Work on Animated Mesh announced.

[Medhue Simoni]

On the topic of the name NPC, I think it depends on the perspective. For me, from an animator's view point, there is no distinction between animated objects and NPCs. Whether it's human, or has other features makes no difference to me. To me, everything requires code to do something. Whether that code is to trigger talking animation, or a walk, or just swaying, it's no different to me. Everything that is animated and not a player, is an NPC. Or, at the very least, potentially an NPC.

[arton Rotaru]

I have an animation scripted with LSL only which lifts, and lowers an outboard engine on an inflatable boat. That was a tedious task and involved to split up the engine into multiple mesh assets. By adding a few bones instead, and playing a animation, I could have kept the entire engine as one mesh asset as well (think draw calls, fetching asstes etc.).

I still wouldn't call an animated outboard engine of a vehicle a character.

[Love Zhaoying]

17 hours ago, Rhonda Huntress said:

Flexi-mesh hair.

[shutup and take my money meme goes here]

Medusa hair.

[Rhonda Huntress]

6 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Medusa hair.

Yeah! 

Oooo, I want to wear cthulu for hair, too.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

23 minutes ago, Medhue Simoni said:

Yeah, of course we can use whatever bones we want, however we want, but I'm not sure I'd advise anyone to do what you described. In order to even do that, you'd need to create a whole new rig with the correct hierarchy, to control the bento bones you want. If you just used the normal human skeleton, making it into a four legged creature skeleton, the default hierarchy would still work for you, without any tricks. Anyways, I'm sure your example wasn't meant as a serious way to do something, but to stress your point.

Actually my example was absolutely serious

I'm not really sure why you would want to create a whole new rig with the correct hierarchy rather than just offset the joints on part of the existing rig but perhaps we have different things in mind?  I was imagining something very simple like a dancing teddy bear or animated toy puppy, and just disconnecting the rig at the elbow and re-positioning the bones of the hand into a simple bipedal or quadruped type skeleton just as one would do when creating any mesh with joint offsets like so...

(another even simpler example would be an animated book which opens and closes by using 2 finger bones to control the front and back cover but you get the idea).

Using a rig like this you could potentially animate the creature to move around in world (to some extent) without having to actually move the mesh object using a script, since the root bone isn't part of the quadruped rig so the object root could remain stationary while everything below the root bone animates the mesh and makes it "run around" etc. or even do the same with the other hand, leave both connected with mChest as the root and have two animated creatures interacting with each other in a single animated mesh object/rig.

[Medhue Simoni]

6 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

Actually my example was absolutely serious

That's pretty neat. I guess it is pretty simple and can use it's existing hierarchy. It's brilliant for some special use cases.

[Medhue Simoni]

35 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

I still wouldn't call an animated outboard engine of a vehicle a character.

Which begs the question. How many traits of a character need to exist before it can be qualified as 1?

[arton Rotaru]

9 minutes ago, Medhue Simoni said:

Which begs the question. How many traits of a character need to exist before it can be qualified as 1?

That's a good question indeed. Probably a very philosophical question, which I willinly leave to someone else to answer.
It's not that important for me either though. I'm just looking forward to the project, mainly because of very simple things. For example, there hasn't been a good way to have spinning wheels, with modeled spokes, on a car which also turn left/right. Turning them with bones will make that finally possible.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

Y'all are sounding like a Dilbert strip with your "Use Cases". 

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

I can see why they would be wary of the label NPC since it's quite vague and doesn't really describe what the new feature actually is, just one potential (and admittedly quite popular) application for it.  Even at the creators meeting where it was first announced there were questions about being able to use avatar shapes and physics layers with animated mesh, which suggests that people will quickly jump on the idea of "Project NPC" as actual NPC versions of avatars.

The subject of attachments and attachment points was also raised, however since animated mesh will still technically be objects it would seem more logical to focus on being able to link multiple rigged meshes together and run the same animation on all of them.  So instead of "attaching" something to an attachment point you would rig the object to the relevant bone and then rez it from the objects inventory and link it to the object.

On a related note, one thing that would be really nice to see would be the ability to link existing rigged mesh content to an animated mesh and have it animate along with that object.  This would allow people to use their existing clothing to dress animated mesh NPCs, and also enable clothing makers to link any item they've made, including those made prior to the release of animated mesh, to an animated dummy that could replace the bots that are currently used in stores.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

6 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Y'all are sounding like a Dilbert strip with your "Use Cases". 

LOL!  I've been completely nerding out ever since this got announced, I'm actually having trouble sleeping at night because I lay awake thinking about all the awesome things that can potentially be done with this new feature. 

[Medhue Simoni]

1 hour ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

LOL!  I've been completely nerding out ever since this got announced, I'm actually having trouble sleeping at night because I lay awake thinking about all the awesome things that can potentially be done with this new feature. 

How many flies do you think I can rig to the skeleton? Probably dozens! All with moving legs and flapping wings! Imagine this swarm buzzing around your next SL picnic.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

1 hour ago, Medhue Simoni said:

How many flies do you think I can rig to the skeleton? Probably dozens! All with moving legs and flapping wings! Imagine this swarm buzzing around your next SL picnic.

 

As a big fan of Ashley A. Adams work, especially some of her latest phobia series bug-monster sculpts, I'm looking forward to seeing a whole host of creepy and disgusting looking things in SL once this feature is implemented.

I must admit that upon hearing that they weren't going to support custom rigs I was initially a little disappointed, but given the number of bones available for use in the bento skeleton I think we should have plenty of options for creating weird and wonderful new things and perhaps replacing some of the inefficient, lag-inducing weird and wonderful old things too.

[HarrisonMcKenzie]

3 hours ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

I can see why they would be wary of the label NPC since it's quite vague and doesn't really describe what the new feature actually is, just one potential (and admittedly quite popular) application for it.  Even at the creators meeting where it was first announced there were questions about being able to use avatar shapes and physics layers with animated mesh, which suggests that people will quickly jump on the idea of "Project NPC" as actual NPC versions of avatars.

The subject of attachments and attachment points was also raised, however since animated mesh will still technically be objects it would seem more logical to focus on being able to link multiple rigged meshes together and run the same animation on all of them.  So instead of "attaching" something to an attachment point you would rig the object to the relevant bone and then rez it from the objects inventory and link it to the object.

On a related note, one thing that would be really nice to see would be the ability to link existing rigged mesh content to an animated mesh and have it animate along with that object.  This would allow people to use their existing clothing to dress animated mesh NPCs, and also enable clothing makers to link any item they've made, including those made prior to the release of animated mesh, to an animated dummy that could replace the bots that are currently used in stores.

Yeah. I found the questions being asked to be really odd and far off base from what Vir was talking about. To me, what he described sounded like putting an animation into a rigged shirt and the animation moving the bone structure that's already there. What everyone else seemed to be thinking was that LL is making rezzable avatars that would use some completely new mechanics, which just isn't what he was saying. Rigged objects already have bones, and this change would just allow SL to see and move those bones independently of an avatar. While you could make simple NPCs that way, it's a very different process than making an NPC. I find it really interesting that everyone seemed to hop on the most complicated solution when what Vir was describing seemed pretty simple.

[Medhue Simoni]

17 minutes ago, HarrisonMcKenzie said:

What everyone else seemed to be thinking was that LL is making rezzable avatars that would use some completely new mechanics, which just isn't what he was saying.

That is exactly what LL just announced. What they announced has nothing to do with normal player avatars. It has everything to do with rezzable independently animated objects, roaming the lands of SL. This is not speculation on my part. We've been talking about it at the meetings for months now.

Edited May 16, 2017 by Medhue Simoni

[Medhue Simoni]

can't delete posts, this is strange

Edited May 16, 2017 by Medhue Simoni

[Medhue Simoni]

4 hours ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

On a related note, one thing that would be really nice to see would be the ability to link existing rigged mesh content to an animated mesh and have it animate along with that object.  This would allow people to use their existing clothing to dress animated mesh NPCs, and also enable clothing makers to link any item they've made, including those made prior to the release of animated mesh, to an animated dummy that could replace the bots that are currently used in stores.

Theoretically, this should be possible. It's just about linking meshes. If they both use the same skeleton, then there is no reason it can't work. Maybe not with existing clothing, as they may need to be uploaded for that purpose. 

[Lucia Nightfire]

When I filed https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-11368 it was a different take on existing suggestions. It was supposed to have both agent and object qualtities. That way we could accessorize our "npc's" with ALL existing content, mod or no mod, legacy or rigged/fitted, using faux attach points, give them the ability to sit on our existing vehicles, furniture, etc.

This seemed to have been too difficult to achieve and so an easier alternative was chosen: Object based only, which I can deal with abeit the loss of many abilities.

One thing I'm still going to continue to ask to be considered is the ability, by script, to assign a body shape and avatar physics from the object's inventory so we can use existing fitted mesh content and not have to reinvent the wheel faking it with non-intuitive, completely redesigned, custom animations, clothing and bits. The adult industry is another huge market for this and it will demand the use of standard fitted mesh content.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

8 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

One thing I'm still going to continue to ask to be considered is the ability, by script, to assign a body shape and avatar physics from the object's inventory so we can use existing fitted mesh content and not have to reinvent the wheel faking it with non-intuitive, completely redesigned, custom animations, clothing and bits. The adult industry is another huge market for this and it will demand the use of standard fitted mesh content.

I must admit I have very little idea about how the internals of avatar physics layers work in relation to the avatar skeleton so can only guess whether that part would be possible, but if it is then it could potentially be a basic form of flexible mesh, since you could re-position the bones that are affected by avatar physics, rig the mesh to those and then adjust the settings on the physics layer to control how the "fleximesh" behaves when it moves.

As for avatar shapes, since they're basically just a list of bone transformations one would think that it should be possible to apply them to any skeleton in which those bones exist.

One "must have" feature for animated mesh, in my opinion, would be variable animation speeds with interpolation between frames, so that we can control the speed at which animations will play while still having them play smoothly.  A simple example of this would be an animated mesh vehicle with an animation containing one full revolution of the wheels,  using a simple formula like FPS = (speed / circumference ) * total_frames you could calculate the exact speed that the animation should be playing at for the wheels to "roll" along the ground rather than spinning or sliding.  A similar formula could be applied to any animated mesh object that walks, crawls, rolls or slithers in-world and would remove the need to create and upload multiple animations in order to provide a range of movement speeds for animated meshes.  

Having a way to control the speed an animation plays at would mean more realistic movement for animated meshes in world, less work for creators and less lag and bandwidth usage for end users (less animations to download, no lag when one animation ends before the next has loaded, etc).

Edited May 17, 2017 by Fluffy Sharkfin

[Love Zhaoying]

Ugh, I just realized this will be used for "breedables" and pets to make them more "lifelike". Not sure why that annoys me.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Ugh, I just realized this will be used for "breedables" and pets to make them more "lifelike". Not sure why that annoys me.

I'm not sure why either!  Animated mesh would mean smoother, more realistic motion and less lag, what could possibly go wrong?  

[Love Zhaoying]

32 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

what could possibly go wrong?  

*raises hand* I know! I know! More client-side lag!! 

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

*raises hand* I know! I know! More client-side lag!! 

I guess that depends on how it's implemented, but I'd imagine that it will be less laggy than having every frame of an animation as a separate mesh all linked together as one object with a script constantly switching alphas on and off, and since these will be rezzed objects they'll be subject to the restrictions of land impact, which means they shouldn't be anywhere near as laggy as a lot of current avatars, some of which wear millions of rigged, animated polygons at a time without any restrictions (although that does raise the question of whether LL will extend the "jellydoll" feature to apply to animated mesh as well as avatars, but i suspect the performance issues will be as much about the number of animated meshes on screen rather than just their complexity so maybe they'll also implement impostors and a "max # of non-impostor animesh" setting similar to the one they have for avatars).

[Medhue Simoni]

20 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

I guess that depends on how it's implemented, but I'd imagine that it will be less laggy than having every frame of an animation as a separate mesh all linked together as one object with a script constantly switching alphas on and off, and since these will be rezzed objects they'll be subject to the restrictions of land impact, which means they shouldn't be anywhere near as laggy as a lot of current avatars, some of which wear millions of rigged, animated polygons at a time without any restrictions (although that does raise the question of whether LL will extend the "jellydoll" feature to apply to animated mesh as well as avatars, but i suspect the performance issues will be as much about the number of animated meshes on screen rather than just their complexity so maybe they'll also implement impostors and a "max # of non-impostor animesh" setting similar to the one they have for avatars).

We already have impostors for rezzed meshes. They are called LODs. These are going to be really important to animated meshes. 

[MoonHowler Snowpaw]

Hi all! Is it the main thread on this subject? I want to follow its development, where is it mainly discussed?