Project Bento Feedback Thread

[Gaia Clary]

Hi;

I see an asymmetry in the Attachment points for the Upper Arms. Below is a snapshot from Aditi (with my Avatar on a T pose stand and Show Bones enabled). I have attached 2 small spheres to R Upper Arm and L Upper Arm:



In blender the attachment points are also not symmetric. Here you can see that the L Upper Arm attachment point is farer away from the avatar center and lower in Z compared to the R Upper Arm:



Now i was curious and took a look into the lad file. And there i found the attachment point entries indeed are not defined symmetric:

<attachment_pointid="18"group="1"pie_slice="0"name="R Upper Arm"joint="mShoulderRight"location="ATTACH_RUARM"rotation="0 0 0"visible_in_first_person="true" />...<attachment_pointid="20"group="3"pie_slice="4"name="L Upper Arm"joint="mShoulderLeft"location="ATTACH_LUARM"rotation="0 0 0"visible_in_first_person="true" />

Is this intentional? Or is this a known issue?

 

[Polymath Snuggler]

I noticed that too ~ while staring at the LAD file, but I figured it's always been like that~ since it wasn't "Bento" I didn't see fit to mention it.  I figured everything that's worn on an attachment point has always been adjusted to that node position.

[Whirly Fizzle]

Gaia, I believe this is ARVD-49 - Avatar_lad.xml having non-symetrical attachment offsets for several attachment slots

[Bond Harrington]

---

Do you have a link to the Collada file that you downloaded? I checked the file:

https://bitbucket.org/lindenlab/sl-sample-content/raw/tip/models/collada/female_2016_08_05.dae.zip

The Armature in this file has the correct orientation, so it should work for animations. The mesh objects in that file indeed have rotations of 90 degrees, but this should not matter for your case.

---

Yes, that's definitely the file.

As for the other stuff, I tried rotating the Avatar and then the mPelvis bone and neither seem to do the trick. Whenever I select armature in Object mode, it goes straight to the bone.

 

I've gone ahead and taken screens of what I have in Blender and how it appears in SL.



[Gaia Clary]

• Select your Armature
• In the footer menu bar of the 3D View change from "Pose Mode" to Object Mode"
• In the properties bar (right side of the 3D View) check that rotation is set to 0,0,0 for x,y,z
• Check that Scale is set to 1,1,1 for x,y,z
• Select your Mesh head
• In the properties bar (right side of the 3D View) check that rotation is set to 0,0,0 for x,y,z and scale is 1,1,1 for x,y,z

 

[Vir Linden]

There are some asymmetries in the avatar, both for the bone positions and the attachment points. I doubt that these were deliberate, but at this point we're stuck with them because there's so much existing content based on that behavior.

We have tried to make sure all the newly added bento bones and attachment points are symmetrical - if you know of any places where that's not the case, please let us know right away.

[MoonHowler Snowpaw]

Isn't it technically possible for SL to support more than 1 avatar type? I mean not now, but at all in future maybe it's better to separate avatars to different types, like an asymmetric default human, a symmetric  bento all in one, and maybe a quadrupped animal? Most of existing clothing should still work i think, because these asymmetries are just tiny comparing to sizes of clothes.

[Vir Linden]

Well, bento itself is an extension to the default avatar skeleton, which means that it inherits any existing asymmetries from the default avatar (hopefully without creating any new ones). Supporting multiple skeletons or per-avatar skeletons would be a significant new project - not impossible but not something we currently have scheduled either.

[mahadma]

I seem to have run into a slight problem. Since the last update I am unable to import files with joint offsets. Well apart from the show joint in the preview bug this is a new one. The problem is it seem that SL viewer is acting up since even old files that I am certain were working before arent workin now. Is there a direct link to the latest viewer? since when I tried to reinstall it wanted to update immediately. Might be some residue files.

[Whirly Fizzle]

You can download the latest Bento-RC viewer here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Release/5.0.0.320815

The autoupdate seems to be barfing on this version & trying to force an update back to the default release viewer.  There have been several complaints about that.

Uninstall the current Bento-RC you have installed & make sure all files have been removed from the install folder after running the uninstaller & then manually install from the link above.

[mahadma]

Thankes  kaay so the import works now tho the new mesh i just made apparently is the source of the problem. I guess Ill wait till the preview system works again

[DS Diavolo]

Since 2 days I can't login to Aditi, anyone else who has problems?

[Whirly Fizzle]

Aditi was down over the weekend. It's back up now.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-40760

[Medhue Simoni]

My elephant is now in dancing school. Here he is starting to get the rhythm.

[Bianca Erin]

I am a animation creator. Is there any specific program to create new bento''s animations? Cause the ones I have they are all for the normal animations.. "/

[DS Diavolo]

Thank you! I was afraid I had done something dangerous...

[Cathy Foil]

---

Bianca Erin wrote:

I am a animation creator. Is there any specific program to create new bento''s animations? Cause the ones I have they are all for the normal animations.. "/

---

If you are using or prefer Blender then Avastar is your best bet.  If you use Maya or prefer Maya then MayaStar has the ability to create and export Bento animations.  If you use Maya and don't want to buy MayaStar you can use Samantha Patterson's open source Maya BVH exporter.  You can get it on the Bento Testing page. LINK

Hope that helps.

Cathy

[Fiona Branagh]

I've been looking through the thread and haven't found a discussion about this, but maybe it's there and I'm just not seeing it.

Anyway, I am using the attachment points for the hind limbs, which are paired up with Hind 4 bones.

When I run an animation, the objects that were perfectly attached to those bodyparts in the default position, move along with the bones as they should, but are offset to the side quite a bit. As soon as I stop the animation, the attached objects jump back into proper place on the avatar.

Any thoughts about why this might be happening for me to look into?

[daFlesh]

hello, I was wondering

1.If  "remove unused influences" tab must be ticked or not, while binding mesh to bento skeleton.

2. As far as I know, it was causing issues, to import whole skeleton, there was a upload limit with bones

I mean : for example if I only rig a hand, I should delete other bones. (at least up to a number, -Ive forgotton that-)

Is that changed ? 

 



 

 

[Vir Linden]

There is a limit to how many bones a mesh can be rigged to - more than 110 joints will be rejected. This is a per-mesh limit, not a per-file limit, so if you have a model broken down into pieces, the total number of joints rigged to could be higher than 110, as long as no piece exceeds that limit.

There is no longer a lower limit - previously you needed to list at least 20 bones even if you weren't using that many, but with Bento you can list as few joints as you are really rigging to. Generally the recommendation is to rig to and list as few joints as possible, because this makes it easier to combine multiple meshes on the same avatar.

[daFlesh]

Thanks for your feedback Vir,

I am a beginner with bento, perhaps a silly question, how many bones in bento skeleton? (not sure where to check this data in maya) if number is over 110, it means that I just cant bind (pic1) whole bento skeleton to my single one piece mesh, and it will give error while uploading in SL ? I know,  the parts behind is unused, better to delete them. But I just want to figure out, whats possible & whats not. so if I made a centaur with wings and tail, (say all bones used) I can upload it as a single mesh piece or .. not ? 

I just couldnt test that, because I had another lovely issue with dae_fbx importer. (pic2) It was working with old skeleton fitmesh but now, not sure whats wrong. I use mayastar 5, its great,Cathy just made an update. But it seems like I am missing something there

pic1

 PS : I learnt that ; pic2 isnt a real error," Its simply telling you that you "forgot" to add some bones to your mesh" in my case its  fine because the body doesnt include mhind, mwing mtail parts. thats why it s a warning, not error.



pic2



[Cathy Foil]

In the past you had to have "Remove Unused Influences" turned off but with Bento you can now have that turned on.

I see your avatar you are not using the hind legs or wings or tail.  You do not need to Smooth Bind your mesh to them.

If you want to use all the finger bones and face bones in your mesh you will need to make either the head separate or the hands separate meshes or you will be over the 110 bone limit.

Pick just the bones you want to rig to before you do your smooth bind.  You can see how many you have selected by clicking turning on your "Object Details" display and look at "Selected Objects:" readout.  Turn it on here Display>Heads Up Display>Object Details.

For the Bind Pose warnings you are getting you can try two things.  1. In the MayaStar menu go to Skin Weight Tools>Custom Bind Pose>Create Bind Pose and click Create Bind Pose.  This might fix those warnings.  I am assuming you are getting these errors when trying to Smooth Bind your mesh to the new Bento Skeleton in MayaStar.  Or 2. you can delete all the mesh currently rigged to the skeleton and in the Outliner click Display>DAG Objects Only to turn off DAG Objects Only and now in the Outliner you can find and delete the bind pose.  It will most likely be named bindPose1 or it could have some other number at the end.  Now you should be able to Smooth Bind your mesh to the MayaStar skeleton if you weren't able to before.

Hope that helps.
Cathy

PS I would also turn off "Allow Multiple Bind Poses".  I am not sure how well it plays with MayaStar.

[Medhue Simoni]

So, I'm in the middle of releasing the Elephant, and I'm thinking about how the heck people are going to even know when new products are available. Yeah, we all have our own blogs and stuff, but there is NOWHERE in the SL properties that allows us to announce anything. I sell on numerous platforms, all of which allow creators to post new products in their forums. ALL except SL. Years ago, we were allowed to post products in the forums, on a thread specifically for new product releases. Today, there is no such thing. Yes, LL has improved many things in SL as of recently, but the 1 thing that LL has not improved, at all, is how we can market our products. Having a place to post in the forums is the simplist and the very LEAST that LL could do to improve marketing products. And guess what? We, meaning LL and SL creators, both win. Why this was ever removed blows my mind.

[daFlesh]

Hey Cathy, ty for suggestions, it really helped much , I just learnt some new pretty helpful points 

annd  that warning-error window wasnt coming up when smooth bind , it came up when I tried to export my dae. file out of SL, I just learnt Its simply telling me that I "forgot" to add some bones to the mesh". In my case it is  fine because my mesh body doesnt include mhind, mwing mtail parts. So it s a warning about that, not an error and I can just upload the mesh in sl without problem 

[Vir Linden]

The best documentation on the updated skeleton seems to be here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/BentoSkeletonGuide although it may need a bit of updating.

The current Bento totals are: 133 conventional bones (up from 26), 26 collision volumes (unchanged), 55 attachment points (up from 40)