Kitsune Shan

That would be very problematic. There's a lot of content already like hairs which uses the skull bone because it does allow some adjustments. Having face bones rigged to there would lead to incompatibility with several hairs. Rather get two bones on neck instead.

Thats quite far from the project objetive. It surely would be nice, but Bento is about extra bones and what you are asking for is morphers support in SL. I dont think we will see morphers support for any time soon. They dont even seem able to implement translation properly yet something like morphers may be out of their capabilities.

Lets be realistic on the subject. SL have to be adapted to certain standards but you cant "break" those standards to make something viable when to start its totally wrong. Changing how animations should work just so people that does an AO using bones translations can still use their AOs its really pointless. If they choose to use bones translations for parts that shouldnt use, its something that should rely on their side and responsability. I dont think that SL should accomodate to wrong workarounds. There is no point on using bones translations asides of facial bones unless you are making a special AO for a special avatar. In that case, the animations dont need to carry over to different avatars nor it should anyway. So we are discussing here why animations have to be compatible with everything when in the real world they never are. When you work on game characters and develop animations, you can retarged and adapt them inside of your 3D software. You can reuse them adapting them and they work perfectly. But thats it, they are being adapted again. Unless you use certain kind of locomotions and inverse kinematics in SL, you cant really expect animations to work on every scenario and I dont think that LL is aiming at that. Again, it doesnt matter how animations scales properly, you wont be able to use facial expressions on different heads unless they were done to work on pair with them. Every mesh head will require different joints offset, different degrees of movement. There is no way that these animations will work in the same way on a different head. Its really something trivial, it could work just by coincidence or if bones offset as well as mesh head itself doesnt changes that much but in most case thats not the case. The example of different avatars size was given. I dont see why an AO developed for a little pixie avatar should work on a huge orc avatar. It wasnt made with that purpose, they are custom avatars which requires custom animations and if translations were used its because it was needed for certain actions that only the avatar for which were made will use. As mentioned before, if you make just a general AO and you shouldnt use translations but you do, is no one else fault but yours. Not because someone may not know something it doesnt meant that should be implemented. I myself have bough certain things in SL, clothing, that for no reasson uses joints offset and broke my avatar making them totally useless. These pieces didnt require that, but surely the creator didnt know. Should have LL remove that option because someone doesnt know how to do use of it? Surely not... If necessary, when uploading animations a checkbox for adding translation could be added to prevent those less aknowledge to upload something that could break certain things. But still, if someone makes something "wrong" and mess an AO, its on their side to fix and reupload it. Adding enough documentation surely will also help people to understand everything and how new things works. BTW if someone remember when OH are inworld and at which time, woul be glad if tell me. I would like to be on the next meeting.

You are totally misunderstanding the project. This won't work with old default avatar heads nor having more attachments points would help either. This project is about having new extra bones but those new bones like the ones on head for facial animations won't work with default expressions (nor should it in any case anyway). I'm sure that users will be able to not just mimic but do even better facial animations than the default ones (which isn't that hard seeing their bad quality) so you shouldn't worry about having good mesh heads once bento it's fully implemented.

I'm not sure why the reuse of animations is so important. I don't think anyone expect animations to be reusable between different meshes like heads and custom avatars. There is no way, even limiting animations to just rotations, to do such thing. Every mesh head or avatar may require custom animations. Due a mesh head being so different between them and different positions on mesh joints offsets, this is expected. I don't think we will ever see "AOs" for heads unless they make it on purpose for certain models purposely. This is the same for mesh avatars, having different shapes and proportions, no one should expect for animations to be compatible between them. So, basically, I'm just trying to say that this is something totally irrelevant. Even now, you can't use an humanoid AO on an animal avatar. If this didn't matter before, it shouldn't matter now.

You can simply rig those rings to fitted mesh bones. You may need to provide a different mesh/weights for each body mesh. Think on it just like doing a bra, its the same.

Yes, those are my exact thoughs. But I also came to the conclusion that, from the point of view of someone that isnt 3D artist or animator, to realize why bones translation isnt an option but the rule, may be a bit "abstract". Thats probably why they are asking for more examples. I really think that bones translations can be implemented. It may be more or less hard but thats the programmers works. And if they are working in such area its because they may have the knowledge and talent to do such task. I think, they should at least try because without trying we cant really point out and see which downsides are those that seems to keep them from doing Bento properly. Or maybe we could realize that is not so impossible and those "bugs" and downsides that could appear are easier to fix than expected. We cant just throw the towel before starting. But we have to point something evident, bones translations have been there and people have been using it even tho SL wasnt even made for it. So I could expect that something that works without even intention, could be totally perfect if done on purpose. We also have seen some examples. We saw that awesome animation of the little dog, we have seen also examples of how bones translation fixes some issues with joints offset and I added myself how could help to not use joints offset for those avatars that are already deformed by another mesh attachment. A good example is if you try to wear a new mesh anime head full of animated expressions that, since doesnt match an human head, uses joints offset. You want to wear this head with your favorite anime avatar like Kemono from Utilizator. But this avatar uses joints offset for shoulders and probably others bones as well. If you wear this mesh head, your avatar will change form into the default avatar shape. This would mean that said head could be only worm by not deformed avatar and if a compatible head its made, you couldnt wear with normal avatar. Im sure that could confuse a lot of customers. Im actually very busy, but if I get the time I will try to make some basic video and provide some basic mesh showing advantages of bones translations. I do feel like you tho. I feel that its totally unnecessary to keep defending something that its an industry standard and that people more aknowledge than us already have been settle. I would also suggest, to those that thinks that adding extra bones for translation simulation, to try to do some animations with that or to build a whole rig with them. I can tell in advance that wont be an easy task :matte-motes-whistle:

Thanks, but still lacks others features that diffuse have. Anyway that was just an example, maybe not the best one but still, bones translation is a must have. Im not sure why its so hard to understand for LL that there is not such workarounds about that. Every decision now will just imply to limit something that could be really great. Im totally sure that people can wait more time and get bones translation done properly. Not to mention the amount of meshes that already use this through anim files. I would like to know how broen those would be or if they will keep working after the update and translations block.

Before jumping in which seems easier to implement keep some things in mind. Adding additional bones at the tip was an old dirty workaround when something else wasn't possible. If you want to add facial bones, let's do it properly instead of half implement a new feature. We have already too much features that are on the half way of being implemented (like not being able to change materials through scripts yet among others). I'm sure that users can wait for a finished and polished product. Relying on extra bones in exchange of translations, wouldn't fix the issue of having to use joints offset which automatically breaks content. For example, every mesh head would need to use joints offset meaning that every avatar would get deformed not only on head but the rest of body. Extra bones, asides of all, doesn't even fix the issue of facial animations correctly. Users will notice that once they start making serious animations. You couldn't use either facial motion capture which now day is very easy with even a simple Webcam. Further explanation of why it seems so hard for you guys to consider something that it's a standard would be helpful. Let's not forget that SL have been using translations through different hacks always and people never complained asides of the lack of office support through recognized file formats.

Well it depends. If we talk about mesh bodies like Maitreya or Belleza, then those won't see any benefit asides of changing the static hands for animated ones. Where we will see big changes is on custom avatars like furries or others types that make usage of all bones like could be animals too.

That animation is pretty awesome. Did you put the bones at the tip of the ears for the smooth bending? Perhaps the same image with visible bones would be very interesting to see and surely would help for LL to see how bones translates.

Basically, as have been said already, this project adds new bones to the default avatar making possible to rig and animate new things. The default avatar won't change so this only applies to new meshes. As for examples, you can now make mesh hands and animate every finger, make a mesh head and animate it's facial expressions, blink, open mouth, etc; there are also new bones that makes possible to rig and animate ears, tails and wings. All those bones can be also be "moved" to different positions to achieve different results. For example, wings could be moved to do extra arms for some kind of Sci-fi avatar or animal. The most important to know is that all those new bones aren't made to affect the default avatar, so you won't likely see hands or facial animations for it nor is intention of this project tho. We surely will see this reflected soon on common products like hands being now animated rather than having to use several hands posed hidden with alpha to change pose. Hope that helps helps a bit to make it clear. There is also a lot of articles among SL bloggers that may cover a bit deeper the project.

The usage of proper version of FBX is not only about joints offset but about properly exported multi material subobjects. I'm not sure whether they fixed all of the issues that I had found on the uploader already but I still find safe to use that version as you won't get any benefit using another one anyway. While the Dae exporting option from max works, it seems to be bugged since 2015 taking too much time to export. Anyway, I'm glad that my workflow worked to fix your issues with joints offsets . --||-

Im not sure why we have to provide so much examples about bone translation and its utilities. Bone translations for facial expressions isnt just an option, is a must have. Whoever in the industry can tell you that you simply CAN'T animate a face with rotations. How are you suposse to move for example lips with rotations? The only bones where rotations are necessary is jaw. Even an eye blink isnt made with rotations even if could technically be possible. LL have to realize that, everytime you roate a bone, there are vertex that rotate over theirself (those that are near joint center) and that also others vertex move in opossite direction. Asides of that, there is a huge important point on why we need bone translation that I hope to elaborate good enough on my comment. Bones translations is a different way of using "joints offset". Take for example a mesh head. The ideal case for a mesh head its to make it different enough from the SL standard avatar. Otherwise such mesh head wouldnt have too much sense right? Ok, so we have made a new mesh head and it looks amazing. Obviously, this mesh head doesnt match with the default one, meaning that certain bones may need joints offset adjustments to fit this new head. If we force joints position, we arent just forcing it on the mesh head but on the whole avatar. This could lead to distortions to those avatars that shouldnt require any new modification on joints offset. Basically, we would end with content that could break other content just for the sake that make it work and not having bones translations animations. If we had bones translations, this could be avoided. Animations have been always priority based. And those bones that havent been moved, doesnt affect get any animation at all. I could assume that we can give this kind of priority to bone translations on BVH as well. So, with the example that I used before, our mesh head could be uploaded without joints possitions. This, of course, will lead to a distorted mesh once worm. But we have now animations to make the bones go into place and fix the issue without affecting the rest of shape of our avatar or others attachments. If these animations start to being implemented properly, stoping animations would lead to your avatar to goes back to normal and fix another big issue that have been there since the introduction of meshes making people to get distorted depending on what they wear. Certain parts with new bones will sure also need bone translations. Wings for instance. Opening wings animations arent done with only rotations. When wings spread, you may need to move some of the bones too. This example may not be that clear but once you get into animations ad try to animate some wings, you will see why it can be very useful. But leaving asides all those examples, facial expressions alone gives enough weight to make this feature a must have. As many people said already, having bone translations isnt a mere improvement for facial animations but a 100% necessary feature. I kinda guess that from programming point of view it may be hard for them to visualize mentally why rotations doesnt work. I would suggest to import the angel file into any software and try to animate the face. Then you will realize pretty fast that it simply doesnt work. There is also another feature that people is missing pretty hard. Most of them probably due not knowing or because they simply didnt get that deep in 3D knowledge for simply using it for SL and its the vertex limit. I had say before that the already too short limit of 4 bones per vertex its really problematic since fitted mesh introduction. Now that will become even worse. If you want smooth facial weights, you cant limit that to only 4 taking into account that there are more than 30 bones already. Another example could be wings or back. Having to rig something that needs UPPER_BACK, CHEST, mChest, mPelvis, PELVIS, mTorso, mCollar, etc.. its already impossible. This limit have been increased long ago in most game engines. We really need to get this fixed in SL as well. Those that rigs for fitted mesh surely understand what it means.

BVH DOES support bone translations as well as rotations ans scale. Its just SL which doesnt accepts it (yet, I hope).

Working fine to me. https://gyazo.com/3ca427f5b34a5fb08a2357200657ad0f I have applied exactly the same workaround that I have always used for custom joints offset. In Customize > Units Setup set units to Metric - Meters then click on "System Unit Setup" and set 1 = 1 meter. Import the angel dae file, change whatever joint offset you want and export the mesh selecting the mesh and also the bones. Import the mesh in SL, it should work. If doesnt work, check which version of FBX are you using as not all supports joints offset correctly. Use FBX Plugin 2013.2 for correct joints offset. If this isnt possible due your version of Max, then download FBX converter 2013.2 from Autodesk website. Export your mesh as FBX in 3D Max with these settings: https://gyazo.com/09a02e7686bd301f61ad9a88526c9779 Its very important to use FBX 2013 under FBX File Format > Version. Now use FBX converter to convert that FBX into a perfectly compatible SL DAE.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions about anim files, its really apreciated the effort. The main problem with that format its that it really changes from what I have seen on Autodesk products. The tags at least seems totally different from what I have seen on the little anim documentation regarding SL. I would REALLY like to know how you could convert a FBX or other files into anim format. That would probably end all the problems since all softwares can export in one or another way to FBX. And thanks Adeon for that little software. Ill check right now to see how it works. But, asides of all that.. its really that problematic to use BVH format? I keep saying, FBX would be the best, or even DAE too. Simply exporting the animated bones should do the job pretty fine. I just dont see too much sense on using anim files having to always use workarounds while BVH is more widespread. Even Daz3D supports BVH and SL export options. I know that there are some parameters that can be set on anim files that you cant on BVH files but that shouldnt stop BVH for being reliable for the common user. But well, one step at a time, lets wait for LL to sort this problem of translation then we can start asking for reliable animations formats. Thanks again to those who had bring a bit of light about anim file format in SL .

LL stated that bone translations would stop working when the project leave beta grid and joins main one so its normal that now they still works. Asides of that, assuming that something without any support its perfect its pretty wrong. Not everyone uses Blender, not everyone should have to buy third party plugins/script to make it work. Not to mention the lack of info on SL wiki about how anim animation format exactly works plus you wont ever hear a word from Gaia explaining anything about it. Its clearly a too closed format that no one knows and no one can know at all. I have several friends trying to build tools for others fotwares supporting anim files and its totally impossible. I have no idea from where Gaia took all the necessary info to build tools to export in such format but the rest of us doesnt even have a schema of the file. Bein said that, we really need to support BVH files instead of anim. BVH files is a common well known format that its totally compatible with rotations, translations and more. SL have been always converted BVH to anim files internally, I dont see why they couldnt continue with that adding support for translations. Lets not rely on hacks and weird workaround please.

I don't think that have nothing to do with SL anim format file. A lot of engines, softwares and games simply put ".anim" as extension for animation files just due the "anim-ation" name. Anyway, what we need is a real support using real animation file formats like could be BVH, DAE or FBX. Having to rely on usermade scripts that usually is buggy or unfinished over only one software its really bad idea. Not to mention that you cant even export anim files with blender without avastar and even tho, you cant export anim files if you didnt make your mesh over avastar. For example, if you make certain mesh in another software, you cant bring it to blender to simply export the animation because the anim option only shows over avastar meshes. Surely there are ways of retargeting but I find that really complicated in comparison with the easy fact of allowing BVH animation format. A format that its already compatible in SL. All they need to do is just make it to read bone translations as well as rotations.

SL animations doesnt work in that way. SL only gives priority to those bones that have been animated from its default position/rotation so the rest that you dont animate have no influence on those animated. There is no way of breaking content just by implementing something that people have been using not so officially.

I already tried to test to upload the angel test file. I need more time to deeply test more but would be nice to be able to upload bone translations through BVH files to test facial animations. Do you think isnt totally lost to get BVH support for them if they arent totally removed from the viewer at the end? Because I guess they probably wont get removed seeing that you cant really replace them with rotations. Also, any chance of having raised the limit of 4 bones per vertex to like 8? Ill try to illustrate a bit more why thisi s so important and why I keep asking about it now that we have a lot of new bones when I get a bit of time for it. Then surely you guys will try to do something to sort that problem out because without it, we wont be able to use those bones at all.

The thing is that they arent really stoping it, they just never had official support for them. It was through hacks and they simply allowed it adding changes to the uploader. What we really need is a solid official support through real animation files like BVH, FBX or DAE files. Then we could start talking about having bone translations. And, just to clarify, Im totally with you but I dont want a simple "lets allow it". I want good support of a must have feature otherwise it wouldnt have too much sense.

How many chances are that we can see translations animations on bones officially supported by BVH files and not just by hacks and weird workaround with anim files (which isnt even a common animation format)? Because if there is none, you guys could start already by removing all facial bones. I have the file right now opened in 3D Max and its literally impossible to do any facial expression or animation asides of the jaw. I'll do special emphasys on making them available through BVH files at least (would be better if we could upload animation simply through FBX files or DAE just uploading the animated skeleton but ok, lets stick with BVH) because Im really tired of having to rely on software and extra plugins/scripts to do a task that should be easy and simple. Plus the viewer at time to upload could do the conversion to anim files like always have been doing.

Ok I have a very important question for you. It have been said already how important bone translation is at time to do facial expressions but I think that guys didnt really took something into account at time to remove them... Lets say someone makes a new mesh head for SL (it will surely happen). Its a fact, and everyone involved a bit in 3D knows, that rotations on bones are useless at time to animate facial expressions. You cant rotate lips to make expressions, that would be totally messed up but, ok... lets say we move the bones back enough to the head where those rotations would be translated similar to translations. We would need to upload the said head with custom joints which wouldnt be a big issue unless you want everyone to have the same heigh all over SL. Right now, joints offset overlaps one to each other at time of wearing meshes with them. Since SL only allows using one, it would mean that wearing this head would shrink your back to the default bone position on the whole body, not just the head, making it impossible to wear a mesh head with joints offset. I have yet to test how well positioned those bones are in relation with the head at time to make human heads in non custom avatars but I think we could really end all this debate and future problems if you guys simply implement bone translation animations within the common BVH files. Lets drop anim files. Yeah they are cool and stuff but Im tired of having to use "hacks" and workarounds for something that should be there. Not to mention that there is no official support for anim files. All we have is blender in which case you force users to buy avastar tool to be able to export that format. Wouldnt it be easier to simply implement translations on bones through BVH and do the conversion on SL servers as we have been doing the whole time? Why to complicate something that should be simple from the begining? I am really glad with this feature but we have to get it totally done or not, we cant have it half finished. There is something else that everyone is missing already. I do all the rigs for Blueberry mainstore. Im sure you all know this store. I can safely tell, that rigging for SL actually its quite painful with the 4 bones per vertex limit. It was ok before, but once collision bones were introduced, we have to deal with areas that goes up to 6 bones. Now include to that the possibility of adding the new bones. I cant really imagine how to animate facial expressions with only 4 bones per vertex having a total of 30 bones there. This would make the skinning process and the animation one really hard and ugly. The animation would be quite sketchy and weird. Couldnt we really get that limit increased to 8 like most actual game engines? I dont think it would do any bad right now or any noticiable performance impact (if we take into account how many high poly meshes people wear till everyone lags, we can surely agree that its really late for optimizations within SL). So thats it, too much bones and too litle of them per vertex isnt a good combination. We really need the limit raise to 8 as well as translations capabilities at time of animating them. Otherwise we may run into a lot of useless features that only people will be able on furries and moving **bleep** as seeing how priority people have on a bone for that zone. I hope we can all reach some goals at time to balance the requested features right now before its late and we realize that we need them. Remember that the community involved here right now is that one with more interest and knowledge on them and you should really hear what people is asking for unless this forum post is only to give people the false illusion that we can ask everything we want even tho wont be changed or implemented.

May be the same reasson why normal maps arent available without advanced lighting mode even tho they are totally compatible with the render engine. Or the same reasson why we havent custom bones on meshes. Or even the same reasson of why we cant simply change materials paramters through scripts. I really dont know why some basics must have features arent there already and why others that no one asks for are being implemented like that obssesion of changing interface from time to time. Mysteries of SL