Any news (either from third party or LL) on new Animation inovations in the Veiwer?

[Poenald Palen]

I heard two things. 1st was AO integration or improvements. I already have heard of third party clients using the AO thing. You drop it in and viola. The next thing I heard about is LL would be adding this, maybe. BUT they where using the old "Rag doll" avatar physics stuff or something to make a posing thingy inside the SL client.

OK, another  one I heard about was they where going to use the Kinect with a project they where already working on that sort of didn't get completed or they stopped working on it. It would use the Kinect to control the avatar.

So my question is this. Has any third party started work on this? OR combining rag doll physics based "bones" and weights with the Kinect project. In other words YOu can sort of move your avatar with your own body attached to points. Lets say Hips (not all directions because you are sort of taller or shorter and camera angle ect.) with hands and legs. If you move in a certain way, you don't mess up your avatar to much. I mean, it is not a great solution....it might not work to well due to your body being different and so on. Plus, the sctreaming of all that info would end up delayed and lagged...not so fun, but people have learned to deal with this when using online jamming sites by just adjusting your timing to jump in early and you get used to it.

Ok, the next idea though is simple enough. A Kinect through to control would mean that when you are on a scritped stand, pose ball or whatever that all the control keys get taken over and you are then able to trigger them. SO, you would move your arm forward or move in a running pattern and it would trigger forward key. then, if you walk back, backward. Obviously animations could be made and it would sort of make this all sort of neat. You can imagine that it could be used for all kinds of fun stuff and gets people on thier feet a bit.

So...anything? Or is the kinect thing all worn off and people forget about it as it collects dust in the back of thier TV stand dvd storage cabinet? I don't have a kinect, but I seriously have looked into other inputs into SL, I think it is neat BUT I lack the coding knowledge and have my hours available to work drastically reduced. Sadly, I am getting to old to teach new tricks and can't do much each day....besides...they already worked on a video control thing like Kinect! The rag doll physics is like back in 2007 and 2008 or earlier! This stuff is stagnant....wow, I need to move into the animation business. There simply isn't any interest in it but from the purchasers of animations....doesn't everyone in SL buy at least one 10L animation at some point for something? lol. 

[Medhue Simoni]

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Poenald Palen wrote:

I heard two things. 1st was AO integration or improvements. I already have heard of third party clients using the AO thing. You drop it in and viola. The next thing I heard about is LL would be adding this, maybe. BUT they where using the old "Rag doll" avatar physics stuff or something to make a posing thingy inside the SL client.

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This never really excites me. My coder created an awesome AO hud that I can add most animation related things to. The last thing I would want to do is use a system that I have no control over. Heck it took LL a whole year to fix the problems with walk and run priorities. I can't even imagine how long it would take to fix something that went wrong with their internal ao system. As far as I know, it has been talked about, but not beyond that.

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Poenald Palen wrote:

OK, another  one I heard about was they where going to use the Kinect with a project they where already working on that sort of didn't get completed or they stopped working on it. It would use the Kinect to control the avatar.

So my question is this. Has any third party started work on this? OR combining rag doll physics based "bones" and weights with the Kinect project. In other words YOu can sort of move your avatar with your own body attached to points. Lets say Hips (not all directions because you are sort of taller or shorter and camera angle ect.) with hands and legs. If you move in a certain way, you don't mess up your avatar to much. I mean, it is not a great solution....it might not work to well due to your body being different and so on. Plus, the sctreaming of all that info would end up delayed and lagged...not so fun, but people have learned to deal with this when using online jamming sites by just adjusting your timing to jump in early and you get used to it.

Ok, the next idea though is simple enough. A Kinect through to control would mean that when you are on a scritped stand, pose ball or whatever that all the control keys get taken over and you are then able to trigger them. SO, you would move your arm forward or move in a running pattern and it would trigger forward key. then, if you walk back, backward. Obviously animations could be made and it would sort of make this all sort of neat. You can imagine that it could be used for all kinds of fun stuff and gets people on thier feet a bit.

So...anything? Or is the kinect thing all worn off and people forget about it as it collects dust in the back of thier TV stand dvd storage cabinet? I don't have a kinect, but I seriously have looked into other inputs into SL, I think it is neat BUT I lack the coding knowledge and have my hours available to work drastically reduced. Sadly, I am getting to old to teach new tricks and can't do much each day....besides...they already worked on a video control thing like Kinect! The rag doll physics is like back in 2007 and 2008 or earlier! This stuff is stagnant....wow, I need to move into the animation business. There simply isn't any interest in it but from the purchasers of animations....doesn't everyone in SL buy at least one 10L animation at some point for something? lol. 

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Well, I been using the Kinect for a few months now, and, for the most part, I'm impressed. It does take alot to impress me too, lol. But....... it is not quite there yet. There are issues, techinical and practical. I've also heard of LL doing somethings with it, but I would not personally get my hopes up for this. Even if they could make something that worked, it would probably not be a very pretty thing. Really tho, I hope they prove me wrong.

 

The newest thing related to animation is mesh. Animating a mesh avatar, somehow, fixes issues with avatar size and animation. For me, this is big, and I'm waiting to have my hands on a few really cool mesh animals to animate.

[Medhue Simoni]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Well, I been using the Kinect for a few months now, and, for the most part, I'm impressed. It does take alot to impress me too, lol. But....... it is not quite there yet. There are issues, techinical and practical. I've also heard of LL doing somethings with it, but I would not personally get my hopes up for this. Even if they could make something that worked, it would probably not be a very pretty thing. Really tho, I hope they prove me wrong.

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Actually, I retract some of this. Before, I only had the kinect to use for motion capture, but now that I have an xbox360 and see how they are using it in games, I think LL should really work hard to make this happen. Ok, it would be weird if motion was streamed in real time on your avatar, most because every1 would see all the movements to trigger things. If some1 just used the kinect for real time motion, there would be no way to move around. So, I think it is a good idea to just use the kinect to be your controls. So the kinect would replace the mouse and keyboard, and the AOs would just keep working as normal. But.... I would suggest not focusing at all on gestures for building tools. The last thing I want to do is build something in SL while I'm standing. LL should just focus on movement, and interface controls related to getting around. If some1 has a kinect and wireless headphones and mic, they can move around SL, socialize, and get a nice workout. Maybe LL should make a special gesture too, to say "I'm only using voice, I can not type into chat at this time. If you have voice on, you can hear me tho", in chat.

[Poenald Palen]

Thakns for the response! Yea, when I learned they where using BVH I sort of looked at the files and immediatly got a notion there was a reason. Maybe streamed animation, with some mocap siute! I didn't know what had gone on with mocap since I saw it way back in the day, about a decae ago lol. SL was so...well....'rough' compared to a fluid and 'real' virtual world that many dream of, I keep looking for future proofing or stuff that is sort of in place to allow more cooler features to be added soon. I figured it was so specific with it's frames that it allowed streaming. They could have used soemthing else and relied more on the viewers built in animations, which would be less streaming and more codable to allow hands to wrap on things or fingers to push buttons. But, instead they send a file that is limited with no real world info activity. Obviously, if you where wearing a VR helmet YOU would guide it, you would be the "program" that puts the finger on the button! Smart move LL!? OR...was it all just faster and more based on how poser was doing anims? I didn't know about poser so much, but now I figure it is all sort of just what was fastest and easy for users to work with, since poser was standard and fast to learn for a resident.

I am totally not a software engineer, nor network engineer. I have only peaked at some SL viewer code that is on the open source site. So...yeah, I am not programming this all up this weeken or anything lol. BUT, I did hear they already worked on this before even the 360 had this launched. So, I know the companies who make these boxes must be talking to gaming industry folks, and LL is sort of in the same catagory.

But, yeah, gestures hat are similar to moves make sense. It is faster, still gets you moving and you can do stuff like acrobatics without breaking a few bones! lol. I can't imagine people getting carried away and all the antics of residents teaching each other back flips through youtube lol. Then there is all the other activities. But I mean, these days people have some sim gear in thier living rooms, hydrolics and so on! No shakign game pads for some adults who game, nope they want full simulators and maybe even real bleeding one day...you never know, some people are a little crazy about realism.

[Medhue Simoni]

Well, I would somewhat disagree with the notion that the bvh format was a bad decision. Bvh is the most popular motion capture format. You can find more motion capture in bvh format than all other formats put together. Plus, almost all motion capture systems allow for direct export to bvh. The choice to use bvh allowed SL to have better animations than you can find in any game. If you see alot of shakyness in an animation, that is the fault of the mocap creator. And really, I think the limitations are only that of the creators and coders, mostly. With mesh coming, LL has talked about us importing custom bvh skeletons. Now this is really something I can't wait to do.