Coin Flipping Madness

[Charalyne Blackwood]

So I have two heads. One, I really love the appearance of overall. The makeup options are plenty and I can make and upload my own eye designs easily, but the facial animations are really weak. The other head, has much better facial animations, but I can't find great satisfaction in editing my shape to where I really like it. As someone discovering SL photography, I'd completely love to have all the best features of both in one package. Anyone else ever run into this? I'm almost bald from tearing my hair out

These images are the same pose, same skins, same hair, etc... 

[Josephine Carissa]

Hello Char,

why not use them both....what i mean is depending on the type of pose and shot your taking : ) 

1. i like the eyes in this one

2. the expression is cute and would be fun for a action type pose

mostly i think you should have fun and enjoy yourself : )

Best Regards,

Josephine

 

[Charalyne Blackwood]

Thank you! I'll spend more time adjusting the second shape to more closely resemble the first. I haven't figured out the storing of wearables to where I can change from one to the other quickly but I'll get there!

[Nalates Urriah]

In SL it is common to use only the animations made for specific heads with those heads. But, let go of that idea. Try the demos for animations made for other heads. You may find they work or maybe just some of the animations do.

There are generic Bento Facial animations. They look good on some heads and awful on others.

Experiment.

Animations in a HUD made for a specific head will 'work' with all other Bento heads in SL. Animations move the bones in the head. These bones are common to all heads. BUT... not all makers rig the face the same way nor to the same bones. So 'work' is nuanced... in that regardless of the head the animation WILL move the bone satisfying the idea it worked. But, moving that bone may produce no change in the face or not the expected change giving the appearance of not working. Thus the need to experiment.

[Charalyne Blackwood]

Thanks for your input!  I'd really love to make all my own animations, but the Avastar add-on for Blender is every bit as complicated as Blender was. The (very) outdated tutorials aren't much help either. Makes me wonder what the people who make the generic Bento animations are using for their work..?

[Nalates Urriah]

On 3/22/2021 at 3:43 PM, Charalyne Blackwood said:

Thanks for your input!  I'd really love to make all my own animations, but the Avastar add-on for Blender is every bit as complicated as Blender was. The (very) outdated tutorials aren't much help either. Makes me wonder what the people who make the generic Bento animations are using for their work..?

There are three primary tools used with SL; Blender of course, 3D Max, and Maya. Both Blender and Maya have add-on tools specifically for SL.

I used to do just Blender, no add-on. That was complicated. I had to make all the adaptions for SL. Using AvaStar made it much easier.

I suspect the newer AvaStar video tutorials are the ones behind their paywall. You may find some of the free ones on Vemio. YouTube is likely to have the older ones.

[Charalyne Blackwood]

So far I've been able to get away with just Blender and Qavimator, but as I progress through the images I want to create, I'm finding it more difficult to work with those and the available hand poses.

[Nalates Urriah]

12 hours ago, Charalyne Blackwood said:

So far I've been able to get away with just Blender and Qavimator, but as I progress through the images I want to create, I'm finding it more difficult to work with those and the available hand poses.

I did too. Avimator, Posemake, and something else Oh... now I remember... BVHacker were my first attempts. After making a few clumsy looking animations I started using Blender. That worked better and I could better control animations.

At some point I watched a couple of modeling tutorials made using AvaStar. Both the clothes making and animation looked so much easier I bought it. It was a bit of a pain to change from how Blender approaches the work flow and change over to AvaStar. But being able to use IK to animate made life so much easier. Also, AvaStar takes care of the SL gotchas without my having to understand them and work around them. AvaStar makes the conversions on upload. Plus, I can upload anim files which give me more control over the animation. The viewer "optimizes" BVH files on upload creating some gotchas one has to work around.

Unfortunately, the new people coming into SL seem not to be into building as much as new people used to. So, I think we have fewer tutorials being made these days. The stuff I made was 2014 stuff. It is here. Blender and AvaStar have changed. Also, the Dev Kits from the big name body brands have adapted for use with AvaStar. I don't pay attention to MayaStar because I am not a Maya user. But it also has a good reputation and support.

My thinking is the sooner one buys AvaStar the sooner they figure it out and start making better stuff easily. I know from experience it is possible to get by with just Blender. I used to do those Blender Only type tutorials. I just no longer recommend going that way.

[Charalyne Blackwood]

A couple months ago I got Avastar at the suggestion of several people so I can pose the hands. So far I haven't been able to do anything with hands. The more I hear about the actual process the more I regret the purchase. Meanwhile I'm making houses and small buildings in Blender with little difficulty. Maybe I'll just stick to structures..?

[Nalates Urriah]

Well... go with whatever you enjoy. SL is supposed to be fun.

I like learning and experimenting. I watched a lot of tutorial video...