Certain adult furniture deforms my face... it’s SO BAD

[HannahLilly38]

So, over the last few months I have had a few embarrassing hookups.  Haven’t we all? 

The most embarrassing moments happen repeatedly on certain furniture. On certain adult furniture the built in facial animations deform my face ✨so grotesquely that it scares me.  I am not talking about a little bit of a naughty scowl ... it’s as if someone put my pretty avatar head in a head-smasher, and the leftover facial expression is agonized, squeezed, and repulsive.  
😳

Yes it is hilarious, in retrospect.  No it’s not my imagination.  Yes it’s truly THAT bad.  

 I have not narrowed it down to a particular brand but- of course- it’s always when I am a guest so I can’t alter the issue without a buzz-kill conversation.

Asking your hot date to maneuver through the settings to shut down the ugly “f**k faces” (especially mid-make-out-session) is never a fun conversation. 

It’s one of those moments so embarrassing that you just slam the computer closed and pray to recover from the shame next time you login.  😂

 

My questions: 

1. anyone else ever experience the foul faced bedtime blues? 

2. Can I prevent face animations from being activated without altering someone else’s furniture options? 

Some facts that might be useful: 

• I currently wear a Catwa Tala Head with Ammara shape by Wrens Nest. 
• Body is Lara (if relevant) 

•Most recently,  after the owner switched off faces in the adjust menu of a piece of furniture,  my actual facial structure was still contorted and messed up.  It didn’t return to normal until I undeformed in avatar health settings in Firestorm. 

I never want this to happen again because it is ... simply gruesome.  I want to stay pretty while gettin’ busy.  
 

Any words of wisdom?  
Hold the moral judgment, please.  It took guts to come here and ask such a cringe-inducing question.  
 

Thank you very much for your expertise and experiences.

🍎The End.  
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 12, 2020 by HannahLilly38
{{Edited for a spelling error}}

[Sabrina Tamerlane]

When you create an animation, there is an option to adopt a facial expression, with a Catwa head it should do nothing and only work with an old avatar head like so:

 

 

 

I have a Catwa head too and i simply don't see this expression... Maybe this particular animation is very high priority or your Catwa head needs an update, maybe you could just check the animation HUD that comes with it?

[Rowan Amore]

Some of the newer furniture does include bento face animations.  Some good, some not so good.  There is usually an option to shut it off in the furniture.  Perhaps next time, ask it an amusing fun way for them to shut it off?  They generally do override the animations in the head HUD also. As for the distortion part, when you stand up, edit appearance in the pie menu and reset skeleton/animations.

[Skell Dagger]

Catwa CSR here

It sounds as if the bed has Bento animations that were not created to work with Catwa heads. If you add your Catwa Anim HUD you'll notice the API button at the top. Make sure that is switched OFF (red) and not ON (green). The API button is what calls animations from third party scripts, and while it should only work with Catwa animations it's worth checking that you have it switched off.

Please also check that your head is up to date. All Catwa Bento heads are currently on v4.5, so if yours is not, please redeliver your original purchase, unpack it, and the update will be inside.

Even if the API button is switched off, what I suggest doing is a full reset of all animations. For Catwa that would involve:

1. Detach all worn items that animate you in any way. This includes AO(s), gesture HUDs, any other HUDs with animation options, and even genitalia ('The V' is a prime culprit for unexpected animations, so if you're wearing that please detach it for this reset)
2. Right-click your avatar and select Gestures from the menu. Hunt down each of those gestures in your inventory and deactivate them all
3. Right-click your avatar and select Appearance > Reset > Skeleton & Animations
4. In your viewer's menu, go to Avatar > Avatar Health > Stop Avatar Animations & Revoke Permissions
5. Again, in the viewer's menu, go to Avatar > Avatar Health > Undeform Avatar
6. Teleport to Hippo Hollow region ( http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Hippo Hollow/128/128/2 )
7. Log out
8. Log back in, and make sure it's to Last Location (so you log back in at Hippo Hollow). Do not re-attach any animated items or re-activate any gestures yet
9. Return to the bed that's the culprit and try out the animations that had been causing the problem

If the issue is fixed, re-attach your AO and try the animations again. Still okay? Start re-activating any gestures that you had enabled (one at a time, and try the bed animations after each one is activated). Still okay? Add any other animated item that you were wearing (eg: genitalia, etc) - again, one at a time while testing the animations in between.

If the issue was not fixed by steps 1 to 9 then the problem is with the animations in the bed.

For reference: Animation priorities in Catwa Bento heads are set to 1 for the full face AOs and 4 for the Full Face Expressions, Animated Eyes Moods, and Animated Lips Moods. Depending on the priority of the bed animations, it might be worth setting a neutral Full Face Expression, or creating a custom preset mood using a combination of your favourite Eyes Mood and Lips Mood, and setting it running before you use the furniture's animations. However, if the furniture is also set to a priority of 4 that might lead to some interesting results, but it can't be any worse than your current 'foul-faced bedtime blues'  

[Jordyn McGregor]

4 hours ago, HannahLilly38 said:

So, over the last few months I have had a few embarrassing hookups.  Haven’t we all? 

Best post line opener ever!!!

[HannahLilly38]

8 hours ago, Sabrina Tamerlane said:

When you create an animation, there is an option to adopt a facial expression, with a Catwa head it should do nothing and only work with an old avatar head like so:

 

 

 

I have a Catwa head too and i simply don't see this expression... Maybe this particular animation is very high priority or your Catwa head needs an update, maybe you could just check the animation HUD that comes with it?

❤️ThNk you for your input.  Totally appreciate that.  
———————-

7 hours ago, RowanMinx said:

Some of the newer furniture does include bento face animations.  Some good, some not so good.  There is usually an option to shut it off in the furniture.  Perhaps next time, ask it an amusing fun way for them to shut it off?  They generally do override the animations in the head HUD also. As for the distortion part, when you stand up, edit appearance in the pie menu and reset skeleton/animations.

Thanks for takin the time to make this suggestion.  
———————

 

6 hours ago, Skell Dagger said:

Catwa CSR here

It sounds as if the bed has Bento animations that were not created to work with Catwa heads. If you add your Catwa Anim HUD you'll notice the API button at the top. Make sure that is switched OFF (red) and not ON (green). The API button is what calls animations from third party scripts, and while it should only work with Catwa animations it's worth checking that you have it switched off.

Please also check that your head is up to date. All Catwa Bento heads are currently on v4.5, so if yours is not, please redeliver your original purchase, unpack it, and the update will be inside.

Even if the API button is switched off, what I suggest doing is a full reset of all animations. For Catwa that would involve:

1. Detach all worn items that animate you in any way. This includes AO(s), gesture HUDs, any other HUDs with animation options, and even genitalia ('The V' is a prime culprit for unexpected animations, so if you're wearing that please detach it for this reset)
2. Right-click your avatar and select Gestures from the menu. Hunt down each of those gestures in your inventory and deactivate them all
3. Right-click your avatar and select Appearance > Reset > Skeleton & Animations
4. In your viewer's menu, go to Avatar > Avatar Health > Stop Avatar Animations & Revoke Permissions
5. Again, in the viewer's menu, go to Avatar > Avatar Health > Undeform Avatar
6. Teleport to Hippo Hollow region ( http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Hippo Hollow/128/128/2 )
7. Log out
8. Log back in, and make sure it's to Last Location (so you log back in at Hippo Hollow). Do not re-attach any animated items or re-activate any gestures yet
9. Return to the bed that's the culprit and try out the animations that had been causing the problem

If the issue is fixed, re-attach your AO and try the animations again. Still okay? Start re-activating any gestures that you had enabled (one at a time, and try the bed animations after each one is activated). Still okay? Add any other animated item that you were wearing (eg: genitalia, etc) - again, one at a time while testing the animations in between.

If the issue was not fixed by steps 1 to 9 then the problem is with the animations in the bed.

For reference: Animation priorities in Catwa Bento heads are set to 1 for the full face AOs and 4 for the Full Face Expressions, Animated Eyes Moods, and Animated Lips Moods. Depending on the priority of the bed animations, it might be worth setting a neutral Full Face Expression, or creating a custom preset mood using a combination of your favourite Eyes Mood and Lips Mood, and setting it running before you use the furniture's animations. However, if the furniture is also set to a priority of 4 that might lead to some interesting results, but it can't be any worse than your current 'foul-faced bedtime blues'  

Thank you for the walk through. I will try it out ... as intimidating as the process sounds.  I was sure it was a conspiracy set in motion by whatever the opposite of a guardian angel is. 
Now it feels... fixable. Thanks much. 

 

6 hours ago, Jordan Whitt said:

Best post line opener ever!!!

Haha 😆  ❤️

[Marianne Little]

11 hours ago, HannahLilly38 said:

 

Thank you for the walk through. I will try it out ... as intimidating as the process sounds.  I was sure it was a conspiracy set in motion by whatever the opposite of a guardian angel is. 
Now it feels... fixable. Thanks much.

Haha 😆  ❤️

Skell is always so super helpful. Maybe @Skell Dagger can suggest for CatwaClip a 100% stop button in Catwa heads, that stops all other furniture than you own yourself from animating your face? It is not so easy to go back to furniture you do not own, as in this case. Maybe you don't have a LM, maybe the beau has turned on security?

Fun thing that, my alt had an Annie head (pre Bento) when she was out dancing in a club with only dances that animate the heads too. Wow, I was happy to have a head that others can't animate... all the others dancing flashed terrible smiles that looks more painful than happy!

Maybe we can have a backup head with the scripts killed in case we encounter furniture or dance pads that animates us. We can't be animated then?

Edited October 12, 2020 by Marianne Little
Typo

[Skell Dagger]

16 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

Maybe @Skell Dagger can suggest for CatwaClip a 100% stop button in Catwa heads, that stops all other furniture than you own yourself from animating your face?

That's not needed in the head's HUD because it's already in the viewer It's what the 'revoke permissions' part of 'Avatar Health > Stop Avatar Animations & Revoke Permissions' does.

[Rowan Amore]

55 minutes ago, Skell Dagger said:

That's not needed in the head's HUD because it's already in the viewer It's what the 'revoke permissions' part of 'Avatar Health > Stop Avatar Animations & Revoke Permissions' does.

Would that not stop ALL animations including the ones on the furniture you happen to be using?  The best thing would be if all furniture creators had the 'shut off facial animations' button included.  I don't expect them to make animations for each and every head that's available either.  And let's be frank, why are you even bothering to pay that much attention to those faces?  If one is funny/weird/creepy, work it into the RP.  Slex is supposed to be fun so have some fun with it.  

[Marianne Little]

Would not the best be to stop others from animating you, while you yourself control it? Then one can play animation gasp, smile or close eyes where one want to.

It is not possible to contol all furniture others own before you do things... And get all furniture creators to include "shut off face animations"? Good luck with that. It is totally not going to happen. Creators do what they want, always did that.

Instead of discussing "safe, protection" like in RL, we must have that talk about "No action before you turn off facial animations"?

[Skell Dagger]

34 minutes ago, RowanMinx said:

Would that not stop ALL animations including the ones on the furniture you happen to be using?

Yes it would, but I assumed that Marianne was talking about after the fact, since she mentioned "It is not so easy to go back to furniture you do not own".

I'm honestly not sure if it's possible to add a 'stop only my facial animations from being controlled by third party scripts' button to the HUD. (There are so many potential variables to this that it could mean the button would need to be clicked each time the animation changed, for example.) I can ask Catwa, but it would be down to whether that's possible, and whether it could be added to the already incredibly complex scripting of the head without messing something else up. We are expecting one more round of updates to the Bento heads at some point in the future (no, they will not be 'upgraded to HDPRO' but there are some things Catwa wants to do with them) so I'll ask her if it's possible to add. Don't count on it, though; it may simply not be possible to either do or squeeze into the scripting that already exists. I don't know if there's enough memory in the scripts to allow for it.

18 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

Maybe we can have a backup head with the scripts killed in case we encounter furniture or dance pads that animates us. We can't be animated then?

Killing the scripts in the head only stops the head's own animations from running. Third party animators will still be able to move the face (example: Lelutka Axis HUD), since they're moving the bones themselves.

Edited October 13, 2020 by Skell Dagger

[Rowan Amore]

27 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

Would not the best be to stop others from animating you, while you yourself control it? Then one can play animation gasp, smile or close eyes where one want to.

It is not possible to contol all furniture others own before you do things... And get all furniture creators to include "shut off face animations"? Good luck with that. It is totally not going to happen. Creators do what they want, always did that.

Instead of discussing "safe, protection" like in RL, we must have that talk about "No action before you turn off facial animations"?

Some 3rd party facial animations huds will override what's in the furniture.  That's always an option but I like yours better.  Shut off the faces or no slexy time. 😁

[Love Zhaoying]

..perhaps tell friends that the furniture is too "painful" to sit on (by the expression on your face)..

[Marianne Little]

I have not been on adult animations since we got Bento. I can imagine that a stiff expressionless face during it all, are a little boring. Even when we had only the default head, it was possible to use animations like open mouth in some... situations.

23 minutes ago, RowanMinx said:

Some 3rd party facial animations huds will override what's in the furniture.  That's always an option but I like yours better.  Shut off the faces or no slexy time. 😁

The Lelutka Axis HUD? Or the ones by Chrysanthenum? That could be the best way to play the animations you want. Could even play yawns, disintrested or frowns if the performance is subpar. 🥱

[OptimoMaximo]

This is not how any of this works, animation wise. What happens here is a set of animations that use a different set of joints positions is taking control of a head that uses its own positions, pulling and pushing those joints to the animation positions. Reset skeleton and animations works only on the client that calls this function, but anyone else will still see your avatar head distorted as you saw it before. Revoking permissions doesn't do any good, because the moment you stand up from an object that triggers animations automatically revokes permissions (as well as sitting on one automatically grants those permissions), unless the scripter wrote it badly or did it on purpose. The only way to reset the skeleton from a deforming animation for both user and others who may be seeing the deformed user is to log out and back in, as those animations don't survive relogging. 

Scripted methods like turning off third party animations won't work, as the item is a general purpose animated sittable and would not ask the animation hud to plug to it, unless specifically scripted to do so, in which case it would certainly be advertised as such. 

The only way to prevent any of this to happen is to have at least one animation made for the specific head at highest priority possible (6), and hope that the creator of this piece of furniture didn't do the same, because animations priority works on a "last triggered animation wins" basis, which means that priority conflicts between animations that share the same priority is resolved by playing the last one that was triggered on top of the second to last for all of its duration. Which not only can deform the avatar, but if the overridden animation didn't provide rotation and position animation data for all the involved joints that the deforming one moved and rotated, those that aren't included in the first animation will not go back into their intended position and rotation when the deforming animation stops playing. 

On a side note, the priority war has been fought already for years with AO's meant to override anything and everything, which led to the addition of priorities up to 6 because of a lot of creators unresponsible use of highest priority possible, everywhere. Bento skeletal additions are a clean slate, where we get to use all priorities from 0 to 6, and looking for highest priority safeguarding animations is not a solution as this will lead to all animations always at highest priority, in the attempt to outshine anything that anyone else made. Ask the creators to lower the face animations priorities as they conflict with other people's products, since now there definitely are tools that allow doing that (and I can tell about it, since I'm the creator of an animation exporter plug in that does exactly that, among other features). 

[Sabrina Tamerlane]

Creators can also exclude head and hands from their animations unless they are necessary.

[Frank90a]

Happens to me as well sometimes, and the animations were made specifically for the avatar, which is in my case nonhuman. Tested animation on an identical "pet", identical result. The poses and animations themselves look amazing. But a couple animations and poses just mutilate the head every time, animated face or not. These aren't erotic poses or animations, and not just one creator. Very strange.

[RohanaRaven Zerbino]

There are a few things to be explained on that theme.

In this case, body or shape you wear are not important.

First, let's assume you are playing properly made animation.

1. Each Bento head is closed system with unique rig and for that reason head shapes and animations must be made specifically for given brand. Yes, some rigs are close match, but that is more on coincidence level than any kind of system. Why Bento head creators have chosen to create closed systems is beyond me, but it is as it is. So, if you play animation for head A onto head B it is very possible to get horrifying facial expression and to look like the clown from your worst nightmares. But we still cannot talk about face deformations as your face will pop back to nice expression once you play animation made for given head, or if you reset skeleton with your viewer option.

2. While skin and makeup creators have devkits to work with, animators don’t have such a tool, so we are working blindly, with heavy testing. I understand it would be insane for Bento head creators to offer devkit rigs as that would expose their work to all kind of abuse. No, it is not excuse for terrible mistakes we are sometimes making, but hey, we are just humans, regardless the general opinion.

3. Even Bento heads are on a market for a while, there is only few of them with inbuilt background animation that would control rig - it is just like body default animations, when you turn off all anims, there is still default anim to deal with your body. Some of Bento heads ask for a HUD with an active anim to be worn to achieve that, but the best possible solution would be to have background low priority resting face anim in head itself. Lack of such an animation will cause stuck tongue or frozen face. But that is still not deformed face.

 

Now, let’s examine animation side of problem.

1. For all the reasons above, body and face animation should never be exported as one anim from animation program. Even more, that should be avoided for the purely technical reasons in process of animating as well as file size limit - but I doubt this is the place to talk about that in depth.

2. With exception of eyes and tongue (and tongue only in stick out anims) facial bones should never be animated with translations, but only with rotations.

I’ll try to explain.

To achieve Tongue Out anim or to move eyes in some type of animating techniques, you have to export animation with translations data - that is unique case when this type of export has to be used, and allowed to be used. If there is any other bone keyframed even on 0/0/0 translation, your head rig is out in a wild and this will cause irreparable deformations, unless you relog.

Even more, you might blame wrong anim for deformations! It might happen that 0/0/0 translation is not noticeable in the animation that holds it, but to show on next animation you play, even if it is properly made. That is because there is nothing to put that bone back on place but relogging, it is becoming unpredictable and uncontrolled.

Usual reset face animations will reset only values that are allowed to be used in SL: rotations on entire face rig and translation on tongue. In some cases, not even skeleton reset from viewer will help.

Export with translation, or even worst, using scaling in animations, are also a cause of body deformations. Yes, we are using translations in body animations (some bones would be useless without it), but animation should never be exported specifically with translation data. Moving and scaling bones along any axe is reserved for creation inworld avatar’s SL shape since the dawn of SL time.

Now, what I am going to dare to say as last is: yes, there is one very popular intimate system with horribly deformed face options, and I am not really sure why creator of the system is not doing something about that (tested on several different head brands, always with the same result). Yes, I am animator, but I am trying at least to inspect some of the systems my customers are using, just to be sure I know what the hell they are talking about when asking questions.

I am hoping this is not too much information, but if you kinda understood even half of this, you can say with confidence “No, it is not me, it is your furniture, please turn darn facials off!”

 

 

[Frank90a]

Ah. Yes, that definitely did explain some facial deformities from any animations, but especially if the face animation is actually separate in some actions, but not in others. Thanks for that.

[Zandriann]

Ok so I recently experienced this delightful SL Blessing.  After going all through the suggestions here I was still suffering the Facial Turrets from hell.  Then on a whim I looked at my Sessions  The V hud and clicked the stop button and voila!  Facial Ticks Be Gone!  Home this helps others too!