Project Bento Feedback Thread

[Medhue Simoni]

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Cathy Foil wrote:

 

So you could make your smile instead of using 350 frames with 175 frames and then Blender export it with 15 FPS or with Maya edit the BVH file to 

Frame Time: 0.0

66666

I am no animation expert but I been doing some experiments and this is what I been able to gather.

If you are using Blender you could just export out as an .anim file.  These types of files bypass the optimization process.

However just like it is good to be an efficient modeler for mesh animating with as few frames as possible will also help decrease your files size and lag and should load faster for your customers.

Medhue knows much much more about animating than I ever will.  Perhaps he will weigh in on this topic.

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I should probably add that it is not just a matter of changing the frame rate. For example, if you make an animation that is 2 seconds long, but at 30 fps, then you have a total of 60 frames. If you change the frame rate to 20 fps, then in order to keep the animation with the same timing as the original of 2 second, you'd have to change your total frames to 40. In Blender, this is done easily by scaling the frames, which I usually do in the Dopesheet/Action editor. I have no idea how this is done in Maya tho.

[DreamCrawler Martin]

Hello Cathy, thank you for answering.

I bought your mayastar. Can not use it directly, since i use custom mesh models, but it solved the main issue with the info you gave about the scale difference when uploading models vs animating, aka solved my maya to SL workflow. Thank you for the great work!

So yes I am creating them with Maya. I already got closer to the exact issue, seems its the BVH parser not processing translations from a BVH correctly.

I have changed the framerate as you suggested: 15 FPS, directly editing the BVH. Animation is 50 frame total. Bone movements (rot and trans) from 0 to 25.

After parsed, rotations stop at frame 25. Translations go on until frame 50. It really seems to be SL Client's BVH parser issue (because the parsing is done client sided, right?)

I am not a big fan of blender. But made that same animation test with avastar template. Found out you cannot export translations on BVH format on avastar (makes me wonder why). If you export on .anim file everything works fine, translations stop where they're supposed to. But again i need to animate on maya, there are so many tools i use so using blender would limit me too much.

[Gaia Clary]

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DreamCrawler Martin wrote:

I am not a big fan of blender. But made that same animation test with avastar template. Found out you cannot export translations on BVH format on avastar (makes me wonder why).

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The bvh-exporter in Avastar-2 is capable to export also with translations. I admit there was a bug in the user interface that has hidden the option in some of the beta versions.

However we found that the .anim format always seems to provide better results regarding precision of the imported animations. Maybe because the .anim format does not get optimized during import?

[DreamCrawler Martin]

Hello! thank you for replying

I did as you recommended, reduced the framerate to 15 fps, reduce the frame length to 50 (no need to specify the FPS in maya, the bvh exporter will just reproduce all the frames in the timeline, all you need to do is specify the frame speed in the BVH after exporting).

So in this 50 frame animation I reproduce the issue as basic as possible:

1 Add mFaceJaw, mFaceLipCornerLeft & mFacelipCornerRight keyframes on frame 0. (Both rotation and translation, all 3 axes, 6 curves)
2 Go to frame 25 and Rotate mFaceJaw bone to open mouth. Then rotate & translate both LipCorner bones to give the avatar a nice smile.
3 Keyframe all 3 bones on frame 25 (both rotation and translation, all 3 axes, 6 curves)
4 Export a 50 length animation in BVH format.
5 Result: Once in BVH uploader preview you can see the issue: Jaw rotates correctly until half of the animation (frame 25) but the mFaceLipCorner bones keep translating until frame 50 (end of animation).

So much lower framerate, just 50 frames total, just 3 keyframed bones. Issue still reproduces when uploading the BVH.

I know using blender with .anim format solves it. But it literally stops any maya user to animate.

[DreamCrawler Martin]

Gaia, After reading your last message I just tested with your lastest avastar version with the intention of reproducing the same issue when parsing a BVH with translations made in blender

Yet again, for me, blender avastar BVH export does not seem to include translations. Or if it does, it gets, somehow, ignored by SL. I do the exact same animation from my previous post (with the 5 steps) on the bento angel. I export as BVH, and nothing, only rotations. I export it as anim, and rotates and translates perfectly. Could you please please please have a check? Its probably me (again I'm not quite good with blender) but I would like to try to reproduce this same issue from a different source other than maya, to discard its not a bad BVH exporter in maya.

[Gaia Clary]

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DreamCrawler Martin wrote:

Gaia, After reading your last message I just tested with your lastest avastar version with the intention of reproducing the same issue when parsing a BVH with translations made in blender

Yet again, for me, blender avastar BVH export does not seem to include translations. Or if it does, it gets, somehow, ignored by SL.

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It depends what version of Avastar you use. For example Avastar-2.0-23 was never tested for BVH exporting... Also as far as i recall the option to allow "with translation" was unintentionally not showing for the BVH Exporter for a couple of Avastar-2 versions. We did not see that because we tend to use .anim all the time :matte-motes-sour: I believe this has been fixed at least in avastar-2.0-37 but i will take look into this before Avastar-2.0-38 gets uploaded to make sure it works there.

What i know for sure is that the BVH Importer seems to neglect subtle animations especially regarding lips movements.

[Medhue Simoni]

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DreamCrawler Martin wrote:

Hello! thank you for replying

I did as you recommended, reduced the framerate to 15 fps, reduce the frame length to 50 (no need to specify the FPS in maya, the bvh exporter will just reproduce all the frames in the timeline, all you need to do is specify the frame speed in the BVH after exporting).

So in this 50 frame animation I reproduce the issue as basic as possible:

1 Add mFaceJaw, mFaceLipCornerLeft & mFacelipCornerRight keyframes on frame 0. (Both rotation and translation, all 3 axes, 6 curves)

2 Go to frame 25 and Rotate mFaceJaw bone to open mouth. Then rotate & translate both LipCorner bones to give the avatar a nice smile.

3 Keyframe all 3 bones on frame 25 (both rotation and translation, all 3 axes, 6 curves)

4 Export a 50 length animation in BVH format.

5 Result: Once in BVH uploader preview you can see the issue: Jaw rotates correctly until half of the animation (frame 25) but the mFaceLipCorner bones keep translating until frame 50 (end of animation).

So much lower framerate, just 50 frames total, just 3 keyframed bones. Issue still reproduces when uploading the BVH.

I know using blender with .anim format solves it. But it literally stops any maya user to animate.

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If you have the character in Blender with Avastar also, then I would test that bvh file from Maya in Blender. Avastar has a very good retargeting system, if the animation doesn't convert over perfectly. I'm not saying do it all in Blender, but just to test Maya's bvh exporter using Blender.

[Lilith Reina]

Hi guys, I restore the thread with a direct, unanswered question:

How can I realize an un-deformed anim to fix the shape after a translation animation?

I'm using Avastar 2RC5 and exporting in .anim.

I tried everything with no success, perhaps you have the answer.

[Medhue Simoni]

26 minutes ago, Lilith Reina said:

Hi guys, I restore the thread with a direct, unanswered question:

How can I realize an un-deformed anim to fix the shape after a translation animation?

I'm using Avastar 2RC5 and exporting in .anim.

I tried everything with no success, perhaps you have the answer.

If I understand your question correctly, then you can't really do this.

If you are using a Bento head, and you want as many of the sliders to work as possible, then you can not use translation animation, for the most part, besides with bones that are not affected by the sliders. Animation will not fix things when a translation animation is played on these heads. You would need to wear a default body shape, then rightclick/Reset skeleton and animation, and then wear your custom body shape again, to get back to your actual shape.

[Lilith Reina]

1 minute ago, Medhue Simoni said:

If I understand your question correctly, then you can't really do this.

If you are using a Bento head, and you want as many of the sliders to work as possible, then you can not use translation animation, for the most part, besides with bones that are not affected by the sliders. Animation will not fix things when a translation animation is played on these heads. You would need to wear a default body shape, then rightclick/Reset skeleton and animation, and then wear your custom body shape again, to get back to your actual shape.

I see. Since many anims of different creators use translaction anims without deformation (two of them: Catwa and Lelutka) I though that the solution was close. I'm literally using a Catwa anim with tralsaction on a Lelutka bento head and everything works good, I can go also on the other way around (Lelutka anim on a Catwa head) with no trouble. No default body shape and no reset skeleton, the shape remain the same after the anim. perhaps I miss something in the process.

[Medhue Simoni]

5 minutes ago, Lilith Reina said:

I see. Since many anims of different creators use translaction anims without deformation (two of them: Catwa and Lelutka) I though that the solution was close. I'm literally using a Catwa anim with tralsaction on a Lelutka bento head and everything works good, I can go also on the other way around (Lelutka anim on a Catwa head) with no trouble. No default body shape and no reset skeleton, the shape remain the same after the anim. perhaps I miss something in the process.

Well, of course, I'm 1 person, and I haven't tried everything. Using some kind of bind pose feature in Blender or Maya, some of this could be possible, but I have yet to test any of this. I would also question how you know exactly that these are animation with translation? I'd also question whether is it just you seeing the heads working together, verses everyone else seeing EXACTLY what you see. Yeah, bone translation animation might seem to you to "work", but not as likely to work on you from the view of everyone else.

[Lilith Reina]

1 minute ago, Medhue Simoni said:

Well, of course, I'm 1 person, and I haven't tried everything. Using some kind of bind pose feature in Blender or Maya, some of this could be possible, but I have yet to test any of this. I would also question how you know exactly that these are animation with translation? I'd also question whether is it just you seeing the heads working together, verses everyone else seeing EXACTLY what you see. Yeah, bone translation animation might seem to you to "work", but not as likely to work on you from the view of everyone else.

Well, that kind of anims is impossible to realize only with rotations, especially tongue and lips movements.
I tried several times to animate the face with Avastar I can see the difference, rotations have huge limits. Perhaps there's a way out there to reset the bones after a transaction movement, I tried to put a frame with zero rotations and translations in the end of the anim but the result is always the same.

[Medhue Simoni]

The tongue tip, which is the part that would stick out, is not affected by the sliders. It might seem so, but that is only because it is parented to the tongue base, which is affected. So, you can move the tongue tip however you like. My advice is to use 2 animations to accomplish the goal. 1 with just the tongue tip, with bone translation, and 1 animation to handle the rest, like opening the mouth, using only rotation.

[Medhue Simoni]

31 minutes ago, Lilith Reina said:

Well, that kind of anims is impossible to realize only with rotations, especially tongue and lips movements.
I tried several times to animate the face with Avastar I can see the difference, rotations have huge limits. Perhaps there's a way out there to reset the bones after a transaction movement, I tried to put a frame with zero rotations and translations in the end of the anim but the result is always the same.

Oh, I was just informed that it is possible to have some bones with bone translation, and some bones with only rotation in 1 animation. Seems this was introduced in Avastar2, in RC4. I'll likely try to make 1 today, using the tongue.

[Lilith Reina]

2 minutes ago, Medhue Simoni said:

Oh, I was just informed that it is possible to have some bones with bone translation, and some bones with only rotation in 1 animation. Seems this was introduced in Avastar2, in RC4. I'll likely try to make 1 today, using the tongue.

Excellent, do you know which bones is possible to use with translaction please?

[Medhue Simoni]

16 minutes ago, Lilith Reina said:

Excellent, do you know which bones is possible to use with translaction please?

Here is the link to some good Bento bone info. Look near the bottom for which bones are affected by sliders.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Project_Bento_Skeleton_Guide

Not all the sliders are translated sliders tho, Many only use scaling, which means those bones can be translated without an issues. They aren't labeled which use what tho. I can't really say off the top of my head.

 

It is also worth noting, that with Avastar2, currently RC5, you can simply attach the sliders and move the sliders in Avastar, and actually see which bones are moving.

Edited March 16, 2017 by Medhue Simoni
adding stuff about sliders below the link.

[Lilith Reina]

15 hours ago, Medhue Simoni said:

Here is the link to some good Bento bone info. Look near the bottom for which bones are affected by sliders.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Project_Bento_Skeleton_Guide

Not all the sliders are translated sliders tho, Many only use scaling, which means those bones can be translated without an issues. They aren't labeled which use what tho. I can't really say off the top of my head.

 

It is also worth noting, that with Avastar2, currently RC5, you can simply attach the sliders and move the sliders in Avastar, and actually see which bones are moving.

I run some tests with Avastar, basically all the face bones are involved with the shape sliders apart the tongue. I didn't recognized the bones that use only the scaling, anyway I had confirmation that Lelutka and Catwa anims works good also on the other bento mesh heads because they use translations only for the tongue bones.

[MaxTux Wonder]

i’ve recently converted a bento avatar with avastar into the most recent rc 2.0.43 (5), when i upload it in the viewer the feet don’t touch the ground, before i had no problems with it.

check out the video https://youtu.be/vYS11oFGzs0

 

i tried to scale avatar and armature proportionally 2 meters height, and this is what i get when i import the avatar in SL (look at the picture) the avatar is stretched, how if it as to be anyway 4 meters

Edited March 17, 2017 by MaxTux Wonder

[shadow2mist]

For now SL bhv importer is limited in it's core philosophy. It's looking for changes, and if there is no change, the information is discarded.

Let's say I want to have a static animation, without any movement, but with certain bone rotation that is the same in the first key frame and the last key frame (eyes held open). Than I would have another static animation with different bone rotations (eyes held closed). I play the first (static eyes open) in a loop and then I play the second (static eyes closed) it starts and ends and I have a nice blink transition there and back. But bhv exporter won't let me even save it because there is no change. I would need to export in anim format.

Another scenario. I want to make blink animation but loop the frames when the eyes stay closed. So I key frame 1 opend, key frame 2 closed, key frame 3 still closed and key frame 4 open again. The animation is saved ok in bhv file but SL importer ignores key frame 2 because there is no change between key frame 2 and 3 and it interpolates movement from key 1 to 3. So I can't loop it the way I wanted. Again the anim format is the only way to go.

(I gave eyes as an example, I was doing mouth animation and noticed it)

So please please please Linede Labs make the anim exporter for maya. Please. Why only blender users have it and maya users are pulling their hair off?

[Medhue Simoni]

On ‎3‎/‎17‎/‎2017 at 10:43 AM, MaxTux Wonder said:

i tried to scale avatar and armature proportionally 2 meters height, and this is what i get when i import the avatar in SL (look at the picture) the avatar is stretched, how if it as to be anyway 4 meters

Convert to Bind Pose will save your unique joint positions.

 

 

As far as Ground height, and being under or above the ground. I try to figure this out when I upload, in the upload options, or I do it withing the body shapes.

Edited March 26, 2017 by Medhue Simoni

[Medhue Simoni]

Bento Gun Animation WIP

[CoCo Louis]

Hi guys, Since last year I started to make a body mesh, I wanted to update it to Bento but in avastar 2 the seams of the faces are seen, while with the old avatar are not seen. Someone here could help me please. (Excuse my bad English I hope you understand me thanks)

[Sanya Bilavio]

Hello, i'm working on animating a bento head and am running into an issue when trying to make the blinking animation. I'm using Avatstar 2 animating the default avatar included with it (using the default avatar because for some reason i could not import .dae files into blender, they just wouldn't show up in the scene)

When i animate the blink it looks totally fine in blender/avastar : https://gyazo.com/83b80ac33731c5396cb25895b83719e1

However when i uploaded it into SL it looks like this : https://gyazo.com/eaa4a6b372f3a7ab7960210a25d2da1b

For some reason its clipping inward to my eye instead of rotating downward like it should. If anyone has an answer as to why this is and how i can fix it please help <3

Edited April 4, 2017 by Sanya Bilavio

[Medhue Simoni]

3 hours ago, Sanya Bilavio said:

When i animate the blink it looks totally fine in blender/avastar : https://gyazo.com/83b80ac33731c5396cb25895b83719e1

However when i uploaded it into SL it looks like this : https://gyazo.com/eaa4a6b372f3a7ab7960210a25d2da1b

Looks like a weighting issue on the original avatar that you are playing the animation on in SL.

[Sanya Bilavio]

4 hours ago, Medhue Simoni said:

Looks like a weighting issue on the original avatar that you are playing the animation on in SL.

Hmm really?? I guess ill mess around with it some more, it would be something that simple -.- lol