Awkward wrists...

[Shaade Fallen]

Heya~

 

So I'm not new to animating at all, been doing it for years - though I've never thought to ask around about this, mostly because I've just been assuming it's a limitation of the SL skeleton.

But I'm really getting sick of the super-awkward and limited wrist/elbow rotation here...at times it seems virtually impossible to get some very basic and completely natural arm positions, such as having the elbows resting on a suface with hands laying flat on the same, said surface - where having the elbows down will force the hands up at undesirable angles, and to get the hands flat the elbows need to be spread way out and sometimes even up off the surface.

I use Avastar to create my animations in blender, and this has always been a problem for me.

So I just want to know - is this really just a limitation of the SL skeleton, Avastar, or have I been seriously missing something this whole time? Maybe there's some work around?

Thanks for reading~

[Chic Aeon]

8 minutes ago, Shaade Fallen said:

laying flat on the same, said surface - where having the elbows down will force the hands up at undesirable angles

I use the VERY old QAvimator (not bento  but maybe I should check again as they were reportedly working on that) and it is certainly possible to do what you want in that antique program.  Not an Avastar user but I did make animations in Blender for Cloud Party and had no issues there --- so thinking it is not the skeleton. 

 

But that being said, there are plenty of "bad" animations out there (poses too) that break the immersion as they are so obviously wrong. So TESTING inworld (or in FS preview) is an important part of the process. Good luck 

[OptimoMaximo]

On 6/29/2019 at 4:15 AM, Shaade Fallen said:

So I just want to know - is this really just a limitation of the SL skeleton, Avastar, or have I been seriously missing something this whole time? Maybe there's some work around?

It is definitelya limitation of the skeleton. It's always been like that in SL due to the number of joints in the area. There is a way to diminish the effect, and that's compensate the rotations of the hand with a rotation of the forearm, and the forearm rotation compensated by the upper arm rotation. Look at your own arm: how much can you rotate the hand without rotating the forearm and how much you can rotate the forearm untill the upper arm needs an adjustment to allow such rotation? I don't think you can rotate your hand alone by 90 degrees keeping the forearm stiffly unrotated, unless you break something. Whole martial arts studied and take advantage of this when doing "joint locks"

[Alyona Su]

2 hours ago, OptimoMaximo said:

Look at your own arm: how much can you rotate the hand without rotating the forearm

You must be seriously double-jointed. The *only* way my hand rotate is by the forearm twisting. And it appears that the body is designed specifically to work this way. BUT, I make be a freak-o-nature, perhaps. If you are referring to bending the hand at the wrist, well, that's a different motion entirely.

Edited July 1, 2019 by Alyona Su

[OptimoMaximo]

1 hour ago, Alyona Su said:

You must be seriously double-jointed. The *only* way my hand rotate is by the forearm twisting. And it appears that the body is designed specifically to work this way. BUT, I make be a freak-o-nature, perhaps. If you are referring to bending the hand at the wrist, well, that's a different motion entirely

Did you read my intervention and what it was meant to answer? that's exactly the thing i wanted to make the OP reason about