Import Hand animation bvh

[Rocketchampion0]

Hi I've noticed that every time I import a .bvh into second life the hands are overwritten with the one of the premade poses  I've seen animations with custom hand movements and I'm wondering how to import my animation with my custom hand movement ? 

[Quarrel Kukulcan]

1 hour ago, Rocketchampion0 said:

Hi I've noticed that every time I import a .bvh into second life the hands are overwritten with the one of the premade poses  I've seen animations with custom hand movements and I'm wondering how to import my animation with my custom hand movement ? 

IIRC custom hand animations only work for residents wearing Bento mesh hands. The system avatar's hands can't be given custom animations because they are not rigged to animation bones. Instead, they are locked into whichever one pre-set pose you specify during upload. (Mesh hands ignore this setting -- if the animation doesn't move the fingers, the hands won't change.)

I think the official viewer's animation preview only knows how to show the system hand pose choice and doesn't know how to display the effects of Bento hand animations. On the other hand, Firestorm previews animations by playing them on your avatar, so it will show Bento hand animations if you have Bento hands on (but it won't show you what system hands will do).

[Rocketchampion0]

1 hour ago, Quarrel Kukulcan said:

IIRC custom hand animations only work for residents wearing Bento mesh hands. The system avatar's hands can't be given custom animations because they are not rigged to animation bones. Instead, they are locked into whichever one pre-set pose you specify during upload. (Mesh hands ignore this setting -- if the animation doesn't move the fingers, the hands won't change.)

I think the official viewer's animation preview only knows how to show the system hand pose choice and doesn't know how to display the effects of Bento hand animations. On the other hand, Firestorm previews animations by playing them on your avatar, so it will show Bento hand animations if you have Bento hands on (but it won't show you what system hands will do).

Well its not that I have the default avatar hands on I bought bento ones,  I just don't have an option to import a bvh without the hands animations being overwritten, i saw that .anim files could possibly do the trick but avastar looks like the only blender exporter for that.

Edited January 23, 2022 by Rocketchampion0
Spelling Correction

[Lucia Nightfire]

9 hours ago, Rocketchampion0 said:

i saw that .anim files could possibly do the trick but avastar looks like the only blender exporter for that.

I'm sure the creator of a certain proprietary software will be along later to change your mind. 🤑💰💸

[Quarrel Kukulcan]

23 hours ago, Rocketchampion0 said:

Well its not that I have the default avatar hands on I bought bento ones,  I just don't have an option to import a bvh without the hands animations being overwritten,

What viewer did you upload with? LL's viewer doesn't show Bento hand or head animations in the upload preview. You have to do the full upload and then play it in-world (pro tip: use the test server for this!) or use a different viewer that shows correct Bento previews.

I just made a test animation that flexed Bento fingers. I used plain Blender with no add-ons and uploaded it as a .bvh file with the Linden Lab viewer. I was still forced to select a hand pose in the upload panel (because you have to pick one). That's the hand pose that showed in the preview panel, and it's the pose my avatar's hands used when I played the uploaded animation without Bento hands on, but when I put Bento hands on and played it, I saw my custom flexing.

EDIT: I also tested uploading with Firestorm. Firestorm previews uploaded animations by making your avatar perform them instead of showing them on a thumbnail avatar in the import window. You can see correct previews of Bento animations on your hands and face that way, if you have the correct mesh body parts on.

Edited January 24, 2022 by Quarrel Kukulcan

[Chic Aeon]

While I think "most" people use Avastar to upload (bvh upload was broken in that software for years but may be fixed now I haven't tried lately) it may ALSO be the priority that you have set your animation on.  Try uploading with priority 4 and see if that works for you.   If you already did that then I have no idea other than a program that will export anim files (there is another besides Avastar but I don't remember what it is). Good luck.