Why can't couple animations take (at least some) differences among avatars into account?

[Jennifer Boyle]

Couple animations are always set up for a particular pair of avatar shapes. At least one content creator makes the shapes they use available publicly. Unless a couple is willing to use the shapes used by the creator of the animations, they never match correctly.

My BF and I are the same height because he prefers to be a man of average height and I prefer to be a tall woman. It is always obvious that couple animations were set up for a female who was shorter than the male.

First, I am not looking for perfection, just what seems like a feasible amount of improvement. Why can't it be better than it is?

It seems that it should be feasible for there to be automatic communication of key avatar measurements from the avatar or mesh body to scripts controlling animations, and that t should be possible for animations' effects to be altered as needed. I should think that just a few dimensions, e.g., heights, arm lengths, leg lengths, foot positions, would be enough to make a large difference.

I am not sure where within the systems involved changes would be needed, but the needed changes shouldn't be beyond the abilities of people who can create a whole 3D world.

[Katherine Heartsong]

I've always found it odd that since we have attachment points on a body, why we also don't have "key" points on a body that when an interaction is attempted between two avatars, that specific parts of the body line up better than they currently do.

To stay family friendly with my example, let's think about a simple kiss between partners.

I bring up a HUD by right clicking on you ideally (or have a HUD) and select "Tender Kiss". Our avatars move close, lined up, and my avatar's "Lips" object meets your avatar's "Lips" object, since in the HUD a "Tender Kiss" is defined as "AvatarOne lips touch AvatarTwo lips for two seconds."

Every other game where two avatars kiss does it (family friendly or not), why not here?

Edited February 21, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Coffee Pancake]

The animation system in SL is the most basic and rudimentary one possible.

We have been asking for something better for as long as I have been in SL. Literally .. anything.

It never gets attention and will never get attention because .. <depressed sigh>

 

<rant>

The powers that be can't be depended on to even have an AO (or to understand why more than one animation might be desired in an AO), expecting them to participate in a couples animations of some sort, perhaps even something as plain as a cuddle or dance, so they can see just how utterly garbage the system we have is .. yeah, not happening.

It isn't even possible for two avatars to hold hands but hey, lets make a PR deal about how falling in love here can be a thing.

Kissing .. EEEEWWWWW ... that's not PG.

Why do we all keep trying to make this gross.

Why didn't we all love Sansar, that was beautifully sterile!

</rant>

[Wulfie Reanimator]

A more technical answer is that SL uses forward-kinematic (FK) animations. To have animations line up for avatars of different sizes, we'd need inverse-kinematic (IK) animations.

The below video will explain the difference in about 20 seconds, at 1:28.

With IK animations, we could define where we want the extremities of our avatars' limbs to be, and not worry about where the shoulder begins. With FK animations, the shoulder position necessarily determines where the hand will be.

The SL animation system is capable of handling IK animations, but it only works for internal animations (when you turn your AO off). Stuff like the avatar's head turning towards your cursor, or your feet adjusting to the ground surface is done with IK. LL is working on a Puppetry project which should expand on this system, but I don't know how it's gonna affect regular animations (if at all).

[Jenna Huntsman]

It's also worth noting that the Puppetry project is going to go a long way to address this issue, as IK is being worked on as a feature for that project.

[Jennifer Boyle]

I have a new idea for a partial solution that I think people could start using today.

I am thinking of an object containing AVSitter scripts and couple animations.  There could be multiple sets of animations. I'll say three for puposes of discussion. One set could be for male taller than female, another for both the same height, and a third for female taller than male. Perhaps scripts can access avatar height; I'm not sure. Even if they can't, it would be simple for the script to ask each avatar if they were short, medium, or tall. If both made the same choice, i.e., both answered tall, then the set of animations designed for avatars of the same height would be used. If one answered tall and the other answered short, another set would be used. It seems to me that such a system would be feasible using AVSitter. Obviously, creating three times as many animations would be a lot more work, although I wonder if a skilled animator might find a way to streamline the process.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

24 minutes ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

I have a new idea for a partial solution that I think people could start using today.

I am thinking of an object containing AVSitter scripts and couple animations.  There could be multiple sets of animations. I'll say three for puposes of discussion. One set could be for male taller than female, another for both the same height, and a third for female taller than male. Perhaps scripts can access avatar height; I'm not sure. Even if they can't, it would be simple for the script to ask each avatar if they were short, medium, or tall. If both made the same choice, i.e., both answered tall, then the set of animations designed for avatars of the same height would be used. If one answered tall and the other answered short, another set would be used. It seems to me that such a system would be feasible using AVSitter. Obviously, creating three times as many animations would be a lot more work, although I wonder if a skilled animator might find a way to streamline the process.

For a single pose where two people have three height choices, you'd probably have to create up to 18 animations (9 pairs).

1. Tall to Tall
2. Tall to Medium
3. Tall to Short
4. Medium to Tall
5. Medium to Medium
6. Medium to Short
7. Short to Tall
8. Short to Medium
9. Short to Short

Depending on what the subjects are doing, you might get away without the redundant Tall-to-Medium, Medium-to-Tall, etc. That would still leave you with 12 animations (6 pairs). You'd essentially increase the animation count 6x (with all the notecard setup and script usage that goes with that). Even with some streamlined animation process and being able to set it up with AV Sitter, it'd still be a pretty imperfect system and I have to wonder who would think that's worth the effort.

Edited February 27, 2023 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Coffee Pancake]

53 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

For a single pose where two people have three height choices, you'd probably have to create up to 18 animations (9 pairs).

1. Tall to Tall
2. Tall to Medium
3. Tall to Short
4. Medium to Tall
5. Medium to Medium
6. Medium to Short
7. Short to Tall
8. Short to Medium
9. Short to Short

Depending on what the subjects are doing, you might get away without the redundant Tall-to-Medium, Medium-to-Tall, etc. That would still leave you with 12 animations (6 pairs). You'd essentially increase the animation count 6x (with all the notecard setup and script usage that goes with that). Even with some streamlined animation process and being able to set it up with AV Sitter, it'd still be a pretty imperfect system and I have to wonder who would think that's worth the effort.

That's such a bad hack and it still wont ever look right

 

[Jennifer Boyle]

3 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

1. Tall to Tall
2. Tall to Medium
3. Tall to Short
4. Medium to Tall
5. Medium to Medium
6. Medium to Short
7. Short to Tall
8. Short to Medium
9. Short to Short

 

Couln't the same set of animations be used for 1,5, and 9.; for 2 and 6; and for 4 and 8? That would cut it down by almost half.

[Coffee Pancake]

The only way this is every goign to happen is with an automated workflow .. and if its automated, it might as well be done in the viewer in real time.

[Jennifer Boyle]

2 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

The only way this is every goign to happen is with an automated workflow .. and if its automated, it might as well be done in the viewer in real time.

Obviously, I have far less understanding of this that you. Can you please explain in a way that poor dunces like me can understand?

[Wulfie Reanimator]

13 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

Couldn't the same set of animations be used for 1,5, and 9.; for 2 and 6; and for 4 and 8? That would cut it down by almost half.

That's true, if the difference between tall and medium was the same as medium and short, you'd only need three (to five) pairs of animations.

Edited February 28, 2023 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Aglaia]

No need to create multiple animations: just adjusting automatically the avatars positions / rotations. In an AVsitter furniture, so far it can be done manually: users can adjust their x, y and z postions in the Pose menu. So the goal would be to make this adjustment automatic.

The scritps could get the avatars heights and, by some calculation, automatically adjust the positions. A script can also get some other parameters like leg length, with the llGetVisualParams function. Knowing legs length and avatar height could help to automatically adjust adult rated animations.

Now, making such a system is easy to say, but harder to make. This would be a big project that requires some research. It could be either a fork of AVsitter to add this feature, or a whole new sitting system. In both cases this is something that will require some research. It is hard to know how efficient such a system could be without spending a lot of time in research and tests.

It would also require that the furniture builders follow some conventions dictated by the system, like using some given female/male avatar shapes as models for making the base positions/rotations.

That said, i think that right now, we better just wait for the Puppetry project to be released. Puppetry should bring some new possibilites regarding to this stuff.

Edited February 28, 2023 by Aglaia

[Katherine Heartsong]

My idea doesn't involve heights at all, just identified points on a (human) avatar's body that need to touch/meet when a specific animation is requested. Lips<>Lips is what meets when a kiss animation occurs; Chest<>Chest when a frontal hug animation is triggered, etc.

We already accept the weird visuals when people are dancing where one avatar (usually the woman) can be floating three feet off the ground or poorly lined up in other ways, so a hug where "Chests" meet even if the shorter avatar floats up off the ground is not any more a stretch.

Of course, these identified points on the body would include more intimate pairings as well depending on the animation requested. That way we'd also eliminate the need to "line things up" manually; for example, with a, umm, hug.

[Katherine Heartsong]

21 hours ago, Aglaia said:

That said, i think that right now, we better just wait for the Puppetry project to be released. Puppetry should bring some new possibilites regarding to this stuff.

I still don't get the point of puppetry. I see the cool technology, but all anyone is going to see of me if I enabled it is my head looking down at the keyboard and my hands making typing motions. I can't gesture with my hands/arms and talk (typing in Nearby or IMs is how I talk to other people in SL) at the same time.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Katherine Heartsong

[Rowan Amore]

4 hours ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

I still don't get the point of puppetry. I see the cool technology, but all anyone is going to see of me if I enabled it is my head looking down at the keyboard and my hands making typing motions. I can't gesture with my hands/arms and talk (typing in Nearby or IMs is how I talk to other people in SL) at the same time.

Someone thought it would be a game changer...somewhere...on the internet.  The only practical application I can see is when someone is doing a video with voice.  Other than that, I can't see an application for it in most people's day to day SL.

[Love Zhaoying]

23 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

5 hours ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

I still don't get the point of puppetry. I see the cool technology, but all anyone is going to see of me if I enabled it is my head looking down at the keyboard and my hands making typing motions. I can't gesture with my hands/arms and talk (typing in Nearby or IMs is how I talk to other people in SL) at the same time.

Someone thought it would be a game changer...somewhere...on the internet.  The only practical application I can see is when someone is doing a video with voice.  Other than that, I can't see an application for it in most people's day to day SL.

Can't we supposedly use puppetry to create animations a new way, without using the traditional MOCAP hardware and software?

I sure hope that is a plan. 

Guess I'll have to wait and see, since I purposefully skipped the demos.  (I'd rather be mildly surprised than bitterly disappointed.)

[Aglaia]

6 hours ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

I still don't get the point of puppetry. I see the cool technology, but all anyone is going to see of me if I enabled it is my head looking down at the keyboard and my hands making typing motions. I can't gesture with my hands/arms and talk (typing in Nearby or IMs is how I talk to other people in SL) at the same time.

The wecam motion capture stuff is just an example of what Puppetry can do, but Puppetry is much more than that.

Puppetry is:

• Possibility to generate animations from a LEAP plugin
• Streamed animations
• Inverse kinematics

It is very promising and could be a game changer for the animation system of Second Life.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Aglaia

[Christina Halpin]

If I am understanding right, if I have two animations, they can be lined up so the Center of Gravity (COG) is on the same level. Then the height of each person can be determined, the discrepancy in lip height estimated, and then one of the posing objects can raise or lower to get the lips to come a lot closer. (the feet will then be off, as will the COG's.)

I kind of do that, I think. But I also use AVSitter, and the interaction gets complicated.

Edited March 20, 2023 by Christina Halpin