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It is my impression that joint offsets are still fine. I've uploaded a number of joint offset wing attachments and uploaded matching animations for them; no issue so far.  It's when someone moves a bone completely to create a non-contiguous distortion that isn't allowed, or at least that's what I get from the announcement.

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No I think you got it wrong or maybe Im missunderstanding here.
You are totally able to use bone offset with the custom joints position just like always. What it looks like will be removed will be the possibility to animate them through anim files. So you can still create custom avatars just not animate the offset. However, I do agree that they should be supported and not just on anim files which you can only make with Blender but as an official feature with BVH support (whish the day we can upload animations as DAE files...) because facial animations seems quite hard with those. Facials animations rarely rely on rotations asides of jaw. The rest are usually moving bones. Not like there arent workarounds but we wont get exactly the same.

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May be the same reasson why normal maps arent available without advanced lighting mode even tho they are totally compatible with the render engine. Or the same reasson why we havent custom bones on meshes. Or even the same reasson of why we cant simply change materials paramters through scripts. I really dont know why some basics must have features arent there already and why others that no one asks for are being implemented like that obssesion of changing interface from time to time. Mysteries of SL :P

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And here I was so excited for this announcement.

 

So we have the facial bones parented under mHead and mJaw. And we can just rotate our bones. No translation?

So we are gonna rotate our jaws open and then do lip snarls all day? No proper smiles by translating the corner of the lip bones etc etc etc etc etc.

 

Please rethink this.

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THANK YOU! 

 

This is wonderful news!

 

BUT ONE THING WAS OVERLOOKED ---- A bone for toepads. ( It really does matter having the abilty to pose the toes. SL's Scuba Flipper foot, needs to end. The toes are espeically important for Action Poses. (It would be only one bone for each foot to serve for all the toes as a "toe pad bone" with  motions being back and forth, side tilts for left and right.)

The abilty to create natural poses with faical expresions and hands would be amazing!

..... BUT it will be even more stark and out of place if the foot continues to be an expressiveless Duck Flipper.  

Imagine if the SL Avatar could pose naturally like this:



 But not just human avatar would be improved by having a poseable toepad, so would Furry avatars with Digigrade feet, and all kinds of other animal like avatars like T-Rex. It's strange that all these extra bones are added for Furry type avatars but the Toepad is considered unimportant.  Please, let's fix this.

 

 

oh! BONUS:  Some rendered walk cycles

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Kitsune Shan wrote:

 I really dont know why some basics must have features arent there already and why others that no one asks for are being implemented like that obssesion of changing interface from time to time. Mysteries of SL
:P

Yes, that is always the question, isn't it?

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The moment they add anything specific for sexual use, like genitalia, is the moment SL as a whole can be classified as adult only.  Which would be very contrary to their ethos of being a virtual world for all. So they won't do it. What people do in their world, is a different matter, and can be explained away much easier in news/promo stuff, than if they added a boner bone specifically for genitalia

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While they have not outright advertised SL as such, they also really haven't done a lot to move public perception away from that. Twitch.tv put a blanket ban on SL this year for example, due to Adult Content, despite the fact that a large portion of the user experience in-world is not of a sexual or graphically violent nature. 

Add to that the fact that the new armature includes a groin bone and you can infer that prolonging that perception is in the Lab's interests. 

 

*shrug* :matte-motes-frown:

 

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SIN Rain wrote:

Damn, I was loooking forward to wiggling my toes!

Are the bone assignments final or is there still a chance to suggest/reassign some bones for toes? (perhaps the fingertip or 2nd knuckle bones reassigned?)

 

p.s If you do decide to implement, can I have a royalty for when anyone Curls their Toes in SL? :matte-motes-big-grin-wink:

 

 Actually, in theory, you can have toe bones, by using the wing bones.

 

 

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Aki Shichiroji wrote:

Add to that the fact that the new armature includes a groin bone and you can infer that prolonging that perception is in the Lab's interests. 

 

*shrug* :matte-motes-frown:

 

A groin bone is easily doable, even without any of these new bone. Might I suggest, to anyone wanting a groin bone, just use the mskull bone. Generally speaking, I was using the mskull bone for a jaw, but now that we have an actual jaw bone. The mskull bone was just an extra bone, just like the extra feet bone, and can be exported in dae, and anim files.

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 Not sure if this is a bug or expected behaviour - it seems that anything rigged to the new joints either partly disappears,collapses or melts when viewing that avatar as an imposter?

There was a guy on aditi with a mesh head using the new bones & his head melted when viewed as an imposter. This was at ground level.

This gif shows the effect with the bento_angel.dae test content. See how the wings & tail get clipped when the avatar becomes an imposter. The wings actually flicker quite badly when the avatar is an imposter but the flicker is too fast to show on the gif.

https://i.gyazo.com/177186beee1ee3750a6a0c06eaefb211.gif

 

Edit: Filed a JIRA issue for it - https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-10991

 

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I am very interested and excited in this feature. I'd like to thank Linden Lab for listening to input and working on this.

I would like to argue against the lack of bone translation/positioning via animation. While it does have the traditional legitimate use of animating the facial bones (which rarely use simply rotation to animate the face), there are other non-traditional uses that it would be particularly potent and powerful for.

Personally, I have been using "animation deformations," the changing of bone positions through the use of animations, in place of mesh skeleton deformations through mesh upload, because the mesh skeletons haven't always loaded to everyone looking at it, and it's much easier to automatically replay an animation than it is to rewear the object that sets the mesh skeleton.

If LL does not desire unapproved use of this feature, I recommend communication. A good set of tools includes enough rope to hang yourself with. To continue a tool analogy, a nailgun is powerful and useful. Given to someone who doesn't know any better, it can be deadly. The trick here is education. Let us know how to use the tools, and if we're using the tools wrong, tell us how we're using them wrong, and why we shouldn't use them wrong. But don't remove the tool just because it's "dangerous." Second Life has lacked a proper "standards guide" since its inception, and this has resulted in some very wasteful and dangerous creations. However cool.

Also, a source file for the new skeleton, or at least an explanation including all bone names and which bones are parents to which other bones so we can create our own would be desirable.

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For starters, I'm super excited by all of this! I'm not going to pooh-pooh anything yet until I've really had a chance to play with all this amazing new stuff. Seems to me an upcoming version of SL is going to incorporate hand/finger tracking as well as face-tracking a la FaceShift. I have a ton of experience with both, thankfully!

As for animating such a cool rig, I've been just doing basic stuff in QAvimator up until now, using 3DS Max for my mesh and vertex weighting. Clearly, I'm going to have to graduate to a better animation tool.

Can anyone recommend a good animation tool that'll work well for Second Life?

 

I'm going to stare at this thread until I hear about where I can download the skeleton file-- though I supposed I could import the angle that someone kindly supplied as a DAE. I've already loaded that onto Aditi and I'm delighted with the flapping wings and wiggly tail animations you can upload as an .anim file.

I am positively giddy with delight! Even if it's not perfect, it's a huge step forward! Wheee!!!!

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So in the Main article about the Bento project, it is intimated that there are common creation tools that have the new bones in them for manipulation. Can anyone articulate which these are? Have they been put into SLAT (my favoirte) or Q-Avimator? or do we now have to use Blender, Poser or Maya? I am very interested in the facial bones and would like a simple tool to do only facial animations that I can layer onto my whole body anims. Any clues or pointers?

I must say, this will be an interesting adventure for those of us long time people who have longed to be able to get past the lame facials that we have been living with since the crust of SL was cooling :-) 

Thanks for your efforts!

Valradica Vale - animator

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Pamela Galli wrote:


Kitsune Shan wrote:

 I really dont know why some basics must have features arent there already and why others that no one asks for are being implemented like that obssesion of changing interface from time to time. Mysteries of SL
:P

Yes, that is always the question, isn't it?

Yeah. I mean, I'm sure this project was the result of listening to users -- and god knows, there are a number of very vociferous folks who really care about the avatar skeleton and have fussed at great length about it for years.

Thing is, there are so many things I'd much, much rather see. So many ways to enhance the interactivity of SL and make it a more engaging activity.

And honestly, I'm fine with interactivity features taking a back seat (again, as when Mesh was introduced -- which actually reduced interactivity).

But please, let this be declared a quick success. Whatever this feature does, please can we just make the most of it as-is, iron out the worst of its bugs, and not add ever more elaborate tweaks, so maybe we can finally get on with something that might actually improve retention?

(At this point, there's simply no way for avatar improvements to help retention because the SL avatar has grown layers and layers of incompatibilities, utterly baffling to new residents who now leave never to return long before any further avatar elaborations can make an impression. I agree that one step toward sanity would be to make the classic avatar an asset that can be unworn. That, together with adding a supported script API for every function of the Appearance editor, might ameliorate some of the damage done by past avatar improvements.)

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@Qie – This will release a wave of new creativity in SL, and I will be surprised if the follow up from LL is not a SL Avatar 2.0 that also will be compatible with Sansar. The version 2 avatar would be expcted to have a new UV map in addition to the old one for backward compatibility. 

The TPV creators may stuggle a bit with this, but we shall see. 

 

I am glad they do this. – It is actually great!! (as I have posted for years for this to happen in this and other forums.)

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Yeah, see, that's all fine, and I'm all for seasoned SL users having new toys to play with and new ways to polish-up their avatars.

It's just not going to help retention. At least not that of new users.

The most important thing about the Project Bento announcement is that it claims not to introduce any further incompatibilities.

And that's the biggest fear about Avatar 2.0: if it's going to be yet another incompatible change there simply must be better, user-scriptable tools for managing all the incompatible assets in all these baffling layers of "avatar stuff". It cannot depend on viewer controls that new users will never be able to understand -- not that any such controls are exposed in a practically usable way, even now.

So, I've simply written off the avatar and all its accoutrements. Others can keep playing with it for amusement and the (still profitable) deck-chair-shuffling of oldbie wardrobes, but for new users, it just doesn't matter anymore: the injury is already fatal.

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Qie Niangao wrote:

 

So, I've simply written off the avatar and all its accoutrements. Others can keep playing with it for amusement and the (still profitable) deck-chair-shuffling of oldbie wardrobes, but for new users, it just doesn't matter anymore: the injury is already fatal.

Isn't that a bit harsh, eh? 

I guess the new rigging and avatar will really shine in Sansar, and while that is promiseware the rest of us gets to have a better experience. – The new rigging is going to remove a LOT of convoluted interfaces like slink-hands with HUDs just to mention one…

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Gavin Hird wrote:

Isn't that a bit harsh, eh? 

Have you talked to new users recently?

I mean, they're not easy to find, but if you ever catch one who's stuck it out after wearing both classic and mesh avatars simultaneously, it will be their number one complaint.

And who can blame them?

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Qie Niangao wrote:


Gavin Hird wrote:

Isn't that a bit harsh, eh? 

Have you talked to new users recently?

I mean, they're not easy to find, but if you ever catch one who's stuck it out after wearing both classic and mesh avatars simultaneously, it will be their number one complaint.

And who can blame them?

In the battle of wearing classic and mesh avatars (and clothes), even the most dedicated can loose their will to live.

An avatar 2.0 would largely get this sorted for new users, while still causing us oldtimers some grief. 

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