Anim Exporter

[NiranV Dean]

nuff said.

[EnCore Mayne]

am i to assume that you will be releasing a poser that can save to .anim Niran?

[NiranV Dean]

On 3/7/2023 at 12:23 AM, EnCore Mayne said:

am i to assume that you will be releasing a poser that can save to .anim Niran?

Exactly.

It will export as .anim file, can import said .anim files and will feature a whole host of other changes and improvements.

[EnCore Mayne]

wicked. should we be referring to you as NiranV Linden any time soon? this is a game changer.

as an aside: have you wrangled the Lindens into seeing the world the way you want them to? i remember you having discussions about permissions. i see from your Discord that you are considering a T-Pose start for any exports. have you thought about allowing us to alter our full perm imports that we've created with Avastar/Blender as an additional start mode?

it's all guessing from my perspective but it sure gets the mind to working. hope you're getting the dev help you need. it SOUNDS DELICIOUSLY EVIL EXCITING!

[Lucia Nightfire]

6 hours ago, NiranV Dean said:

Exactly.

It will export as .anim file, can import said .anim files and will feature a whole host of other changes and improvements.

Will it allow for capturing and tweaking of your current pose which resulted from the playing of third party created animations?

[EnCore Mayne]

10 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

Will it allow for capturing and tweaking of your current pose which resulted from the playing of third party created animations?

how difficult would it be to circumvent any and all of the existing permissions system?

i'm not a coder. i've never run a copybot viewer. i'm not capable of, even if i wanted to, of breaking Linden's perm system even though apparently there are some clever types (with the skills i believe you yourself possess) who've done just that. in that, while not wanting to interupt a personal issue you and NiranV might have, i find your question to his intents to be somewhat troubling as to its colouring his character.

now, if i read you wrong and the question can be treated as a serious reservation; the Poser as it has existed can indeed alter any and all poses irregardless of the creator or perms. unfortunately [my criminal bias aside], exporting those alterations has never been a capability. of course it's possible, and has probably been glaring at NiranV every day he toils away crafting his genius innovations. what exactly would prevent him from turning into an unnamed rogue 3rd party developer, cough, cough [Phoenix anyone...]?

i suppose your question might have been read better if you had asked how is NiranV able to ensure the preservation of 3rd party creators currently applied permissions. knowing you're a coder, his technical explanation might go over the common user's head, mine included. nonetheless, i'd be happy to have him take his time away from the project and detail how his open source code might be adopted by anyone else who sees a long overdue revolution in user capabilities lacking.

[Coffee Pancake]

2 minutes ago, EnCore Mayne said:

while not wanting to interupt a personal issue you and NiranV might have, i find your question to his intents to be somewhat troubling as to its colouring his character.

This is not a personal dispute.

If this exporter allows the user to adjust an animation made by someone else and then export the result, it breaks the TPV ToS.

It doesn't matter if the starting position is part of an animation or a static photography pose.

https://secondlife.com/corporate/third-party-viewers

 

[EnCore Mayne]

isn't it obvious?

it wouldn't be released if it breaks TOS. full stop. who'd think otherwise?

doesn't anyone know NiranV? he's not suicidal.

am i missing something the coterie of 3rd party developers are keeping secret about his reputation?

[Lucia Nightfire]

On 3/9/2023 at 8:24 PM, EnCore Mayne said:

how difficult would it be to circumvent any and all of the existing permissions system?

i'm not a coder. i've never run a copybot viewer. i'm not capable of, even if i wanted to, of breaking Linden's perm system even though apparently there are some clever types (with the skills i believe you yourself possess) who've done just that. in that, while not wanting to interupt a personal issue you and NiranV might have, i find your question to his intents to be somewhat troubling as to its colouring his character.

now, if i read you wrong and the question can be treated as a serious reservation; the Poser as it has existed can indeed alter any and all poses irregardless of the creator or perms. unfortunately [my criminal bias aside], exporting those alterations has never been a capability. of course it's possible, and has probably been glaring at NiranV every day he toils away crafting his genius innovations. what exactly would prevent him from turning into an unnamed rogue 3rd party developer, cough, cough [Phoenix anyone...]?

i suppose your question might have been read better if you had asked how is NiranV able to ensure the preservation of 3rd party creators currently applied permissions. knowing you're a coder, his technical explanation might go over the common user's head, mine included. nonetheless, i'd be happy to have him take his time away from the project and detail how his open source code might be adopted by anyone else who sees a long overdue revolution in user capabilities lacking.

I have no skills in viewer development.

I have no idea how the poser is coded.

It was a genuine question with no intent on character assassination or ulterior motive.

 

Edited March 17, 2023 by Quartz Mole

[EnCore Mayne]

On 3/10/2023 at 6:19 AM, Lucia Nightfire said:

I have no skills in viewer development.

I have no idea how the poser is coded.

It was a genuine question with no intent on character assassination or ulterior motive.

 

my apologies. my only gauge of you is from your interactions here n the forums and your inworld products. i erred in putting you above us. i was mistaken about what i still believe are your exalted skills. consider me duly chastened.

as to my adoration of NiranV...if you had toiled away in your dungeon crafting up one of the preeminent viewers and were on the edge of transforming the very platform you use to exist within i'm certain my fawning subjugation for your Godlike status would still fall outside of what might seem to be an unnatural reaction. it's merely human. i thought better of you.

Edited March 17, 2023 by Quartz Mole

[NiranV Dean]

The Poser will currently start into what i call the "Live Edit" mode, it will continue to function as normal. There is a button at the top left that allows you to switch to the "Create-A-Pose" mode. Doing so will put you into T Pose (aka it will reset all bone rotations). This is to prevent "stealing" poses that are currently running on your avatar, sadly this is something i have to do as Coffee explained it would be against the TPV ToS otherwise. Personally speaking i do not care about "stealing" poses, if it was for me i would not add this limitation at all, i firmly believe that giving out this export tool for free is the entry way to allowing every single user to make their own poses at any given time, for any reason, with any avatar, for any furniture, FOR FREE (minus the 10L$ upload cost). You are essentially getting the ultimate posing tool (and with further updates i'll make it able to export entire animations, making it a decent animation tool too).

Right now the Poser can export your pose as XML file (if you are in Live Edit mode) and as ANIM file (if you are in Create-A-Pose mode), it can also import both XML (again only in Live) and ANIM (only in Create) and continue editing these. Any animation you created outside of SL, as long as it is saved as .anim can be loaded by the poser although it will only load the first keyframe right now. Multikeyframe support is planned for when i have the UI to support editing them.

The poser has always been coded in very open terms, meaning that it is made in such a way that it has as much freedom as possible, anyone with very little coding skills could take out the very few and simple limitations that i put in place.

Here's a more current picture of the Poser right now. I'll probably be splitting it in two windows eventually, its getting... quite clogged.

Edited March 10, 2023 by NiranV Dean

[EnCore Mayne]

thank you for your additional perspective on your Poser's newest iteration NiranV. (i might have gushed EXTREME REVOLUTION but i've been told...)

one thing i'm not sure about is the XML export. i've only exported my shape through Firestorm's viewer menu: Developer>Character Tests>Appearance to XML. importing that file into my Avastar/Blender v2.79 the skeleton appears in the T Pose. are you saying that your viewer, as it is now, exports the bone positions/rotations that the avatar's in?

[NiranV Dean]

31 minutes ago, EnCore Mayne said:

thank you for your additional perspective on your Poser's newest iteration NiranV. (i might have gushed EXTREME REVOLUTION but i've been told...)

one thing i'm not sure about is the XML export. i've only exported my shape through Firestorm's viewer menu: Developer>Character Tests>Appearance to XML. importing that file into my Avastar/Blender v2.79 the skeleton appears in the T Pose. are you saying that your viewer, as it is now, exports the bone positions/rotations that the avatar's in?

The XML format is completely custom you cannot use it for anything outside the poser in BD unless someone writes a converter.  Which the creator of BentoBuddy actually wanted to do... which kinda prompted me to take another shot at an official exporter and BAM now here we are.

To explain what the Viewer does to prevent stealing: Technically not much, it will simply not enable the export as ANIM option (infact i'll split them anyway) as long as you are in Live Edit mode and will not allow XML export while in Create-A-Pose. That means XML is solely for local saving and ANIM is for the intent to make poses. Very simple, so simple in fact that LL completely and totally failed to acknowledge this when i brought it up.

Edited March 10, 2023 by NiranV Dean

[EnCore Mayne]

okay, for the illiterate and technically challenged, let me see if i got this right: each viewer, if it can export xml, has complete control over what is written (both in structure and data). looking at the Firestorm file it looks like it's got plenty of vector details written into it. as an example from Firestorm file the devs decided to write blah blah blah (excluding a gross amount of detritus):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII" standalone="yes"?> <linden_genepool version="1.0"> <archetype name="???"> <root name="mRoot" position="119.452408 142.478226 24.873421" scale="1.000000 1.000000 1.000000"/> <bone name="mHandThumb1Right" position="0.030412 -0.033361 0.000014" scale="0.850000 0.850000 0.850000"/> <joint_offset name="mHandThumb1Left" position="0.030412 0.033361 0.000014" mesh_id="dc2ad552-461a-1de1-41ac-6cc9a56dfa49" count="6" distinct="1"/> <joint_rig_info num="74" name="mHandThumb1Left" min="-0.007723 -0.008875 -0.025385" max="0.028469 0.025636 0.004275" tmin="-0.138870 0.140106 0.251280" tmax="-0.106522 0.183731 0.296253"/> </archetype> </linden_genepool>

not having studied XMK at all at all at all, i'm assuming there's other information that the devs could throw in there that could amount to the exact position/rotation for any and all bones?

if that's the case (relying on your input here), there's simply no way for anyone (aside from the genius/hacker level) to interpret any of that data using commonly available posing tools. so even if a viewer's XML may contain precise coordinates Blender/Avastar is not able to read it?

bare with me, just trying to understand: so the only comprehensive reader of your Poser's XML code is your viewer? the only manipulation of the pose numbers is exclusive to the local user and their use of it exclusively in BD?

oh oh. had a thought. in being able to save the XML file locally, that file can be transmitted ad infinitum to whomever, right? or are there restrictions on that file being uploaded and used in someone else's BD?

[NiranV Dean]

9 minutes ago, EnCore Mayne said:

okay, for the illiterate and technically challenged, let me see if i got this right: each viewer, if it can export xml, has complete control over what is written (both in structure and data). looking at the Firestorm file it looks like it's got plenty of vector details written into it. as an example from Firestorm file the devs decided to write blah blah blah (excluding a gross amount of detritus):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII" standalone="yes"?> <linden_genepool version="1.0"> <archetype name="???"> <root name="mRoot" position="119.452408 142.478226 24.873421" scale="1.000000 1.000000 1.000000"/> <bone name="mHandThumb1Right" position="0.030412 -0.033361 0.000014" scale="0.850000 0.850000 0.850000"/> <joint_offset name="mHandThumb1Left" position="0.030412 0.033361 0.000014" mesh_id="dc2ad552-461a-1de1-41ac-6cc9a56dfa49" count="6" distinct="1"/> <joint_rig_info num="74" name="mHandThumb1Left" min="-0.007723 -0.008875 -0.025385" max="0.028469 0.025636 0.004275" tmin="-0.138870 0.140106 0.251280" tmax="-0.106522 0.183731 0.296253"/> </archetype> </linden_genepool>

not having studied XMK at all at all at all, i'm assuming there's other information that the devs could throw in there that could amount to the exact position/rotation for any and all bones?

if that's the case (relying on your input here), there's simply no way for anyone (aside from the genius/hacker level) to interpret any of that data using commonly available posing tools. so even if a viewer's XML may contain precise coordinates Blender/Avastar is not able to read it?

bare with me, just trying to understand: so the only comprehensive reader of your Poser's XML code is your viewer? the only manipulation of the pose numbers is exclusive to the local user and their use of it exclusively in BD?

oh oh. had a thought. in being able to save the XML file locally, that file can be transmitted ad infinitum to whomever, right? or are there restrictions on that file being uploaded and used in someone else's BD?

In order to read any file a program needs to have some sort of reading function to interpret the data its getting. Blender and Avastar both lack these as the XML file is custom formatted. The XML (and the ANIM file) can be transmitted to anyone freely but since the poser itself does not allow you to import ANIM file in Live or XML in Create mode they can only be used to "continue" working on original data that you (or someone else) created and shared. Live mode is completely local so importing said XML files wont do anything other than giving you a locally viewable copy of the pose that cannot be exported.

[EnCore Mayne]

okay. i'm gonna have to install BD again (just building up a new system from my main getting fried by a voltage spike!). not having used it much (since it wasn't capable of downloading the animation/pose) i thought it was bound to be the ultimate tool for animators.

i think my confusion is with the Live/Create modes. Live is manipulating any pose, including 3rd party creator's handiwork. anything made in Live can only be exported as XML as a freely transferable file. that file can be imported to anyone in Live and is only viewable within the local system. this feature can be a real boon to photogs, the basis of your viewer's empowerment. gush, gush.

there are (or were, from the last time i used BD) save slots within the viewer for the local Live poses, no? wouldn't that alleviate any need for exporting/importing the XML? i don't see a use for the exporting of the XML unless it's for importing to other users for their own projects. i can see where animators might have some push back on that.

importing full perm .anim and exporting Create mode .anim is the bees knees. at present timeline of development we'll be able to use your system with real inworld models to perfectly place our particular pieces with full interoperabilty with inworld scene components!

in other words, hallelujah! NirvanV is King!

[NiranV Dean]

It's here! It's there! It's finally released! Let's see how people break it.

[Coffee Pancake]

11 minutes ago, NiranV Dean said:

It's here! It's there! It's finally released! Let's see how people break it.

You're a hopeless train wreck.

Posts the video for you .. who cares about the poser. Woop ... booooring ...

 

[Lucia Nightfire]

On 3/12/2023 at 2:14 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

You're a hopeless train wreck.

Posts the video for you .. who cares about the poser. Woop ... booooring ...

 

Floaty ears.

Curious if that is PY driven or not.

[NiranV Dean]

On 3/14/2023 at 4:18 PM, Lucia Nightfire said:

Floaty ears.

Curious if that is PY driven or not.

It's not Second Life, that's VRChat. The hair, ears, whiskers, tail, toes and scarf are physical (and collide with stuff, like my hands) because they are phys bones, a script that allows a bone chain to posess physical properties such as wind, gravity, collision and other parameters that allows it to move around, think flexiprim but for bones. You can see that my arm collides with the scarf occasionally, physbones can also be grabbed, animated and can fire parameters, animation chains or complex logic when grabbed, pulled, rotated or stretched.

Quite a while back a attempted to take a look into the flexiprim code and see if i can rewrite it to support bones and make a simple version of physbones for SL, sadly the flexiprim code was practically completely unusable as it does flexi completely different from how bones would do this... i also suggested this feature on a meeting but... as with everything it didn't really get anywhere... so unless i do it myself its not going to happen.

Edited March 17, 2023 by NiranV Dean

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

I had a look at this as one of the things I do from time to time is make a pose to precisely fit a particular object. Qavimator and QavimatorBeta only offer very basic props that don't really support a complex shape, so the next-best thing is an in-world animation creator tool (Erdiss ACT) from the Marketplace that uses a poseable dummy and exports a BVH via an external web server. It doesn't offer any of the extra Bento joints your system does, so this is a major step forward.

In regards to cloning other people's work, I see two things here:

Firstly, using things like the Erdiss  tool above it is easy enough to replicate a static pose, so I don't see there's anything to "run screaming naked down the middle of the street" about BD doing this in-browser.

Secondly, longer moving sequences are not going to be easy to copy because there is no way I know of to freeze an animation mid-sequence, so motion-captured sequences are safe. Should somebody be obsessive enough to painstaking make a similar series of individual poses then I'd say it's effectively an original work, not a ripped copy.

The XML format is interesting, I just had to poke around in it. QavimatorBeta also saves to an XML format, albeit with a different nomenclature, but I can see the possibility to do some conversion if necessary.

So the big question, for me anyway, is this: revenue. If I were to grab something I've made in QavimatorBeta , massage the XML, poke it into the folder, and then play it via the saved list, am I bypassing the 10L$ boost to Linden Lab's coffers that would otherwise take place when I upload via the normal route? (I'm guessing that because this is the equivalent of the old-fashioned local textures the answer is no, but this is the only query I have regarding rights etc).

In general though, it's a very impressive and incredibly useful piece of programming.

<tongue-in-cheek>When's the linux/Opensim version of Black Dragon due for release?</tongue-in-cheek>

Edited March 17, 2023 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[NiranV Dean]

1 hour ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

I had a look at this as one of the things I do from time to time is make a pose to precisely fit a particular object. Qavimator and QavimatorBeta only offer very basic props that don't really support a complex shape, so the next-best thing is an in-world animation creator tool (Erdiss ACT) from the Marketplace that uses a poseable dummy and exports a BVH via an external web server. It doesn't offer any of the extra Bento joints your system does, so this is a major step forward.

In regards to cloning other people's work, I see two things here:

Firstly, using things like the Erdiss  tool above it is easy enough to replicate a static pose, so I don't see there's anything to "run screaming naked down the middle of the street" about BD doing this in-browser.

Secondly, longer moving sequences are not going to be easy to copy because there is no way I know of to freeze an animation mid-sequence, so motion-captured sequences are safe. Should somebody be obsessive enough to painstaking make a similar series of individual poses then I'd say it's effectively an original work, not a ripped copy.

The XML format is interesting, I just had to poke around in it. QavimatorBeta also saves to an XML format, albeit with a different nomenclature, but I can see the possibility to do some conversion if necessary.

So the big question, for me anyway, is this: revenue. If I were to grab something I've made in QavimatorBeta , massage the XML, poke it into the folder, and then play it via the saved list, am I bypassing the 10L$ boost to Linden Lab's coffers that would otherwise take place when I upload via the normal route? (I'm guessing that because this is the equivalent of the old-fashioned local textures the answer is no, but this is the only query I have regarding rights etc).

In general though, it's a very impressive and incredibly useful piece of programming.

<tongue-in-cheek>When's the linux/Opensim version of Black Dragon due for release?</tongue-in-cheek>

On the regard of the XML file. It's pretty common for the Viewer to write things as XML, its a nice and tidy format. Anyone could write a converter from any XML format to another and if an importer can read the XML formatting (which is always roughly similar-ish) it can also parse the information and make something out of it (that is an animation for instance).

On the regard of stealing poses: LL's concern is that the Poser by default allows you to "catch" whatever current pose you are in the moment you hit "Start", so single frame animations (aka poses) can simply be played locally and then the Poser could be started which would "record" the Pose as is and use it in the Poser, an export to .anim would now effectively allow exporting this single frame and reimport it as your own animation, effectively "stealing" the pose. However, as with shapes and any other easily created "data containers" (notecards, settings, physics) i do not believe that these should even be protected by copyright/IP and thus the permission system at all, LL also noted on this case that these do possess permissions mainly because they are assets, thus automatically inheriting the permission system, which in turn allows people to do some stupid shenanigans (like making things no mod, no trans and or selling shapes which are effectively just a couple stupid sliders moved around). If it was for me, i would not put the Poser into T pose and i would fully allow exporting any and all poses as i believe that this tool is effecively the "end" of all comercially sold single-frame poses as we know them since the Poser effectively allows us, every single user, what the original creators couldn't: make the pose fit for absolutely everything, right there in-world and for free.

Now stealing actual animations is a whole different thing but the Poser as is wouldn't allow this anyway, as again it only "captures" whatever pose you are currently in, that might not even be a keyframe of any animation, it might be an inbetween interpolation between keyframes of multiple animations even and AGAIN it is only a single frame, the fear of stealing entire animations is thus unwarranted.

On "revenue": LL has said to me, that the 10L$ fee is not for any profit, it is merely to prevent infinite asset upload-spammery. Which is fair but could also be somehow fixed (limit uploads per minute/hour/day and offer infinite additional uploads via conventional 10L$ upload). Also improve temp upload/temp asset preview to make it easier to see what your thing will do before uploading it.

OpenSIM support is not planned (never was and never will unless i'd switch to using OpenSIM).
Linux support is similar to the above (i do not own Linux and are not planning to, even if i would compile it for Linux i could not guarantee that it even runs).

[EnCore Mayne]

1 hour ago, NiranV Dean said:

...If it was for me, i would not put the Poser into T pose and i would fully allow exporting any and all poses as i believe that this tool is effecively the "end" of all comercially sold single-frame poses as we know them since the Poser effectively allows us, every single user, what the original creators couldn't: make the pose fit for absolutely everything, right there in-world and for free.

we bear such an arduous burden upon our freedoms...

nonetheless, i thank you for your compromises to the man.

[NiranV Dean]

5 hours ago, EnCore Mayne said:

we bear such an arduous burden upon our freedoms...

nonetheless, i thank you for your compromises to the man.

There is nothing worse than seeing your tools being gimped.

[Margot LaSalle]

On 3/10/2023 at 2:20 PM, NiranV Dean said:

Right now the Poser can export your pose as XML file (if you are in Live Edit mode) and as ANIM file (if you are in Create-A-Pose mode), it can also import both XML (again only in Live) and ANIM (only in Create) and continue editing these.

First of all, thank you for creating such a great tool.

Second, I must be doing something wrong because when I'm in creation mode and import an .anim that I had previously created in BD and exported, my avatar gets wrapped up and looks like a box, so I have no way of editing that pose.

If I go in Live Editing Mode and click that imported .anim, it works. But then I can't save any modifications as a new .anim.

Is there any way to create a library of my poses so I can modify them in the future and create new poses that can be exported?