Project Bento Feedback Thread

[Matrice Laville]

We have 2 problems that we can discuss to eternity, they won't vanish:

1. Animations with Translation components interfere with Translation components in the Sliders
2. Animations with Translation components interfere with Rotation components in the Sliders

Here is the table of animation capabilities for sliders and animation:

Transform	Sliders	Animation
Translate	Yes	Yes
Rotate	No	Yes
Scale	Yes	No

I do not have any idea about a solution that fits perfect to all situations. All we can try is to make the rig as forgiving as possible. This can be done by removing translation components from sliders where possible and by optimizing the skeleton layout.

Mel has proposed a couple of such changes. The current proposal is based on those changes but does not fully cover all of the changes. Any changes from here must be reasonable and justifiable.

The following changes can probably be done with a reasonable amount of time (this affects only custom meshes):

Changes which seem very reasonable

• Reparent the Tongue to the Lower Teeth Bones

Modifications that are doable with small effort

• reduce the influence on the lips by ~25% (lip fullness, lip thickness)
• reduce the movement of the upper eye lid by ~25 %
• reduce the change of lip ratio by ~25%

More drastic changes

• Remove slider for Jaw Angle
• Remove slider for Upper eye lid Corner
• Remove slider for Upper Eyelid
• Remove slider for Mouth corners

Changes yielding significant workload

• Move all lip joints on the same vertical axis

I further believe that for mesh heads we can define 2 use cases and then derive recommendations:

Static facial expressions

This is where the sliders can be used to mold the face into shape. This is what we always could do for System Meshes. Now we also can do the same (almost) for custom meshes.

Facial animations

This can not be done with system characters (keeping aside the mostly troublesome facial animation morphs) but custom mesh face animation becomes possible now.

Recommendations for mixed use case (sliders and animataions)

Do not use these sliders (set them to specific values) when you play an animation:

• Jaw angle
• Mouth Corners
• Outer Eyelid corner
• Upper Eye Lid
• ...

Creators are advised to add information about animation specific limitations like for example:

• Using sliders with extreme range settings are likely to yield bad animations
• Following sliders must be set to specific values to let the animations work perfect.
• ...

Maybe the next step can be to add some LSL support for example to set slider values before an animation starts (just an example, there may be better ideas). But that sounds like something that can be done after the project is released.

[Medhue Simoni]

Hey Siddean,

I do have some sympathy for the mesh head designers, but at the same time, I think you all are asking for unicorns, which can also be made with Bento. It's a matter of perspective. From my point of view, you head designers are getting way more than you ever had. You have something, right now, that you can do many things with that you either could not do, or you had to do it in a way that caused massive lag.

A rigged mesh is a rigged mesh. It doesn't matter the shape. We all get the same features. Yes, someone making an animal is going to have different expectations than a human head makers, but the underlying issues are still the same. Again, it's a matter of perspective.

So, why am I irritated by these recent events? It's because all of this could have been worked out months ago. There are many creators that spent 7+ months decidated strictly to helping develop Bento, mind you with no pay at all. We did this in the hopes that we will make money on this in the future. How long can we wait tho? We did our work to get it ready, and it was. We were simply working out the bugs. I personally got many different contracts to create bento avatars, some of those with other creators. I have a half dozen or so avatars of my own ready to go. Now, we are in limbo again, waiting for you all to finally put in your 2 cents. The time for that was months ago, as now the rest of us are all waiting for you.

Where do we go from here? Well, ok, so we are back in development. If that is where we are, then we need test heads to develop on, and we need many to test with, not just 1. We also need people trying different things. Thinking outside the box. All that said, this development could go on forever. Literally, it could be endless. A line has to be drawn somewhere, or none of us will benefit from this at all.

Rotation vs Translation - Believe it or not, when I say head creators should abandon rotation for translation, I'm thinking of you and your customers. Remember, I'm an animator. As an animator, I know intimately the difference between using translation versus rotation. You head designers make crazy beautiful heads. The whole point of these heads is that they are so much better looking than the default. So, you don't accept the default head, but you are willing to put inferior expressions on these beautiful heads? As an animator, that is mind boggling to me. I would think you would want the BEST expressions possible, to match with the best heads possible. Yes, customers will love being able to customize their mesh head, but IMHO, this means nothing if the expressions on those heads are inferior.

Ok, so, how might I help with what is currently going on? Well, I can do my own testing around the areas of contention. I can make suggestions on animating your heads. What I did early on, is that I didn't include many of the bones used for the sliders in my animations for the head. On an animals head, with all unique joint positions, this was problematic, as the positions of those bones never held, and an animation was needed to set the bones back where they should be. Now, if those bones didn't need an animation to set their position back to where they should be, then many more things could be possible. So, maybe here is where time needs to be spent by LL. Possibly an internal animation that set positions is needed. I was going to send Vir a mesh to address something similar to this, but I can't really do that when the final skeleton is in flux.

 

 

[Medhue Simoni]

Matrice,

I cringe while saying this, but if it is possible to make all the currently possible sliders to work with translation animations, I'd be for doing and waiting for this. IMHO, it is that important, and that much of an improvement. Plus, everyone benefits from it. Everyone!

 

To others reading this, let me be clear. A fair amount of the currently possible slider already work with bone translation animation. I'm asking Matrice if he can get all the possible sliders to work with translation animation.

[Medhue Simoni]

Sorry I'm all over the forums the past few days, but blame yourself, cause I can't move forward on anything until we have a set skeleton. lol

So why not theorize more.

 

I wanted to talk more about making many different options for facial animations. I don't think it's as strange as you might initially think. See, yeah, there are standard expressions, but in real life we have degrees of happiness, disgust, and whatnot. So, as a customer of an avatar with expressions, I'd want different levels of cheer, or sympathy, or fright. Inturn, this helps people with unusual head slider choices to have options that fit them best.

[Mel Vanbeeck]

Unfortunately it seems that in many cases the priorities I would put on the changes are somewhat inversely proportional to the amount of work you estimate is needed to resolve them.

Showstoppers - likely to cause major customer backlash and customer service costs

1. Jaw Angle: moving jaw bone destroys mouth animations, and customers are extremely likely to want to play with this slider if a head is weight painted in such a way that it actually changes the jaw angle. If a head is weight painted so this slider has no effect, customers may play with this slider then leave it in a bad position without realizing they've messed their animations up. Customers will likely have no idea why their mouth suddenly looks derpy when animated unless they read notecards (less than 4.33333repeating% of residents have ever read more than the first 7 words of a notecard).
2. Reparent tongue to lower teeth (important to allow the tongue to be animated with translations)

Major problems - significantly harms rotation animation quality

1. Lip bone positions: the current positions cause the lips to pull away from the teeth, or push straight into them when rotated side-to-side. This could be downgraded to a minor problem if BUG-20049 could be finished by launch, allowing designers to fix this on their own without disabling all related sliders, although it would be good to know in advance how tweaks to these bone positions would interact with lip and mouth shape sliders.
2. Upper Eyelid Fold: Vertical change to the upper eyelid pivot is likely to cause the eyelid to clip through the eyeball when the eyelid is raised, or pull away from it when blinking. (This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that users are relatively unlikely to play with this slider)

Minor problems - large changes to these sliders likely to cause animations to look bad/unreadable

1. Outer eye corner (head builders are likely to weight their mesh so that the bone properly affects the outer edge of the eyebrow despite the fact that the demo mesh weights this to affect the eyelids as well, but the existence of this slider will probably waste many hours of various people's lives as they figure out what happened here.)
2. lip fullness
3. lip thickness
4. lip ratio (This one actually didn't seem as disruptive as the prior two, but when combined with the above could present similar results. It's another slider that customers are unlikely to move far.)
5. mouth corners

I would not consider the use case for sliders as "static poses" to be significant. All head designers that take the time required to build a Bento head will definitely be building out some pretty comprehensive animation sets to handle facial expressions, including plenty of static poses.

I would also add that there are a number of sliders which are just about entirely useless and not worth more than a few minutes of effort to preserve, since they are essentially sliders to make some sort of unsightly deformation. Face Shear, Shift Mouth, Crooked Nose can all be accomplished using an animation built to make you ugly, and while you can't execute other animations on top of this and keep that static ugly deformation, very few (almost zero) users are ikely to actually want to wear this type of face around for daily use. Eye Pop is a special case since it can't really be replicated with animations, but I'd venture a guess that less that 1 in 1000 residents use any movement to the eye pop slider.

I would also say that BUG-20027 which seems to be getting very little attention should be prioritized fairly highly, as this will take the highly appealing translation animations out of the realm of content-breaking feature disablers to highly useful and and broadly usable.

[Medhue Simoni]

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Mel Vanbeeck wrote:

 

I would also say that

BUG-20027

 which seems to be getting very little attention should be prioritized fairly highly, as this will take the highly appealing translation animations out of the realm of content-breaking feature disablers to highly useful and and broadly usable.

---

Not a coder here, but I would think that using scale only for sliders would be easier, and make more sense than changing some major code base, with way less bugs to fix afterward.

[Matrice Laville]

Very brief summary:

1. Jaw angle: remove because confusing
2. Upper Eyelid: Dito
3. Outer Eye Corner: Dito
4. Mouth Corners: Dito
5. Lip Fullness: Reduce influence for high slider values
6. Lip Thickness: dito
7. Lip Ratio: Dito
8. Reparent Tongue to Lower Teeth: leads to unfixable animation issues when not fixed
9. Lip Bone Position: moving joints to (x=0) Easier to create mouth animation with rotation only

This is my proposed order of fixing:

1. Reparent Tongue (essential)
2. Reduce Lip Slider ranges (fullness, thickness, ratio) (easy to change)
3. Move the joints of the lip corners to x=0, y a bit closer to the teeth but not crossing over, see image
4. Move the joints of the 4 middle lip bones to x=0



I can predict that the first 2 points can be done in a reasonable time (probably less than a day). The points 3. and 4. result in heavy changes in the lad file, not sure how long that would take.

@Mel, Medhue: I understand your points about the lip bones. But doesn't all of this boil down to the 2 opinions:

1. Should work reasonably with rotation only
2. Rotation only never can yield quality face animation

My opinion:

I am not fully convinced that the proposed change of the bone layout is worth the effort (not that i say it's a bad idea). But i am happy with reparenting the tongue to the teeth. This has truly essential benefits.

[wherorangi]

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Siddean Munro wrote:

I promise, promise promise that human mesh head wearers want to change their facial shape. I know this with absolute certainty. I have had human mesh heads available for sale for 2 years, and this is the number one question I get about them, and the number one complaint I see made about mesh heads in general.

 

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this a 1000%

if take a poll of residents who given a choice between:

a) full nu-mesh human body where all the sliders (incl. face) can mod to the same extent as the classic avatar, and some facial animation, or

b) lots of facial animation and only some sliders can mod the human nu-mesh avatar

then the vote will be overwhelming for a)

not only by those already wearing nu-mesh, but also by all those who havent yet bought nu-mesh for the only reason that they cant do a)

+

eta: i just add that for just about all of us, is about uniqueness. Unique meaning the ability to shape our avatars in a personal way

+

eta more

has been some chat about this slider should be this limit, and that one should be changed to that limit, etc etc and LL should hardcode all these slider limits to whatever it is that a person prefers, or somebody else prefers, or somebody else, somebody etc etc

i just raise again what I mentioned way earlier about this. Is no reason (apart from lots of hard work on the part of the devs)  why a maker couldnt include the sliders limits in the mesh model itself. Then everybody who makes nu-mesh human avatars can put those limits in for their own models

 

 

 

[Inara Pey]

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wherorangi wrote:

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Matrice Laville wrote:

I thought it was clear what i mean when i stated that. And since nobody complained i believe that it was either irrelevant, or overlooked, or accepted and fully understood. So i had no reason to add more info at that time.

You where at the meeting?

You could have asked back.

I would have answered right away and clarified.

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is that it was reported. and has now been disseminated to a wider audience other than the creatives involved. People who arent in the creative group as you are, go off what is actually said, not what was meant to be said

that it was reported as said at a LL-sponsored meet, gives what is said at these meets greater credence to the wider audience, even tho was said by you and not a Linden

so I came here to say what I did. Just in case a Linden also takes what was said literally, and never guessed what it was that you meant to say

thanks for your since explanation tho. I much appreciative of this (:

 

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If there is fault here, it is mine, not Matrice's. I took the cooment without seeking clarification beforehands, and apologise to Matrice and to those for whom it caused upset.

[ReneeThesium]

As has already been pointed out, customers - myself included - are going to be more interested in getting the face to look *exactly* the way they want it than in limitless expressions.

Think for a minute.

Whether it's talked about directly or not - SL is about your avatar, human moreso than any other - being absolutely, completely, unique - the 'you'  that you want it to be.

For years now, that has been possible. Then mesh avatars evolved, and there was greater detail and depth and .... wait a minute. I'm stuck with what someone else wants me to look like. Then evolved the ability to customize, and it slowly improved, and this is good. (Frankly I still haven't found a mesh body that I can get the breasts like I want them, hence I don't own a mesh body yet). At this point - mesh heads - are you kidding me?

And along comes Bento.

Now, thanks to the hard work of Vir, his team, and the creators that have been pounding away at this for months now, there is a way to make a mesh head *AND* have it customizable enough to sattisfy a large number of residents that have avoided them due to the cookie-cutter face issue (myself included).

So now the entire process is being derailed because we can't have that and 16.7 million possible expressions.

NEWS FLASH:  there has never been an enormous easily drawn on pool of facial expressions. You are giving up nothing, because you have never had all these animation possibilities before to give them up...

Let me be clear here. I'm not trying to tick anyone off. I am certianly not trying to denegrade the expertise of anyone capable of creating any of these mesh products and animations. I have been working for more than a year to learn to use Blender and other things so that I can create mesh myself ..and honestly most of what I've learned is to be in awe of the people that can do it.

Please, Please, PLEASE remember that perfection is a goal always to be aspired to, but that cannot be reached. Personally I greatly appreciate the insane amount of work and creativity that have been poored into this project. I really wish I could contribute directly, but that is utterly beyond my current skills.

What I can do is this - try to remind all of you of things like - there were big changes to the hands too. 90% of the time in-world, hand gestures are far more noticable tha facial expressions. Has everyone forgotten that now we could all have one, single mesh hand that responds to animations, and not have to have 5 or 6 different ones constantly swapping to get fingers in the right place?

Never stop striving for perfection. But know when it is time to take what you have, move on....and deal with improvements later. 

This ideal you are striving for, and sl, and many other things, is a living and evolving thing. It will never stop growing and changing. The only sure way to kill it is to try and hold up it's evolution.

Creators - all of you.  Bento as it is now gives you all a huge new set of possibilities. Take them. Run with them. Explore them. But please don't get lost in the endless cycle of "let's tweak just one more thing..."

okay... now is the point you all get to be mad at me and tell me I'm a nutcase.......

[kayla Mekanic]

You're not a nutcase. I completely agree with you. I think that once any troublesome bugs are fixed, Bento should be good to go. From what I have seen, it looks good as it is.

[Rumegusc Altamura]

If Creators seek changes is because they know well  their costumers and they know that if the mechanism does not verge  possible perfection of sl, costumers will complain and creators can not lose face. They want all for their costumers, but this not is possible.Now we have this situation:the animations will work great on mesh heads without slider and sliders will work fine on heads without facial animation(or very little). To costumers the choice, according to their preferences. However no one can have the same head that he or she created with apparence on avatar of system, this must be clear.

[Fallen Firefly]

Since the sliders are being touched up this far into the project I thought I would inquire whether it would be possible to connect the eyebrow bones to the eyebrow sliders in the hairbase body part (where you can edit your system eyebrows)?

Also, the behavior of the head stretch slider is not ideal. It does not lengthen the nose vertically resulting in an awkward look look when utilized to make the face longer (you end up with a long face and a vertically short nose) . 

With how the sliders are currently set up there is no way to lengthen the nose vertically, so for people who might wanna have a longer face, there is no way to make the nose be proportional (vertical)length wise. 

Would it be possible to make the head stretch slider affect the bones in the same way it currently affects fit mesh rigged heads? When wearing a fit mesh head, the head stretch slider squeezes/stretches the whole head, not just the general area around the face.

Here's a picture to demonstrate what I mean with vertical nose length in case it isn't clear (I'm not sure if I am utilizing the proper terms)
http://i.imgur.com/0HJuHQE.png

I wasn't gonna mention it since I thought the skeleton was frozen & finished for good but I hope something could be done about these 2 issues.
Perhaps the Head Length bone could also lengthen the nose bones, or drag them down?


I also wanna reiterate what a few posters before me have said: sliders are incredibly important & beneficial and I'm willing to bet that a lot of customers are going to be be willing to give up some complex animations for the chance to make their mesh head look unique. The same cannot be said for animations. I've yet to see anyone use the current mesh head animations out and about. The only time I ever see them used is in screenshots and ads. Sliders would be seen and used constantly.

Something else I have noticed in this thread is a lot of people selling customers in SL short, almost implying that they are too stubborn/dumb to read documentation provided. It is your responsibility to let them know what the product does and doesn't do and what it can and cannot look like . Shoppers in SL are more than willing to compromise (see standard sizing). So it is my belief that advocating certain sliders be removed, because they may or may not cause you to possibly provide more customer service, is selfish.
If you tell your customers not to use a certain slider because it will mess their product, most will listen, and the rest will still try to use it, and perhaps the result will be acceptable to them, perhaps it won't be and they will have learned from their mistakes.

[Jenna Felton]

This is getting very long already and every time I have time to read the thread gets 10 new pages But I am glad how it is going on, and that there are debates, since it schows the topic is so important, and I am glad Bento team is stil waiting with release before all issues are resolved.

The rest of the post can be pointless, as I am neither an avatar designer not animator (although I have an intension to make my very own full bento mesh body myself some day) so you can ignore the folowing when it is pointless.

However, when I read the debates about sliders vs. expressions, I get a feeling the goal is to have sliders and expressions in the same extend the default avatar shape allows. And I beleive there is a mistake in this.At least in theory. There are exactly two default meshes, a male and a female mesh. They are changed by the shape sliders or animations. Some sliders morph the shape but I think it is irrelevant as we want emulate morps via bones.

But the point is, the default avatar mesh is only one of two meshes that every one uses and changes via sliders and animations. Everyone has one of them. While there will be legions of avatar designers and each of them will create dozens of different mesh bodies.

Now, when we want change all the mesh bodies via sliders and animations/expressions in the same range the default avatar mesh allows, than I beleive we get into a situation that you can take a mesh body (or head) from designer A, replace skn and use the shape sliders and you get the look of mesh body from designer B. When it happens, the mesh bodies will become replaceable. And then you can think what happens. People will take cheaper bodies when they look like the more expensive. Prices will fall probably down to dollaraby level. Or DMCA reports will snowing. Neither of them I'd like to see.

Expressions are good. Sliders are good also. But I think shape sliders should change the mesh only slightly, just to make the mesh unique but the mesh must stil stay recognizeable. And when the range the sliders change the mesh is limited, perhaps the expressions will stil work well on them and not destroy the mesh? I think when it is possible this way, the goal must be limited on that.

I am not sure if the mesh format allows to restrict the range of sliders and animations.When it can not, I think there is stil a simple way for the mesh creators to restrict the sliders. Put a notecard with the mesh listing the bounds of every relevant slider. There is such a notecard with the mesh body I wear and mesh head I wear and I have no problem in following the instructions. Animators will have to get the same information from the mesh designer in same or other possible way.

Just some thoughs I got by reading the next 10 pages

[BabyGia]

I completely agree on the sliders versus animations thing.

As a consumer, I am very very interested in a customizable head, and regarding animations I am interesrted only in subtle ones. I mean how many times in the week do you open widely your mouth and stick out your tongue, or bring your eyebrows down inside your eyes. I just wonna have more real life animations, meaning more soft and subtle. Besides , always talking as a consumer, I realy prefer to sacrifice a few face exprecions in order to have a unique face.

By the way, I follow this thread from day 1, and its the best thread of the last 5 years!! Keep rocking on

[Cathy Foil]

Here is my advice to Human Head Creators.
You are going to have to choose between a head being more compatible with the Appearance Editor sliders or a head who has bigger range of facial expression.

Just like with Fitted Mesh we are asking the new face bones to do two jobs at once.  Change the avatars appearance and animate facial expression.  Having more of one means less of the other.

If you want a head that is most compatible with the Appearance Sliders do not move the bones from their default bone positions and only make animations for the head that use rotations only.  This will give your customers the ability to customize the way their face looks the most.  It also means that the head can use just about any facial animation that uses rotations only and look good.  

If you use an animation with translations though the face will change shape while the animation is playing.  The more bones that animate using translations the more the face will change shape.  This could be pretty cool if you want an animation to make your avatar temporarily transform into the Incredible Hulk.  If an animation uses fewer bones that translate then the temporary change in the shape of the avatars face is less noticeable.  Such as an animation that only translates the lip bones for kissing.

If you want a head that is most expressive with animations then you are free to use custom bone positions and animations that uses both rotations and translations.  If you use custom bone positions for your head then pretty much only the head's creator can make animations for it using translations and rotations.  Rotation only animations made by other people other than the mesh head creator have a good chance that they will not work well.  It also means that fewer Appearance Slider will work giving your customer less ability to customize the shape of their face.

Those making and selling animations will want to clearly label their animations as "Rotations Only", "Rotations and Translations" or "Translations Only".  Rotations Only animations will be the most compatible with the most meshes.
Rotations and Translations will be less compatible with the fewest bones animated with translations being more compatible and more bone animated with translations being less compatible.  Translation Only means the least compatible animations. 

There is nothing stopping mesh head creators from taking the same mesh head and offering their customers two versions.  One rigged to the face bones in their default positions and one rigged to bones in custom position.  They can even use the same weights.  Just label them clearly and advise your customers that one is more compatible with the Appearance sliders than the other and that one be used with animations that are rotation only and the other with animations only made by or approved by the mesh head creator.

I have played around with making facial expression using just rotations.  I was quite surprise just how well it worked and got quite a lot of good expressions.  I could be wrong but my gut feeling says these type of facial expressions will more than satisfy the average buyer.

I have also played around with animation with translations and the possibilities for human and non human avatars are limitless and I wouldn't want to give it up for the world.

As a head designer you will have to decide which way to go and how far.  Do you want a head that looks great and moves great but isn't very compatible with the Appearance Sliders or do you want a head that can look great but whose facial expression will be more limited but is more compatible with the Appearance Sliders and other animations made by other people.

[Cathy Foil]

It has been available for a few days and I should have announced it here sooner some new files for Maya users.
In the Bento Testing Wiki page there are now a BVH exporter for Maya that can export out translations animations as well as rotations of all the bones and a test animation skeleton rig for Maya users.

Project Bento Testing Page: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Project_Bento_Testing

[RipleyVonD]

Will we have the option to disable certain appearance sliders? The ones in the head specifically.

[wherorangi]

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Rumegusc Altamura wrote:

... no one can have the same head that

 he or she created with

 

apparence on avatar of system

, this

must be

 clear.

---

can understand your point, and I am accepting and supportive of it

what we hoping to get are better heads than classic

and going off what I have seen so far, the numesh heads are way better looking than the classic head, in the finer details. Amazing sculpted noses, lips and brows in particular, which really blow away the classic avatar head in terms of fine detail. Is really good what everyone has created so far

all we want, as the wearers/buyers. is the ability to add our own little touches, plump/deplump / widen/narrow / shorten/ lengthen / angle/deangle etc to some small degree from the norm/look of this head/body we bought

we not asking for the ability to make a whole new completely different head (with the UI sliders) out of that which we get/buy. We see a head and body which is kinda already what we like/want, and hope to be able to make some subtle changes to suit our own desire/preference

so we get and then apply our choice of skin and makeup and we are happy as. If not quite happy as, then into Edit mode and do some tiny tweaks to get everything all looking perfect together as we see it

basically as wearers/buyers we are personalised modders/tweakers, not creators, and we are happy just being modders and tweakers. We are accepting that if we do want to be full-on creators then we can download Blender Maya etc and go for it

+

i just add on here

with facial animation and numesh human avatar

again if take another poll

pick only two facial animations that you want the most ? The poll answer will come back

1) lovely (or manly in that case) smile, 2) lower my lashes/close my eyes

all the other ones are fun for sure, and are great for fashion pictorials. An also for eating/smoking/drinking/playing etc. But for everyday then the top two are 1) and 2). Any poll of resident buyers/wearers will confirm this I am pretty sure

 

 

[Medhue Simoni]

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wherorangi wrote:

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1) lovely (or manly in that case) smile, 2) lower my lashes/close my eyes

 

 

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IMHO, lovely smiles are not possible with only using rotations. You can make a smile, no doubt, but it will never be a lovely smile. lol

[Medhue Simoni]

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Cathy Foil wrote:

If you want a head that is most expressive with animations then you are free to use custom bone positions and animations that uses both rotations and translations.  If you use custom bone positions for your head then pretty much only the head's creator can make animations for it using translations and rotations.  Rotation only animations made by other people other than the mesh head creator have a good chance that they will not work well.  It also means that fewer Appearance Slider will work giving your customer less ability to customize the shape of their face.

Those making and selling animations will want to clearly label their animations as "Rotations Only", "Rotations and Translations" or "Translations Only".  Rotations Only animations will be the most compatible with the most meshes.

Rotations and Translations will be less compatible with the fewest bones animated with translations being more compatible and more bone animated with translations being less compatible.  Translation Only means the least compatible animations. 

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Hey Cathy,

You should know I'm going to chime in about your post, lol.

After doing some testing, I've pretty much confirmed what I've argued before about rotation vs translation. If a head creator uses the default positions to rig their head with, animations with translations will work just as well as, and most times better, than rotation animations. I really don't think people who are not animators understand just how ugly rotation animations are on a face. An animation with translation, even if it is off a little or even quite a bit, that still looks many times better than a rotation only expression. Again tho, if you have a unique body shape for the face, some sliders will be disabled.

I was wearing a mesh head at the Bento meeting on Thurs. With all this arguing over what does what, I decided to make my own head and start testing it. Some things are definitely true, and some theories are completely false. I'll be making a video later about it all, with a suggested solutions that I've come up with.

[wherorangi]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

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wherorangi wrote:

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1) lovely (or manly in that case) smile, 2) lower my lashes/close my eyes

 

 

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IMHO, lovely smiles are not possible with only using rotations. You can make a smile, no doubt, but it will never be a lovely smile. lol

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given the choice between

a) being able to tweak my face with the sliders and a ugly smile, and

b) a lovely smile and not being able to tweak my head

then is not a competition. a) will always win

I dont have to smile. Same as I dont have to now with a classic head

I do have to be able to personalise my face to myself. If I cant do this then I am not buying, me and everybody else who hasnt bought one already even tho we could of already, way before now

we not buying bc no smile. We not buying bc we cant tweak/personalise it

 

 

 

[Cathy Foil]

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RipleyVonD wrote:

Will we have the option to disable certain appearance sliders? The ones in the head specifically.

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You can disable the translation affect on a face bone by any Slider by moving any bone associated with that slider to a custom position and uploading your mesh with "Include Joint Positions".  Now if a slider has scaling on it the scaling will not be disabled.

The Jaw Angle slider is a good example.  Currently the mFaceJaw moves way up and down when adjusting that slider.

If you wanted to disable that and have the mFaceJaw bone set so it stays in the same place disabling that slider you just slightly move the mFaceJaw bone to a new location.  Rig you mesh to it and upload your DAE with "Include Joint Positions".

 

Mel, Matrice, Vir and myself have been discussing ways and options to fix the Jaw Angle slider so the mFaceJaw bone doesn't have to move up and down.

Hope that helps.

Cathy

[Cathy Foil]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

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Cathy Foil wrote:

If you want a head that is most expressive with animations then you are free to use custom bone positions and animations that uses both rotations and translations.  If you use custom bone positions for your head then pretty much only the head's creator can make animations for it using translations and rotations.  Rotation only animations made by other people other than the mesh head creator have a good chance that they will not work well.  It also means that fewer Appearance Slider will work giving your customer less ability to customize the shape of their face.

Those making and selling animations will want to clearly label their animations as "Rotations Only", "Rotations and Translations" or "Translations Only".  Rotations Only animations will be the most compatible with the most meshes.

Rotations and Translations will be less compatible with the fewest bones animated with translations being more compatible and more bone animated with translations being less compatible.  Translation Only means the least compatible animations. 

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Hey Cathy,

You should know I'm going to chime in about your post, lol.

After doing some testing, I've pretty much confirmed what I've argued before about rotation vs translation. If a head creator uses the default positions to rig their head with, animations with translations will work just as well as, and most times better, than rotation animations. I really don't think people who are not animators understand just how ugly rotation animations are on a face. An animation with translation, even if it is off a little or even quite a bit, that still looks many times better than a rotation only expression. Again tho, if you have a unique body shape for the face, some sliders will be disabled.

I was wearing a mesh head at the Bento meeting on Thurs. With all this arguing over what does what, I decided to make my own head and start testing it. Some things are definitely true, and some theories are completely false. I'll be making a video later about it all, with a suggested solutions that I've come up with.

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OH I have no doubt that the best animations are animations that both translate the bone and rotate the bones.  Animations that just use translations are probably not quite as good but way better than animations that are just made with rotations only.

 

What I am saying is rotation only animations for the face were surprisingly good to me.  The more subtle the expression the less noticeable the limitations of animating only with rotations are.  

 

Personally I think I am going to prefer an AO where my avatar repeats randomly a set of fixed subtle facial expression that play over and over again over an AO which makes my avatar face express intense or exaggerated facial expressions over and over again.

I have had the same sort of experience chatting with people whose AO makes their avatar walk around and rock back and fourth.  It makes their avtar's body language give me the impression that they are annoyed or impatient.  While I know it is just an AO and not reflective of the true mental state of the person I am chatting with it still sends mixed signals to me and I end up leaving the conversation and not wishing to chat with the person next time I see them.

I can definitely see this happening with AOs which while the animations may be wonderful with great very expressive facial animations showing a lot of emotions using animations with translations and rotations there will be this same disconnect between what the person I am chatting with is conveying in their typing or voice and what their avatar's face is expressing.

 

I think more subtle facial expressions will have way less of a disconnect but at the same time still giving the impression of the avatar being more alive than what we have had up until now.

 

What would be awesome is to have a library of facial expressions animations and your web cam aimed at your face.  A program reads your facial expression and then plays in SL the animation associated with that expression.  This would be much easier than a Face Rig type system.

This way there wouldn't be a disconnect between what you are saying or typing and what your avatar's face showing.

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[Medhue Simoni]

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wherorangi wrote:

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

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wherorangi wrote:

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1) lovely (or manly in that case) smile, 2) lower my lashes/close my eyes

 

 

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IMHO, lovely smiles are not possible with only using rotations. You can make a smile, no doubt, but it will never be a lovely smile. lol

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given the choice between

 

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Who said there needs to be a choice? Who said you can't have both?