Project Bento Feedback Thread

[Medhue Simoni]

Regardless what LL says, I say LL supported anim files when they added the option to the importer. If they didn't want to support it, then they should have never added it to their viewer. Before LL added the option, I was telling everyone it wasn't support, so use them at their own risk. When it was added, I just assumed LL was supporting it now. Without anim files, many things aren't possible.

[Oz Linden]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

The development side is the 1 I really do not get. What was the point of making this a CLOSED beta? Why did you make people sign NDAs for this? Why would you threaten people with legal action for talking, over adding bones to an avatar? 

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First and most important, we did involve quite a few resident creators in this project from very early on - we could not have done what we have without them, and we very much appreciate their generous help.

What has happened to date was not a closed beta, it was the initial implementation - what we just started yesterday was the beginning of the beta, and it's wide open to everyone. As Vir has said, we may well make significant changes based on this beta (which is why none of this is on the main grid yet, so that we can make changes that are incompatible with what we have now). 

As someone here has already suggested, when we begin a project that we consider to have significant risk we prefer not to discuss it externally because we don't want to cause confusion or set inappropriate expectations. We've been working on this for several months - consider what it might have done to avatar and animation sales during that time if there were rampant rumors about how we might break everything, or even just that big improvements were coming. Since we could not be sure either what the final scope of what we could do would be or how long it would take, we didn't want to cause that kind of disruption.

It wasn't possible for us to keep the secret (which, suprisingly, we apparently did pretty well) without some limits on how many people we brought in. I'm sure that there are many more creators out there who could have contributed, and we look forward to getting their input now.

One small request ... please actually get the Project Viewer and test how things work, and try the tools that are available to work with them (if there are other tools we can help to support these changes, we're ready to help). In the course of this project we've tried to address a number of problems with how rigging and animation work, so you may find that old problems have been improved. We very much want your input on what we've done so far so that we can bring this to all of Second Life.

 

[Medhue Simoni]

As an animator, I will make a few suggestions on the avatar tho.

 

I'd give the ears 2 bones instead of 1. Imagine floppy ears, like on a dog.

I'd add a center lip bone.(this is kind of iffy tho, maybe I just need better weights)

As pointed out, normally facial bones are not rotated, but the position moved. As an animator, even outside of facial expressions, bone translation is extremely important. Don't handcuff us. I'd say the further development is worth it, or if anim files work, then keep supporting it. It really is that important.

 

These are just my initial observations, playing with the bones.

 

Next up.........

Custom rigs for objects and NPCs.

right?

[Rowan Villiers]

The only thing that is really important to me is to make sure these changes aren't going to require updates to the rigging of the current generation of mesh bodies, and by extension all clothes made to fit them; can anyone give me any additional detail about that? 

[Lyoto Steamweaver]

It won't affect the old content. Just adds more options for new creations.

[Lyoto Steamweaver]

 

Just a quick and dirty skinning job on a mouth to show people that haven't animated heads before, what a huge deal being able to translate bones really is.

 

This is with transform allowed:

http://i.imgur.com/4KsURoJ.gif

 

And same efforts with only rotations

http://i.imgur.com/N3Sd1df.gif

or maybe this: http://i.imgur.com/hppKB21.gif  :smileyvery-happy:

 

 

I'm happy we are getting this update . Will be nice to animate hands properly.

edit: We already have a foot bone. Thats cool.

 

Will hopefully. experiment a bit in world with bento during the weekend

Thanks!

[Exosius Woolley]

Has anyone been able to upload an extended bone rig like a tail or wings, with changes to the joint positions? I understand .anims with joint position changes are being disallowed, but if we're to use the wings as a second pair of arms, for example, it would need to be repositioned. 

I tried to upload a long tail, but the upload did not have the new length - it was compressed to the default length. I am not sure if this is a problem with my exporter or if it's a jira-worthy problem. Anyone test this yet? 

[Kitsune Shan]

I already tried to test to upload the angel test file. I need more time to deeply test more but would be nice to be able to upload bone translations through BVH files to test facial animations. Do you think isnt totally lost to get BVH support for them if they arent totally removed from the viewer at the end? Because I guess they probably wont get removed seeing that you cant really replace them with rotations. Also, any chance of having raised the limit of 4 bones per vertex to like 8? Ill try to illustrate a bit more why thisi s so important and why I keep asking about it now that we have a lot of new bones when I get a bit of time for it. Then surely you guys will try to do something to sort that problem out because without it, we wont be able to use those bones at all.

[Whirly Fizzle]

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Teager wrote:

- I wholeheartedly

disagree with the decision to block animation of bone location

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Adeon filed a JIRA issue to request allowing the animation of bones positions.

BUG-10990 - [bento] A formal method of bone-translating animations is vital for the creation of proper facial expressions.

[Whirly Fizzle]

I created a JIRA filter for all Bento bug reports & feature requests.

I'll keep that updated as new issues come in.

[Matti Deigan]

I just heard about this Project Bento over from  High Fidelity.

Will definitely be checking it out the upcomming changes to SL.

But RE: The bone translations are quite important but I can see why they are not implemented:

There are so many different faces structures and variations of a faces: If we had translations, it would break cross-compatability between animations if something would be animated: a translated bone one face may spell catastrophe on others. This you mean some animatiosn would only work on specific avatars. Rotations handle it with slight ease, but also have the same issues when translated to a new avatar structure.

Then when we add Non-human avatars to the mix, most avatar animations shouldnt then include face definitions at all to make sure for the best compatability. I wonder why they simply didnt allow us to make set shapekeys/blendshapes and call it a day.

 

[Medhue Simoni]

I know I'll be accused of speaking outside the scope of the project, but what the heck.

 

Something that strikes me is that mesh body designers could now create full mesh bodies, except for 1 thing, which is the facial sliders. We have no fitted mesh support for the sliders on the face. Even tho I bashed Fitted Mesh repeatedly, when you have a mesh body, Fitted Mesh actually does work properly. This is partly why mesh bodies are so popular, as technically it is easier to make clothing that fits them, as both the body and the clothing are using the same Fitted Mesh system. The default body uses a completely different system, and is not morphed by collision bones, hence why we can't match the morphing perfectly. Again tho, I come back to the lack of collision bones to morph the face. Now, if we have bone translation and scaling, then we can use the new facial bones to customize the face, but that would require a complex set of animations that only move 1 bone, or few at a time, to customize each part, and then we have to hope that no other animation with facial bones gets played over top of that. We could use the facial bones for customize, or expressions, but not both. I think a better solution would be to extent Fitted Mesh, and the collision bones to the face. Then, everyone can make custom avatars with as much or more functionality than the default avatar.

[Anne Cloud]

I've rigged and animated a couple of wing meshes, which I posted a little earlier yesterday. ( http://www.plurk.com/p/ldqgaj ) The animation used is the same between the two, but the joint offsets are somewhat different. I haven't rigged anything more complex with it as of yet, as I need to design and model new content first.

[Yuriko Nishi]

bone sliding (and also bone scaling) is not only usefull for face animations, it can also be very helpfull for stuff like muscles animations can we have it pretty please Linden lab? in bvh? (thats what most animation programs support, not anim) =)

[MoonHowler Snowpaw]

Voted. I think we need to show this JIRA also to customers, users, not creators, because finally it will restrict their avatars and because we can count the creators which really understand this stuff about bones on fingers. We need hundreds of votes. Is it possible to add there a simple explanation for not experienced user?

[Tornleaf]

I haven't been able to make the joint positions work correctly yet, though I see Aki has them working, so I must be doing something wrong. The tail in this gif is supposed to be a lot shorter. Joint positions work just fine on the body, still, however.

 

https://gyazo.com/cd50f1944bdc5c478ea576c1788e4286

In any case, I'm pretty pumped about these bones. Ideally, no more animations stalling when multiple a-point animations are playing, no more dealing with translations (however, I do support finding a way for the facial bones to translate without deforming the mesh when avatars switch, somehow!), hopefully my customers will eventually be able to pop my quad avatars on and off without having to logoff to clear the deformations. No mesh swapping for different expressions, and no fiddling with script to tackle that. Free-moving eyes now that I don't have to sacrifice eye attachment points for eyelids. I thought I'd have to wait for sansar for a more extensive rig, but these additions should help out a lot. Lack of translations and having to update rigs and all of the tail/ear/mSkull animations will take a decent junk of time, though. @_@

 

Additionally, someone said there should be 2 joints in the ears, for floppy ears, and I would agree.

 

[Kitsune Shan]

SL animations doesnt work in that way.
SL only gives priority to those bones that have been animated from its default position/rotation so the rest that you dont animate have no influence on those animated. There is no way of breaking content just by implementing something that people have been using not so officially.

[Exosius Woolley]

Hi, 

 

Many of us have been unable to make the joint positions work on the new bones. What did you use to rig and export? Thanks! 

[Vir Linden]

We are planning to add support for more sliders during the Project Viewer test period. We do not know how many yet. It's not clear whether we will be able to get acceptable support for all the sliders, since many of the existing ones are based on blend shapes.

[MoonHowler Snowpaw]

More sliders is good. Though i'll say again what everybody says here, bones positions are not less or even more important, by moving them more animations could be achieved, not only more realistic human emotions like in examples posted before, but also nonhuman emotions (please imagine an animation of a horse head, jaw, lips where human flat face bones were used, it will look deformed from all angles). If SL is not becoming a place for limited self expression of course.

[AkiraKiyoi]

Hi! I'm really-really happy that the existing SL avatar will be upgraded with enhanced skeleton. Therefore I'd like to clarify something. Will we be able to use these bones only for specified things (like arms, legs etc.) or it will be possible to use them for other purposes (i.e. for creating attachments)?
You see, we create animated pets as attachments, but now we have to use scripts and lots of animation frames to create them. Script switches on animation frames one by one, you know. The script lags sometimes. So this way doesn't allow us to create complex objests (like our animals) that will be animated smoothly.
So the main question is: will it be possible to use enhanced skeleton for creating such animated attachments (like pets carried in avatar's hands) or not?
Thanks for the answer in advance.

[Polymath Snuggler]

(theoretically) yes  ~ but you would have to include something stating that you cannot wear wings or a animated mesh face while wearing the pet or you'd probably have some very confused / angry customers.

[Polymath Snuggler]

It doesn't have to be *ALL* facial sliders~ I'm very glad to hear that there will be influence from just some of them.  Putting the power into our customers hands to change their face a little from all being *carbon copies* is really beneficial for everyone.  In fact that's the biggest reason why most people who have not adopted a mesh head~ refuse to ~  The lack of individuality (in some minor way even ) is a deal-breaker to them.

 

Also I feel like this is somehow relevant to the discussion:

[Adeon Writer]

I found it very odd that there seems to be nothing stopping you from creating bone-translating animations for the new face bones in Project Bento, regardless of what is stated on the wiki. So either LL changed their minds some time between the writing of the wiki and the initial release of the Project Bento Beta, or they have not yet implimented the uplaod blocking.

 

So, let it be clear: Project Bento, right now, to me, is perfect. You can rig to the face bones, you can slide those face bones around with animations to put them where they need to be for your avatar. Nothing suddenly reverts when you try to rotate them after translate them - it's pretty much smooth sailing from blender straight to SL.

 

The only cause for alarm is the Wiki actually stating that it's blocked. Even though it currently isn't. But if it is blocked in the future, yeah, that's a big problem. The face bones wouldn't be nearly as useful with rotations alone.

[Polymath Snuggler]

If you have any clarification available ~ did you upload a .anim file or a .BVH?

(I've been setting up my Rig in 3DS max till just now finally getting to rigging and animating)