sliders like 'head size', 'head stretch', 'body fat'.

I use Blender and Avastar.

Seems I cannot solve it with the bone weights or any bone settings.

Hope someone can help. Thanks !

 

 

 

 

[Cathy Foil]

The problems you are having is a fundamental problem all custom mesh avatars have whether they are Fitted Mesh avatars or mesh avatars rigged to the normal or mBones.

THe SL avatar eye openings in the mesh are controlled using blendshapes, more commonly referd to as Morphs, not by the bones changing scales except for head size.

Since we can't upload our own Morphs the eyes openings in custom meshes are fixed and not affected by changing the slider settings except for head size.

THe easiest solution is to position your head over the head of the default avatar in Avastar and line up your eye openings in the mesh so they match up.  You will just have to tell your customers that they will have to use the default avatar eye slider settings.  THey should be able to make the head bigger or smaller but that is about it.

Now had Linden Lab gone with the Mesh Deformer this wouldn't be an issue.  I made a test head and made a video as proof of concept that proved the Mesh Deformer worked.  All I did was roughly line up the eye openings of the custom mesh head with the default avatar's and weight the whole head to the mHead bone.  See the video below.

I don't use Blender I am a Maya user and I use MayaStar which I created.  I wanted to make a similar tool like Avastar for Maya users.

 

Even though I made my MayaStar specifically because the need I saw for a tool to help rig Fitted Mesh I wish LL had gone with the Mesh Deformer or let us have both.  They work by totally different methods and can and have worked side by side without a problem during the Beta Testing.

Everything works with custom mesh avatars using the Mesh Deformer.  Eyes blink, all facial expressions and animations, fingers move, avatar physics and all the Avatar Appearance sliders work right out of the box.  Just rig the mesh to the normal mBones like you do for regular mesh.  Best of all it follows the avatar's real shape so bikinis or tight fitting skimpy mesh cloths work.  One size really would fit all.  And it could have quickly been adapted to an new default avatar LL came up with.

I have worked extensively with a similar system for my MayaStar for my Automatic Mesh Resizing feature.  In Mesh Deformer 2.0 LL could have had Qarl add some extra controls such as smoothing or deform form face instead of vertex, envelope setting and UV world space relax that would eliminate the texture distortions.

Everything I predicted or warned about during the discussion while Fitted Mesh was in beta have come true.  I hate to say I told you so to all those who believed Fitted Mesh was superior but I told them so.  LOL

So being a big girl I acepted the situation as it is and have done my best to make a bad sitution better and created MayaStar to try and help.

If LL is reading this watch my video.  With the extra few controls I mentioned and one or two other small easy things to add SL could have not only custom mesh avatars that really work but a clothing system that really is a one size fits all.  It is not too late.  All the work and testing has been done.  The Mesh Deformer is ready for the main grid just sitting on the shelf.  I bet we could even get the residents to pay to get Mesh Deforemr 2.0 up and running.

[Bobbie Faulds]

One other option is something like IKON eys have that allow yout to set the eye position as well as having dfferent size pupils available. Since they all have a mesh overlay, you can use that to properly position your eyes.

[Gaia Clary]

Use specific Shape

If you create a specific mesh character (head) for a specific SL Shape, then you could load your shape into Avastar, then adjust the mesh to that shape. Then just keep that shape when you export. Then the mesh will fit to your shape in SL.

Adjust the eyes with Eye sliders

For the eyes we have 4 sliders which can be of help to adjust the eyes to the mesh:

 

1. Eye Size
2. Eye Spacing
3. Eye Depth
4. Face Sheer

These sliders can be used to adjust the eyes to the head. BUT: the problem is when your head height changes, then the eyes get out of place on the vertical axis (as you show in your image) and we have no way to fix that. But see below for an idea...

Use Referrence Shapes

If you want to keep your head affected by the morph sliders, then the next best solution would be to create a couple of reference meshes for different head sizes which is not very cool but doable with little effort. Then your customers would probably need to select the correct head shape for the head mesh.

Use Mesh eyes

Another option would be to use mesh eyes and weight them properly (you could add the eyes to the head mesh and use a different material for example). But then you loose eye movement.

An idea... (needs LL activity though)

Right now the relative eye hight is bound to sliders which also affect the Collision Volumes. Because of that we can not adjust the eyes to match a fitted mesh face. But if we had one extra slider for "Eye Height" then we could use this together with the 4 others (see above) to get the eyes to the right place. I am sure this is only a small change in the avatar definition files. Maybe someone from the viewer developers could take a look at that and see how easy that would be ?

[Scooter Hollow]

You don't lose eye movements with mesh eyes, in fact you need to be careful with your weighting or your entire face might start wriggling around with eye movements.

[Gaia Clary]

When you rig your mesh eyes to the mBones then you end up with exactly the same issues (eyes can't be placed right relative to the mesh when you use fited mesh head and sliders)

[Mac Ayres]

Thanks you all for your kind help !

I learned a lot from it. Probably I will do what Gaia suggest and make some reference heads.

It would be great if LL adds another slider and perhaps even better if they gave us both Deformer and Fitted Mesh.

I guess this will not happen so we all will have to be creative in our own ways to find solution :matte-motes-smile:.

[slassy Saunders]

HI Scooter:

that is the same problem i got with the mesh head i try to make, is all done, but when im atach to use, is moving with eye movements, do you know, how can i make it to fix it?

Im learning alone follow tutorials, so im bymyself learning, i will apreciate who can help me with that.

 

Thanks so much