Project Bento Feedback Thread

[Teager]

After updating with avastar alpha 10, I also appear to have a working model now. And for extra good news, it appears that my lower jaw is positioned and scaled correctly now, so the jaw trouble I mentioned at last week's meeting may well have been just another result of the avastar facial bone deform. Double yay!

 

Side note - I can see that you made the rig update function set the scale of the rig to 1.00. It may be useful when you write your official documentation on this to ask the user to check that all meshes are also set to 1.00 scale before updating. Last week, I scaled my entire avatar down to 0.968 and used blender's ctrl+A to apply scale, and did not notice that the scale wasn't applied. Therefore when I use the new update rig feature, which sets the scale of the rig back to 1.00, my meshes come out of alignment with my rig. When I adjust the scale back to 1.00 beore using the update rig feature, everything works perfectly.

[Gaia Clary]

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Teager wrote:

Last week, I scaled my entire avatar down to 0.968 and used blender's ctrl+A to apply scale, and did not notice that the scale wasn't applied. Therefore when I use the new update rig feature, which sets the scale of the rig back to 1.00, my meshes come out of alignment with my rig.

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Can you provide an example (ticket) that shows in which way the meshes get out of alignement? Maybe there is a bug in the update tool. And we do not want bugs :matte-motes-sunglasses-3:

[Polymath Snuggler]

If you're in 3ds max ~ work in Ortho instead of Persp if you're having cam-clipping issues.

Alternatively ( or in addition ) you can always uniformly scale the root token up~  that's what it's there for, just scale it back down before export.

 

The rig has to be scaled correctly at the start or it won't export correctly ~  That's just how this works.  No matter what it has to have the correct dimensions in meters.

 

I made those example 2012 rig files~ they're the output of my script.  However there's a couple issues with the dummy node files that I'm going to be fixing. ( The control nodes aren't oriented correctly in the file~  whoops!  )   As well as a potential reparenting of the entire rig setup to accommodate the SL slider setup inside 'max ~~ no promises on that though.

( This will only affect the files with additonal nodes in them ~ not the "basic" ones ~ those are just fine as is )

[Psistorm Voxel]

Thanks for the pointers. On previous avatars I worked at 10.000% scale on all bones, which was ignored by SL, it just made things a bit awkward. Scaling the root token and resizing for export is a good idea, I wasn't sure if it was a workable solution, but I'm glad to know it is

On a final note, once animations can be exported, should I be able to do the same workflow? Aka scale the rig up, animate, then scale it down for export?

[Polymath Snuggler]

I made the decision to share my skeleton files because of the number of people who were struggling with understanding the joint orientations~ as well as the people who were dealing with import issues into 3ds max.  The skeleton files posted on the wiki should be okay to rig to~ for a decent sized test project, but not okay to use with a large animation project just yet.

 

To answer your question: The skeleton files that are presently posted, scaling the root will make the entire rig follow suit ~ but since I posted my original response and now....

I've reworked the skeleton ( yet again ) for slider support~ something which I had not originally planned on doing.

Putting in slider support means that each of the bones have to be set to scale independently ( because that's what sliders do ) which means scaling the token may not be a 'thing' ~ on the newer rig I have.

I'll see if I can puzzle out a scripted solution to that problem.

So the skeleton I have now is parented differently than the one that is publicly available presently. 

( Read that, don't do any terribly complex animations just yet ~ the animation exporter won't be able to actually export anything you do right now ~ however if you're  good with import / export with animations, you can probably retarget whatever you work on presently to the new rig setup )

 

That being said ~ (  in theory!! )~ Working on a rig that is scaled up will work ~ as long as you don't track scale keyframes into your animation.

[Psistorm Voxel]

Thanks very much for the info. I'm not looking to go /too/ complex yet, probably just preparing finger animations and, once I got my avatar head done, a facial rig for an anthro head. So knowing that I can do simple rotation based keying etc does help a lot. And any scale based anims I'll just have to make at the original size, but I can work around that.

Also, I very much appreciate the work you're doing. As someone who does have years of experience making SL content, though virtually none in animation, and little in rigging, this setup and the prospect of having something akin to avastar for max is amazing news for me, along with the possibility of anim export in the future.

[Catwa Clip]

[Exosius Woolley]

Hi, polysail;

I found a problem with your DummyNodes files - these 2 dummy bones are on the wrong side of the face: 

mFaceLipCornerRight_DRV and mFaceLipCornerLeft_DRV

See image: 





[Polymath Snuggler]

Scale based animations will not work in SL.

The bone scale issue is only relevant towards getting an accurate slider system that replicates the SL slider system.

[Polymath Snuggler]

The dummy nodes are on the correct side, you forget the bones are crossed for the corners of the mouth.  Thier controller nodes are rotated incorrectly though.  Which is why I'll replace the incorrect controller node files soonish~ as soon as I get the the SL Sliders workin on the rig.

 

Remember dummy node hierarchy visually appears to be different from actual bone hierarchy  ( though they both function identically as actual bones ).  With "Show Links" on the ( selectable ) link portion of the node leading to the bone does not visually relate the bone's influence, rather it's a conection indicator ~ it shows "what it's attached to".  There is no visual representation for the actual extent of the bone influence.  That's why I prefer bone nodes personally, but there were requests for a dummy only skeleton.

[mahadma]

I second to that, my lower jaw is finally corected

[Inara Pey]

Viewer is now at RC status:

 

Lab blog post.

 

Download details (14th Sept 2016): Bento release candidate viewer 5.0.0.319688 (links to download options & release notes)

[Psistorm Voxel]

Definitely looking forward to the changes

I have a question regarding the hands, which I didn't see anything mentioned about, apologies if it was answered before.

When I did my hand rig, I used LEFT_HAND and RIGHT_HAND as base for the palm, and the finger mBones for the fingers themselves. I am not setting any joint offsets. The rig behaves as expected within 3ds max, though when I import into SL, while the hand scales correctly, the fingers seem to be offset backward from the hand as far as I can see. I can provide screenshots of needed.

Also, I am SO glad being able to straight import my .dae files finally rather than having to paste missing bone information. Feels good, man.

[TPaden Bobair]

Is the scaling of the new bento bones supported on the main grid?

[Catwa Clip]

So sorry to repeat this issue i'm having its not bento related but it is effecting my bento head, and i really do not know what to tell the costumer when reporting it to me. its the system alpha lashes appearing. if at least i know the reason why they appear all of the sudden. then go away without any reasons!
I would advice the costumers to mask their lashes texture and never use eyeshadow appliers when advanced lighting is on, but i already they dont like that solution... If anyone would suggest a better solution i would be very thankful <3


This bug was already reported on 03/Nov/13 but was never fixed!

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-4357?

Save

[Polymath Snuggler]

Anytime someone puts the word "Scaling" in a sentence I start to get fits.

Bone scaling happens with avatar slider use ONLY.

You cannot upload animations that change the scaling of ANYTHING anywhere.

 

Bento just got an RC viewer! Bento is functional on the main grid ( Agni )

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Catwa Clip wrote:

So sorry to repeat this issue i'm having its not bento related but it is effecting my bento head, and i really do not know what to tell the costumer when reporting it to me. its the system alpha lashes appearing. if at least i know the reason why they appear all of the sudden. then go away without any reasons!

I would advice the costumers to mask their lashes texture and never use eyeshadow appliers when advanced lighting is on, but i already they dont like that solution... If anyone would suggest a better solution i would be very thankful <3



This bug was already reported on 

03/Nov/13

but was never fixed!

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-4357

?

 

 

Save

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It looks like you're using textures to form your alphas. Since you're trying to completely erase the body underneath, just put a check in the boxes next to the slots for each texture. That will completely turn the rendering off for that section of the base avatar and there should be no alpha blending issues.

[Vir Linden]

This isn't really a Bento topic, but it came up at yesterday's Bento user group meeting. Question was whether you could include gestures in outfits. The answer is that you can. What seems to work currently is:

• Drag a gesture into an outfit. This will create a link to the gesture in that outfit.
• Wear the outfit. The linked gesture will become activated
• Wear some other outfit. The linked gesture will become inactivated.

Dragging into the Current Outfit Folder does not appear to work.

[Catwa Clip]

thanks alot will try that!

<3

[Whirly Fizzle]

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Vir Linden wrote:

This isn't really a Bento topic, but it came up at yesterday's Bento user group meeting. Question was whether you could include gestures in outfits. The answer is that you can. What seems to work currently is:

• Drag a gesture into an outfit. This will create a link to the gesture in that outfit.
• Wear the outfit. The linked gesture will become activated
• Wear some other outfit. The linked gesture will become inactivated.

Dragging into the Current Outfit Folder does not appear to work.

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You can also copy/paste a gesture into an outfit folder.

[Whirly Fizzle]

Damien Fate has released some awesome Bento wings.

http://blog.damienfate.com/?p=1891

 

[Psistorm Voxel]

I've put some more research into the hand issue I was seeing. Apparently, with your skeleton, I have to rotate R_HAND and L_HAND forward by 10 degrees, then SL will display my hands as they are in 3dsmax.

Also a quick question, since I about finished my female rig and am about to begin the male one. Is your skeleton universal in some way so I can rig both easily, or should I rig on a different male skeleton for now, and retarget later on if/when you release a male skeleton speficially? Because iirc they do use different bone lengths in some cases

[Medhue Simoni]

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Vir Linden wrote:

This isn't really a Bento topic, but it came up at yesterday's Bento user group meeting. Question was whether you could include gestures in outfits. The answer is that you can. What seems to work currently is:

• Drag a gesture into an outfit. This will create a link to the gesture in that outfit.
• Wear the outfit. The linked gesture will become activated
• Wear some other outfit. The linked gesture will become inactivated.

Dragging into the Current Outfit Folder does not appear to work.

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Although I love that we, as individual creators, can add gestures to our outfits, but this does nothing to help the consumer. The process of adding gestures is in no way intuitive, or even remotely similar to creating an Outfit. Now, maybe if we, creators, can give out Outfits with gestures in them, then this would be all good, but we can't do that. IMHO, gestures need to be added to Outfits the same way that ALL other things are added to the Outfits.

[Caian Nagy]

Inverse Kinematics  need for Arms, Legs, Head and Hips. So would be easyer to create animations for any variation of Av heights.

Specific IK bones could be triggered by scripting  to move to certain prim or Bone of another Avatar, this would make animations much more imersive and smooth, avoiding cliping or wrong positioning of limbs, head and hips.

Some specifications would be needed, as how far should the IK BONE stays from target, and what speed it should move to that target.

PLEASE INVERSE KINEMATICS NOW! 

Love you all =* ♥ 

[Polymath Snuggler]

Uh... IK joints are part of what you call a "control rig"

 

You create and append a control rig TO bones.  They're not part of the skeleton, they're what you, the creator append to the skeleton to make it move... Or ~ you know, buy Avastar, because they do all that for you.