Basic (bento) facial expressions for conversation?

[Goh Mfume]

Bento heads are fantastic, but there are not as many facial gestures available for them as there are for classic avatars. And bento facial expressions tend to be part of bulky HUDs that come with the head.

To make facial expressions more useful for conversation, rather than for photography, they should be conversation-relevant and quick to trigger. Instead of triggering a facial pose from a bulky HUD or even a gesture slash-command, the fastest way is to trigger them is with a short word or phrase. It's easy to trigger an animation with a phrase using the right script, the problem I'm having is finding the right animations/poses OR figuring out how to create them myself.

So I'm looking to buy or create the following set of 6 basic face poses* using the corresponding word triggers (or something equivalent)...

a. anger - "grrr"
b. disgust - "yuck"
c. fear - "yikes"
d. happiness - "yay"
e. sadness - "oh no"
f. surprise - "wow"

Is there anywhere to find these 6 face poses as separate animation files that can be dropped into a prim with a script? Or how can I create these animation files myself using some kind of poser application?

* See this image for examples of the 6 basic face poses for conversation...

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Wisal-Hashim-Abdulsalam/publication/330244113/figure/fig1/AS:714994656239617@1547479418624/The-6-basic-facial-emotions-a-Anger-b-Disgust-c-Fear-d-Happiness-e-Sadness-f.jpg

Edited April 19, 2021 by Goh Mfume

[Mollymews]

if you have bought the HUD and the animations contained are copy permissions then we can Open the HUD (open same as a vendor box) and Copy to Inventory

now having copies of the animations, we can then copy them to our own scripted animation prim/hud. The script listening for our typed command on a channel and playing the appropriate animation

listening on channel 1 for example: /1!grrr   /1!yuck 1/!wow  etc

listening on channel 0 then: !grr !yuck !wow etc

 

[Skell Dagger]

It depends which brand of head you're using. For example: all Catwa Bento and HDPRO heads contain an unpackable box of 60 gestures that you can edit to be triggered with whatever local chat words you like, no HUD required:

The gestures are identical to the animations in the head's Anim HUD, and they just need to be activated in the inventory, and then the trigger typed in local chat. For the one highlighted in that image the smile on the head would activate if you typed the smile emoticon into chat, but if you wanted it to activate when you type 'smiles' or 'lol' then just edit the trigger to be that word instead. No need for HUDs or anything like that. All of the full face expressions are included (which cover most things like 'yuck' or 'sad' or 'angry' etc), as well as the separate eyes and lips moods.

For any other head brand, see if they also incorporate a gesture pack like that. If not, then you may need to go along the slightly more convoluted route of unpacking the animation HUD and creating your own HUD or gestures, as Mollymews suggests.

Edited April 19, 2021 by Skell Dagger

[Nalates Urriah]

12 hours ago, Goh Mfume said:

Bento heads are fantastic, but there are not as many facial gestures available for them as there are for classic avatars. And bento facial expressions tend to be part of bulky HUDs that come with the head.

To make facial expressions more useful for conversation, rather than for photography, they should be conversation-relevant and quick to trigger. Instead of triggering a facial pose from a bulky HUD or even a gesture slash-command, the fastest way is to trigger them is with a short word or phrase. It's easy to trigger an animation with a phrase using the right script, the problem I'm having is finding the right animations/poses OR figuring out how to create them myself.

So I'm looking to buy or create the following set of 6 basic face poses* using the corresponding word triggers (or something equivalent)...

a. anger - "grrr"
b. disgust - "yuck"
c. fear - "yikes"
d. happiness - "yay"
e. sadness - "oh no"
f. surprise - "wow"

Is there anywhere to find these 6 face poses as separate animation files that can be dropped into a prim with a script? Or how can I create these animation files myself using some kind of poser application?

* See this image for examples of the 6 basic face poses for conversation...

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Wisal-Hashim-Abdulsalam/publication/330244113/figure/fig1/AS:714994656239617@1547479418624/The-6-basic-facial-emotions-a-Anger-b-Disgust-c-Fear-d-Happiness-e-Sadness-f.jpg

I disagree with that generalized premise. Some specific heads may have a limited selection. But the Bento revision to the avatar provides the capability for users to create as many facial animations as users desire.

The Classic avatar did not use animation via bone/skeleton/armature manipulation. All facial expressions of the Classic avatar are made using morphing. A different process that was built into the viewer. It used a limited set of expressions, a couple of dozen. There was no way for the user to add to or change the set of expressions. While it is possible to script the morphs and mix them, it is not the freedom gained with Bento.

As Skell points out, Catwa has 60 animations for the head or about 2 or 3 times more than the Classic avatar.

There are a few animators that make facial expressions for Bento heads rather than for a specific brand and model. Depending on the animations' permissions all of those can be triggered via Gestures.

[Goh Mfume]

@Nalates Urriah I will check Catwa facial gestures/poses. I went through all of the gestures that come with Lelutka Evolution, but I couldn't find all of the 6 basic facial expressions.

[Skell Dagger]

43 minutes ago, Goh Mfume said:

@Nalates Urriah I will check Catwa facial gestures/poses. I went through all of the gestures that come with Lelutka Evolution, but I couldn't find all of the 6 basic facial expressions.

I can't guarantee that Catwa's animations will work well on Lelutka Evo heads. They're rigged differently, so you might get some strange results.

You might want to look into something like Vista's animation HUDs. I'm not sure if they've updated for Evolution, but they did sell individual animation HUDs for the likes of Catwa, Lelutka Origins, and Genus a while back. Not sure if they included gestures etc, but it might be worth checking them out.

[Goh Mfume]

So after spending more time with the Lelutka Evolution facial expressions, I think I can actually find all six basics in the larger list. Here's how I think they map...

a. anger - snarl -
b. disgust - blee - :r
c. fear - oh no - >_<
d. happiness - grin -
e. sadness - sad -
f. surprise - oh - o_o

And you can just change the triggers to what you want, so problem solved! Thank you for your comments!