Project Bento Feedback Thread

[Utilizator Mode]

Mesh joint offsets were something that we could do from the very start, but they were buggy and unreliable and that’s why we need the animation joint offsets to begin with. And not only that, you cant carry mesh joint offsets over from avatar to avatar, you cant activate and deactivate the deformation whenever you need it, mesh joint offsets dont work with fitted mesh either(or at least didnt work back when fitted mesh was still a new thing) and animation offsets are not just for deformers! theres countless other applications for it. Like for example, comedic animations like exaggerated walks that stretch out legs as they are being put forward, Or maybe a Robot avatar that changes its shape, making it’s legs, arms and torso longer, or extends his arm forward to grab something, or even transforming from a tank into a robot.

Furthermore, like everyone already mentioned, removing joint position animation would undermine the whole face bone thing, you cant animate the face with just rotations, you need to move the bones around to lets say make a big wide smile. You say you never added this ability to the game intentionally and the code for it somehow “doesnt work particularly well in the viewer”? It works pretty well for us, why not just leave it as it is? its working perfectly fine for what we are using it for and not like its crashing or causing any problems. Too lazy to improve it? Fine dont improve it, but dont remove it either just because you personally lack the imagination of how such a feature could be used it in content creation, leave that to us the creators.
Because if you do, you will not be removing a limitation from SL, you will be replacing one limitation with another limitation and for no good reason. Putting a new tool in our tool box and taking away an old tool who’s function the new tool cannot do.

[Tornleaf]

I think LL's big issue with translated animations is how it wrecks the rig until relog, and even undeformer animations can never return you back to your original shape. My undeformers just snap you back to the default female, so most people have to relog anyhow.

As someone mentioned earlier, if we could find a way to have the rig snap back to its original shape/joint positions offset shape after the animation stops, we could potentially avoid a deformed rig. I don't know how plausible that is though. I'm a cg generalist, not a coder. But if this is indeed what LL is concerned about, I'd urge them to find a way around animations jamming bones after they've finished playing instead of taking them away altogether.

As Kitsune was saying about mesh heads with joint positions, it would effect the entire body, and I can see how translated animations could get around that via prorities and selective keys. I like joint positions but in that case I see how it could be troublesome. I think that's worth looking at, as I've seen folk struggle with putting their specific mesh body torsos on joint-positioned mermaid tails and running into issues, which is really too bad.

[Teager]

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Tornleaf wrote:

I think LL's big issue with translated animations is how it wrecks the rig until relog

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This argument is moot if the viewer cannot sort joint offsets correctly. We deform anyway. Animations can and do fix that.

Example of an avatar that failed to load its joint offsets and has no additional animations acting upon it - https://gyazo.com/3b06ca6a0ac4ad4cf539e988931ad313

 

[for LL, not for you, because I know you've seen it <3]

Avatar begins with incorrectly loaded joint positions, then an animation kicks in to fix the joint positions -

https://gyazo.com/4235f82e234b6adc2738ba030d363e2f

Each person's viewer loads their joint positions individually. User A's viewer might fail to load User B's joint positions, while User B's joint positions loaded fine on their own screen. Without animated deformers, User B would have to continually detach and reattach their avatar until everyone on sim sees them correctly. With a deformer, everyone sees User B exactly the same.

 

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Tornleaf wrote:

and even undeformer animations can never return you back to your original shape. My undeformers just snap you back to the default female, so most people have to relog anyhow.

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This is actually false. If you just upload animations with the mbones, the volumes, and the attachment points all in the starting positions straight out of avastar, I'd say you get at least 99% back to the original shape. At the very least, it's incrediby difficult to see any lingering deformations with the human eye. I make sure that all of my avatars play these undeform animations when they are detached, and since you use the same scripter I do, your avatars have the same capability. If all mesh avatar creators would be responsible with their undeformers, and/or if undeform objects were more widely circulated, this would not be a problem except in cases where the sl viewer wildly deforms the avatar in a way that is not caused by any animation at all.

 

Here's the same avatar as aboved when the outfit is replaced with a human one. When detached, the mesh plays animations that undeform mbones, attachment points, and volumes, so no lingering deformation is left. 

https://gyazo.com/80c7d2bb679c0c12cfe95881e4f0dfd7

(Note when the avatar goes into T-pose; that's the undeformer doing its thing.)

 

 

I'm not saying your points above are incorrect, because I think you're right in believing that that's LL's line of thought. I'm just pointing out that they are invalid arguments.

[Tornleaf]

Regarding Rand's wolf there, whoa. I've never seen joint positions glitch out like that, at least not on firestorm. But clearly it happens. I'd say that's a solid issue! Linden Labs, if the aim is to make the nonhuman/nondefault avatar makers rely heavily upon naught but the joint positions checkbox, I'd recommend fixing that issue as soon as possible. !

As for undeformer animations, my customers note that snapping back the a-point and volume bones to default female have issues, especially with fitted bodies. (I've got a-point and volume bone undeformed animations, to be clear) I haven't seen too many issues with mBones, yeah, but the formers just have been my experience, personally. They're not terribly major issues, but they're off just enough to vex picky customers. I'll say this is admittedly anecdotal, so I could be off about some things. I could try to make a gif of it maybe.

One way or another, I still support keeping translations. Like Teager was saying earlier, I don't see the harm in allowing it and mentioning in the documentation that translated animations without correction could deform the next mesh the user puts on. That way if smoothly swapping vastly different rigs without hitch becomes commonplace and expected from customers, the customers themselves, with their money, can urge creators to have failsafes in place, such as mine and Teager's undeformer scripts/animations, or making sure to export animations without translations. Ideally it'd take care of itself.

[Utilizator Mode]

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Tornleaf wrote:

As Kitsune was saying about mesh heads with joint positions, it would effect the entire body, and I can see how translated animations could get around that via prorities and selective keys. I like joint positions but in that case I see how it could be troublesome. I think that's worth looking at, as I've seen folk struggle with putting their specific mesh body torsos on joint-positioned mermaid tails and running into issues, which is really too bad.

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That is a good point that i forgot to mention, mesh joint offsets effect every joint in the body while animation offsets only effect the joints you need and nothing else.

 

 

Also, doesnt stop all animations and fix deformations buttons in avatar health menu fix it?

[Degra Dockal]

Heya! Just wanted to add my two cents into this awesome project.

I've been experimenting with rigged, animated mesh heads for personal use since about 2011 or 2012, and may have found another reason why bone translations would be greatly appreciated. 

While the 30 extra bones in the face are absolutely amazing to mess with, and they do work relatively well, Louis here has a rather.. long head, and with the facial animation bones as they are, they sorta don't match up all that well (the mouth and nose, mostly, and the eyes just a bit, but the eyes being off-center may have been my fault). 

https://gyazo.com/771a65a08858d2da6f86b2ffc4bb381a

 

If i were able to move those bones where they 'should' be according to his facial structure, then I could make the corner-lip bone actually do more than make him smile/look a little constipated. 

If that's possible already, then I do apologize for posting without testing that just yet, but it seemed like something relavent to add! 8D

[RipleyVonD]

I think to animate face bones with rotations only some bones on the face would need an extra bone/joint at the tip to compensate for angle, like the lips for instance and maybe the eyebrows. It does mean a few extra bones but it would help. This isn't the preferred way to animate face bones animators know this but it seems "rotations only' is important to the Lab.

[Tornleaf]

Here's some super rough weights and animation on a fennec fox I'm making. This is done with translations. There was no way to even close the eyes without translations. Tongue works good, 2 joints is plenty, jaw's fine, used some of the nose and eyebrow bones for whiskers. Glad to have proper ear bones, though I'd love another joint for floppy ears.

Does anyone know what the alt eye bones are supposed to be for...?

 



[karole Batista]

hello to all,

first i want to apologize if i did post in the wrong forum!!

i am preparing a topic for my facebook page about project Bento and honnestly i did start reading all your views here but i feel like a noob !!!

i want to explain in my topic on a way very simple what this project bento will give to the residents of second life.

In term of avatar look and animations.... but i feel confuse after reading your posts ... so if someone can simply and with exemples answer my question i will be very happy.

QUESTION: what will be our avatar or second life with project bento and add please few exemples.

Thank you a lot for your answers and have all nice hollidays

kind regards

karole batista

[Kitsune Shan]

Basically, as have been said already, this project adds new bones to the default avatar making possible to rig and animate new things. The default avatar won't change so this only applies to new meshes. As for examples, you can now make mesh hands and animate every finger, make a mesh head and animate it's facial expressions, blink, open mouth, etc; there are also new bones that makes possible to rig and animate ears, tails and wings. All those bones can be also be "moved" to different positions to achieve different results. For example, wings could be moved to do extra arms for some kind of Sci-fi avatar or animal. The most important to know is that all those new bones aren't made to affect the default avatar, so you won't likely see hands or facial animations for it nor is intention of this project tho. We surely will see this reflected soon on common products like hands being now animated rather than having to use several hands posed hidden with alpha to change pose. Hope that helps helps a bit to make it clear. There is also a lot of articles among SL bloggers that may cover a bit deeper the project. 

[Kitsune Shan]

That animation is pretty awesome. Did you put the bones at the tip of the ears for the smooth bending? Perhaps the same image with visible bones would be very interesting to see and surely would help for LL to see how bones translates. 

[karole Batista]

hi kitsune,

thank you so much for your reply! yes this make me less confuse! i did read sl blogs i found but none spoke very simply for a noob like me hahahahaha.

And a lot did just copy paste the message from Lindens Lab....

So if i resume it will make for all the creators things easier than before?

i was expecting to see some much better avatars like Daz but maybe bones modification will not affect this?

waiting your answer

kind regards

karole batista

[Whirly Fizzle]

Bento Mocap Fingers, by Abramelin Wolfe.

[Murgatroyd Zauberflote]

I'd like to note that taking out animated bone positions doesn't just affect avatar creators (though that is a very big thing), but it also affects the ability to animate attachments, which allows for things like weaving a knife between your fingers (which would be POSSIBLE with bento!) and changing the position of a spear from resting to attack position.  I don't know if LL also plans on disabling rotations for attachment bones, which also don't 'undeform' on their own, but that would also kill the ability to rotate weapons in hand.

I don't know how many weapon creators on SL take advantage of that sort of animation, but I just started to, myself, and this would kill a cool thing that I discovered.

Linden Labs, please reconsider disabling joint position animation.  I believe it does more harm than good.

[Kitsune Shan]

Well it depends. If we talk about mesh bodies like Maitreya or Belleza, then those won't see any benefit asides of changing the static hands for animated ones. Where we will see big changes is on custom avatars like furries or others types that make usage of all bones like could be animals too.

[Tornleaf]

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Kitsune Shan wrote:

That animation is pretty awesome. Did you put the bones at the tip of the ears for the smooth bending? Perhaps the same image with visible bones would be very interesting to see and surely would help for LL to see how bones translates. 

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Thanks You're the second person that's asked this which is heartening. The bones are at the base of the ears, but carefully weighting them and putting them at the tip is a good idea.

[karole Batista]

thank you so much kitsune for your answers; i feel less confuse now.

Have a nice merry christmas.

 

[Polymath Snuggler]

I would urge you to not make any specific declarations about what Bento can and cannot do, as we, the designer community work with Linden Labs to try and sort out what is needed and what is not.  Please don't rush to conclusions on this ~ especially with a limited understanding of the material.

 

The last thing we want to do is promise the community at large something that cannot be delivered.

[karole Batista]

this is not my style..... just want to make things clear for the community....anyway ty for your reply.kind regards, karole batista

[Vir Linden]

We've put together some additional documentation about the avatar skeleton extensions - please see https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/BentoSkeletonGuide for a list of the new bones and attachment points.

[Vir Linden]

You said:

"I think to animate face bones with rotations only some bones on the face would need an extra bone/joint at the tip to compensate for angle, like the lips for instance and maybe the eyebrows. It does mean a few extra bones but it would help. This isn't the preferred way to animate face bones animators know this but it seems "rotations only' is important to the Lab."

Any specifics on which bones or how you would use them? If you want to post a more detailed request, submitting a JIRA would be helpful. Thanks.

[Vir Linden]

The alt eye bones are mainly there in case you want to take over animating the eyes yourself. With the standard eye bones, the viewer takes control of the eyes directly. I suppose you could also use them for a creature with extra eyes.

See https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/BentoSkeletonGuide for a bit more info on the motivations for the various bones.

[Vir Linden]

Re: what is the "anim" format, it's a little confusing. Basically what is called anim format in SL is just a direct dump of the contents of one of our keyframe animation objects. There are other formats called ".anim" out there that have nothing to do with the the SL one. So a tool will only produce a .anim file that we recognize if it's specifically designed for that, and such a file won't be useful outside of Second Life.

[Vir Linden]

Sorry, if that was unclear. We're not planning to revisit fitted mesh as part of Bento - what I meant about adding support for more sliders was that we hope to have more of the new bones hooked up to more of the existing sliders. For example, some of the sliders that affect the nose of the default avatar might also be connected to the new Bento nose bones. But since a lot of the existing sliders are based on blend shapes, there isn't any guarantee that we can get something equivalent in all cases. Basically we will do what we can, updating some subset of the sliders.

Having a more complete solution for mesh avatar customization would be great, and it's possible we will get a chance to address it at some point, but it's not specifically part of Bento.

[Polymath Snuggler]

I posted some more specific feedback with a bone-set breakdown on a feature request JIRA Vir.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-11031

 

It is worth mentioning that range of movement not covered by the skeleton has "traditionally" been handled by multi-mesh alpha layer swapping meshes which are absurdly high in polycount and even higher in render complexity.

ANY improvements over the 1.2 million tri Catwa Heads is an improvement.

 

But I think the community at large at this point is still exceedingly curious exactly what the nature of the problem is with the current implementation of translation based animations?  Is it a latency problem?  A computational issue? A security issue?  Why can't we have our cake and eat it too?