Code Violet

Vir Linden wrote: I like the idea of having a way to override a wider range of animations. Currently I think the llSetAnimationOverride hook only applies to animations that are part of the server-mediated locomotion process, so I'm not sure how easy it would be to extend using that mechanism. If you could point me at sample content that uses the existing facial animations it would be helpful - either send me copies or provide pointers to marketplace listings. Thanks! Hi Vir and community, Now that bento is live, I've been getting an increasing number of questions about bento heads, because the legacy expressions don't work with them, breaking the old functionality. Obviously furniture designers can't support bento heads without either the SL community establishing a universal protocol for triggering facial expressions in bento heads or LL adding https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-11569 I wonder if Vir has given any more thought to the llSetAnimationOverride proposal in that JIRA? Or if the bento head community has started to develop any standard? To me, it seems like the llSetAnimationOverride idea presented in the JIRA would set the stage for further development through community standards, so I think the JIRA would be the best way forward. Here are my previous posts on this thread: https://community.secondlife.com/secondlife/board/message?board.id=buildingandtexturing&message.id=14382#M14382 https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Building-and-Texturing-Forum/Project-Bento-Feedback-Thread/m-p/3002538#M14460 And some limited discussion on the topic can be found on the AVsitter website at: https://avsitter.com/qa/549/establishing-bento-protocols Thanks

Vir Linden wrote: We would like to have a more complete mechanism for animation overrides; unfortunately this looks to be a large enough project that it wouldn't fit within the scope for Bento. The current override mechanism is implemented on the server side and works with the management of locomotion state (walking/running/flying etc), so extending it to work with arbitrary animations that are not part of locomtion would entail a fair amount of new work. The proposal is currently on the list of possible post-Bento projects. As always we can't make promises about future projects, but I hope we will be able to address it at some point. That sounds great Vir. I agree that overrides should not slow down completing the Bento avatar. However I do urge your team to look at it as soon as possible, because early availability of overrides would be important for making avatars backward compatible with existing content from the start. As Bento does so much to enhance facial expressions, it would seem a waste for it to just ignore the legacy facial expression framework used for so many years in SL. Avatar creators please think about how your creations will interact with furniture and attachments, when it comes to facial expressions. So that when someone passes your avatar an ice cream its mesh head will know what to do! As facial animations will be triggered by scripts, perhaps often by external triggers, consistent naming will be important. So I suggest you use the legacy facial expression names as a base. That is: express_laugh_emote, express_bored_emote, express_cry_emote, etc. Have fun

Hi Vir and all Bento developers. It's great to see the SL community working alongside Linden Lab so well in the development of Bento. This is just a quick reminder to please think about including compatibility support for the old facial animations by adding a script call like llSetAnimationOverride(). The legacy facial animations are among those listed here. And I'm sure our avatars have all pulled our fair share of those faces in SL using them. These expressions are used in the gestures found in the standard avatar Library, and they are also used widely in resident-made gestures and scripted content such as furniture and avatar accessories. The main advantages of overrides for the old facial expressions are: * Bento avatars can be made to work with existing content that makes use of facial expressions. * Creators can continue to use the legacy names list of facial expressions, and it will act as a starting point for further standards to be developed and adopted by the community. For testing purposes, the "legacy" facial expression HUD is still available here. I'm unable to attend the meetings due to time-zone issues. It would be great to know if/when this idea is being considered

Basically, mesh head designers would create replacements for all the legacy facial anims, add them to their heads, and set them as overrides which would be automatically applied in place of the legacy ones. And creators could therefore continue to apply legacy animations in their scripts, HUDs and furniture, which would work on all avatars that supported it.

Gaia, thanks for the very insightful info, as always! Perhaps this is a good time to ask while people are thinking about facial expressions. I wonder what you and others think about BUG-11569, the JIRA for the llSetAnimationOverride() concept that would allow custom animations to play in place of legacy anims. Mesh heads would use this in script to set up overrides for legacy facial anims, no HUD is involved. While bento facial expressions can't be made to suit all avatars, I thought this may be a solution to a lot of the issues by providing a bridge for any products that use legacy anims. With this in place, I think legacy anim "triggers" could then continue to be used in future products, working with ALL mesh heads that support such overrides, as well as working with legacy avatars.

Jenna, your proposal on the JIRA is exactly my suggestion, It's great you have taken the time to write it up officially there. Vir said they liked the idea in a previous post, so I hope Vir and mesh creators will give good thought to the proposal as Bento nears completion. As said in my previous post, the VR Emoter HUD 4.0 is available here on the marketplace to all for testing legacy facial expressions. I agree also that either way it goes, Polysail's idea of establishing community-decided standards would additionally compliment everything Bento has to offer. ps: Is it too late to put [bENTO] in the summary line of your JIRA (as was requested) which may help it get more attention.

Vir and Bento creators, In response to Vir's request for content examples that use the existing face expressions, Vivian Rail has generously made her VR Emoter facial expression HUD available fullperm for the purposes of Bento testing. You can get it from my marketplace here: Click Here -> VR Emoter HUD 4.0 This HUD should be ideal for testing the existing facial expressions as you can easily select which expression to play and it lets you mix multiple expressions together. I urge creators making Bento avatars to get this HUD and try the effect of the legacy expressions on their Bento avatars and report any findings. This applies especially to human avatars but also any avatar that would use the new face bones. Vir, I'm glad you like the idea of overriding the existing facial expressions in a similar way to how LlSetAnimationOverride() can currently override the locomotion states. As it would be prohibitive to design mesh avatars that work nicely with the existing expressions I believe Bento should build in some way that Bento avatars can handle them. There's a lot of content that uses the existing expressions. All the main furniture scripts in SL enable creators to pair them with the furniture poses. Also there are many "smiler" attachments, food items like lollipops and ice-creams that use them. Thousands of existing items use them. Let me know if you need evidence of other content. However, the VR Emoter HUD covers all available facial animations, so I think it's all that is really needed for testing purposes. As Bento becomes the new standard, I hope the creator community will develop protocols for using new facial expressions between products, but it would be very good to know Bento had built-in a bridge of sorts to allow backwards-compatibility with the legacy facial expression system.

Something that doesn't seem to have been covered in this thread is how Bento will affect existing content. I make a script that creators use to add animations to furniture. So I've become aware that there's a lot of content in SL that Bento avatars will not be compatible with. Second Life currently includes the following facial expressions: express_afraid_emote, express_anger_emote, express_laugh_emote, express_bored_emote, express_cry_emote, express_embarrassed_emote, express_sad_emote, express_toothsmile, express_smile, express_surprise_emote, express_worry_emote, express_repulsed_emote, express_shrug_emote, express_wink_emote, express_disdain, express_frown, express_kiss, express_open_mouth, express_tongue_out A great deal of existing content in SL use these existing animations. And after reading everything, it seems to me that content that uses these "legacy" facial expressions may not play nicely with Bento mesh heads, as the mesh heads will not have been designed for them. From what I understand of Bento, facial expressions will need to be made specifically for each style/brand of mesh head. I'm only a scripter, so please correct me if that isn't the case. Yet if it *is* the case, then my proposal is simple: That LL should expand LlSetAnimationOverride() to include all the existing facial animations. Then scripts in Bento avatars would be able to, for example: llSetAnimationOverride("wink","<replacement_wink_anim>"); Then when content tries to play the legacy "express_wink_emote" on them, the replacement anim would play instead. The replacement would be something designed specifically for that mesh avatar. In this way, all Bento avatars would have the opportunity to be completely backward compatible with all legacy content that uses facial expressions. The alternative seems to be that legacy content that uses facial expressions will have undesireable effects on Bento avatars (they will appear not to work properly with the existing content). I'd love to hear some expert opinions on this idea and issue. Are any steps are being taken to ensure that Bento can work nicely with existing content?

For anyone planning on making mesh heads for wide use (more specifically human, but potentially others), I encourage you to contribute ideas towards Polysail's initiative on developing a standard for playing facial expressions. Such a standard would allow 3rd party scripts to trigger animations in the mesh heads so that furniture designers and others can continue to use facial expressions in their creations, even though the facial animations may now need to be made specifically for each different brand/design of head. I think Polysail's idea or something similar is really vital to Bento's impact on end users. There's some additional discussion on the AVsitter Q&A.