Second Life Puppetry

[Nalates Urriah]

Today at the Server and Scripting User Group Rider Linden announced a new feature for SL, Puppetry built into the viewer. Just before the meeting the official announcement popped in the SL Blog. SL Puppetry

For now this is an alpha stage development, meaning you have to download the project viewer and travel to the Preview Grid to see it work.

I am not going to explain or go into detail as the blog and other sources will be describing this in more detail. I do have a transcript of the meeting chat. If enough people ask for I, I'll clean it up and post it.

There will be a group that includes residents to help develop the feature farther. Check out the blog article for more details.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 minute ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Today at the Server and Scripting User Group Rider Linden announced a new feature for SL, Puppetry built into the viewer. Just before the meeting the official announcement popped in the SL Blog. SL Puppetry

For now this is an alpha stage development, meaning you have to download the project viewer and travel to the Preview Grid to see it work.

I am not going to explain or go into detail as the blog and other sources will be describing this in more detail. I do have a transcript of the meeting chat. If enough people ask for I, I'll clean it up and post it.

There will be a group that includes residents to help develop the feature farther. Check out the blog article for more details.

Darn. For a moment, I thought this was about adding a poser to the viewer.

Work on this is somewhat predictable, given the return of Rosedale to a role here. I'd think it's going to be a very niche affordance, assuming it ever makes it into the main viewer.

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Today at the Server and Scripting User Group Rider Linden announced a new feature for SL, Puppetry built into the viewer. Just before the meeting the official announcement popped in the SL Blog. SL Puppetry

For now this is an alpha stage development, meaning you have to download the project viewer and travel to the Preview Grid to see it work.

I am not going to explain or go into detail as the blog and other sources will be describing this in more detail. I do have a transcript of the meeting chat. If enough people ask for I, I'll clean it up and post it.

There will be a group that includes residents to help develop the feature farther. Check out the blog article for more details.

Thank you!

[Love Zhaoying]

VERY cool! We are just all puppets, after all.

[Coffee Pancake]

This needs to be as good and as polished as VRChat, even going as far being able to make use of motion trackers in addition to a camera.

LL need to look at https://freemocap.org/

 

If this is not as good as VRC, there is no point as we're just going to get dunked on for trying.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 minute ago, Coffee Pancake said:

This needs to be as good and as polished as VRChat, even going as far being able to make use of motion trackers in addition to a camera.

LL need to look at https://freemocap.org/

 

If this is not as good as VRC, there is no point as we're just going to get dunked on for trying.

I get where this is coming from -- High Fidelity is now a shareholder in LL, and this has long been Rosedale's thing.

But it does seem a rather odd way to apportion resources, given how many more basic things are in need of an upgrade or fix.

[Love Zhaoying]

I wonder, will it run on Linux? On old "potato" computers?

This should be interesting, to find out the system requirements!  Maybe time for an upgrade finally..

It should be awesome for "Live Performers" - music, etc.

[Paul Hexem]

31 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Darn. For a moment, I thought this was about adding a poser to the viewer.

Work on this is somewhat predictable, given the return of Rosedale to a role here. I'd think it's going to be a very niche affordance, assuming it ever makes it into the main viewer.

Theoretically it could allow us to write scripts to do exactly that with it, potentially without clunky "move each bone one at a time" huds. 

[Arielle Popstar]

They were looking into puppeteering back in 2008 and then shelved the project. Glad they are finally going to go ahead with it.

[animats]

Tracking hardware is pretty good now. Here's a good system, hooked to VRchat.This is a magnetic tracker, rather than an optical or vision one. The performer and her avatar match closely. She's just being herself, not puppeteering some differently-shaped avatar. So this is a good accuracy test.

Things to notice:

• This tracking system can keep up with fast hand motions, which makes it very expressive.
• Limbs are not passing through the body. Even when she brings her hands close alongside her hips, or her arm across her chest. Although there's a little trouble at 1:29.
• Hard stops work. Watch when she stops moving, or makes a fast gesture, and the tracked avatar stops hard. Noisy systems have to do too much filtering and interpolation, so movement starts and stops are sluggish.

So that's the standard. SL's system, driven from good trackers like that and driving an avatar matched to the performer, needs to match or exceed that.

Otherwise, it looks creepy. People with animation or dance backgrounds will see what's wrong, but for most of the population it will just look creepy.

The big problems in SL will probably involve lag and frame rate. The SL demo is only at 14-15 FPS, which is too slow.

 

 

[Persephone Emerald]

I can't help but think of this one stage show (NSFW Wiki link) whenever I hear or read the word puppetry. It would be cool if LL could animate this appendage too.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

I can't help but think of this one stage show (NSFW Wiki link) whenever I hear or read the word puppetry. It would be cool if LL could animate this appendage too.

I don't even have to go to your link 😉

Me too!

[Jordyn McGregor]

I was not awake enough to read this title correctly and could swear it said "SL Puberty" and was getting peeved about having to go through all that again!!!!

[Rowan Amore]

Just can't wait to see all the people who will think it's funny to.pick.their nose so we can all watch!  Good times ahead!  What could go.wrong?!

[Arielle Popstar]

4 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Just can't wait to see all the people who will think it's funny to.pick.their nose so we can all watch!  Good times ahead!  What could go.wrong?!

I would like it for the simple fact of being able to reach out and touch my partner as an example. In another virtual world the ability to do that with some better premade animations is quite nice between them and working hugs that don't require having to have poseballs and such right at hand.

[Persephone Emerald]

31 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

I would like it for the simple fact of being able to reach out and touch my partner as an example. In another virtual world the ability to do that with some better premade animations is quite nice between them and working hugs that don't require having to have poseballs and such right at hand.

All the more reason to include that other appendage as well.

Hey, what if it were attached to one's hand attachment point? I vaguely remember a porn spoof of Edward Scissorhands.

Edited August 30, 2022 by Persephone Emerald

[Arielle Popstar]

1 minute ago, Persephone Emerald said:

All the more reason to include that other appendage as well.

Hey, what if it were attached to one's hand attachment point? I vaguely remember a porn spoof of Edward Scissorhands.

Well I wasn't meaning THAT way but yes there is that too

[Bree Giffen]

1 hour ago, Jordan Whitt said:

I was not awake enough to read this title correctly and could swear it said "SL Puberty" and was getting peeved about having to go through all that again!!!!

I thought it was SL Poopery and we would finally be able to have bodily functions. But the puppetry sounds good too.  Maybe we can see performers playing instruments or when the Lindens have their meetings we can see them moving their arms around as they speak. There could be a dark side though. In the middle of a conversation with a stranger you might see their hands moving up and down in their pants. 

Edited August 30, 2022 by Bree Giffen

[Persephone Emerald]

3 minutes ago, Bree Giffen said:

I thought it was SL Poopery and we would finally be able to have bodily functions. But the puppetry sounds good too.  Maybe we can see performers playing instruments or when the Lindens have their meetings we can see them moving their arms around as they speak. There could be a dark side though. In the middle of a conversation with a stranger you might see their hands moving up and down in their pants. 

Recalls that video of Giuliani in the last Borat movie.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

Annnnnd now I'm hoping for an opt-out.

[Ceka Cianci]

So we can look forward to this

at least we'll have options like

 

hehehehe

 

[Coffee Pancake]

3 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

So we can look forward to this...

 

With just a single camera.. that might not be possible and just end up looking like junk.

LL really need to avoid reinventing the wheel on this. Rolling new exciting IP is fine when you're at the cutting edge, but we're not, this is a mad dash catchup. We need to CHEAT.

[Rowan Amore]

[animats]

Well, LL has to start somewhere. Some technical notes:

• The sim servers don't know about skeleton joint angles. That's entirely viewer side. Which is part of why avatar/object interaction is so low-rez. To the server, you're basically a cylinder. (Not quite, but that's enough for here.) When you sit, you're still a standing cylinder, which causes troubles when someone sits in a vehicle. But that's why this is mostly a viewer thing. The sim servers are just relaying messages.
• Who's got control of which joint? The puppeteering system? An animation? An animation overrider? Probably the way this works is that puppeteering has an animation priority, and everybody gets to argue about what has what priority. If you only have face and head tracking, the AO and built in animation system still has to control the rest of your body. We're probably going to need more tools for fussing with animation priorities.
• Viewer->Python->TCP->sim server->TCP->Python->Viewer may introduce too much latency and jitter. We'll have to see. SL, unfortunately, outsources voice to Vivox, so this stuff can't go on the voice data path, which would be convenient. The voice data path goes to the same people who need to see the animations, and voice and gestures need to be in sync. Measurements will be needed. Useful first test: log in from two machines side by side, and puppeteer on one while watching the other. See how bad the lag is.
• Get the details wrong and it's really creepy. You can see this with the worst VRChat trackers.

I'm encouraged to see LL doing something ambitious.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Very genuine question, because I honestly don't know the answer.

What are the contexts in which this application is likely to be used? How is it used in VRC, for instance?

What kinds of situation are SL residents likely to find themselves in, where this will be a useful or worthwhile extension of our current abilities?