Siddean Munro

I will be the first to admit it. I make meshes and textures. I am a little out of my depth on animations. That said, I do know how to create basic animations, and from what I can see, what happens in Blender does not represent what happens in SL. I made series of gifs demonstrating the issues with using translation animations along with facial sliders. We (head creators) aren't just sitting around theorising, we have posted gifs and screenshots of the issues. I would have a complete head and set of animations made already, if these issues weren't present. This skeleton is not final until it is released into the main viewer so while we have the chance to test and correct these issues, we should do our best to get it right now. Yes, it is possible to use translation animations. It should be possible to use translation AND/OR rotation which means the rotational pivot points should be close to the correct position without having to move them for an average, human face (unless the issue with disabled sliders is worked out). If you're using translation animations and changing joint positions, then why would you care where the default bone piviot lives? I would like to be able to use translation on the cheeks and rotation on the jaw and eyelids, in a single animation, for example. It should be possible with this avatar, BUT there are issues that need to be resolved. https://i.gyazo.com/097cc1f71d02b4c18de4945e36ce8971.gif https://i.gyazo.com/05dd485a67d96bd742cb3b9213c5f2aa.gif https://i.gyazo.com/9976967d41caed36e9ed11a3bfe5b372.gif In this instance, the animation resetting the bone position as set by the slider. This is with a default shape, absolutely no sliders changed in SL, absolutely no sliders changed in Blender. Uploaded mesh without joint positions checked (Checking joint positions DOES disable eye and jaw related sliders, but hopefully this will be resolved) The shape starts out normal, the way it looks in Blender. I run the animation, ok no problem. I change a slider which deforms the face. I run the animation and the face pops back to the default position. I reset the slider which should set the face back to it's normal appearance, but instead it deforms the face. I have to run the animation again to reset the face bones back to where they should be. The real problems start when I use a shape that I have modified several facial sliders from and try to run translation animations. This is why I think Mel and I would prefer to use rotational based animations instead of translation based animations, if we can possibly make the skeleton suitable for it, which currently it is not. https://i.gyazo.com/43e320c9c5f833aab750764747c3802e.gif I have also tried with a single frame pose, with the following result. https://i.gyazo.com/9d69cfc541df890f653558f59df644d2.gif Default shape https://i.gyazo.com/b89b3c8753e44b9a472a24a6e23c9b84.gif Custom shape The way I see it now unless I am missing something fundamental, there is no way to have a custom (user defined) facial slider setup for a human head AND also use translation animations. If we have to do hacky-hack things with animations running in the background for bone positions, then we diminish the user experience in being able to define their appearance, AND we tie the head to custom animations made for that head. In my ideal world, any animator could make animations to their hearts content which will work fine on my mesh heads, or Lelutka, or Catwa or Logo or any number of mesh heads made with this system, AND the head owner could customise their face shape to suit their taste. This isn't possible at the moment. Human faces are a whole different ballgame to animal faces. We are already dealing with the dark side of the uncanny valley. If we create animations that can be so drastically altered by using a little facial slider, we're in horror mask territory very quickly. I promise, promise promise that human mesh head wearers want to change their facial shape. I know this with absolute certainty. I have had human mesh heads available for sale for 2 years, and this is the number one question I get about them, and the number one complaint I see made about mesh heads in general.

Agreed. In my testing, the jaw angle slider does pretty much nothing to my mesh. Most of the jaw is weighted to the chin bone, as this is the one that seems to controls jaw width, chin angle, double chin etc. Jaw angle does nothing but make the lower half of the face move a fraction of a millimetre. However I have the lower teeth completely weighted to the jawbone, which, with this slider movement, is a serious issue. Behold: https://i.gyazo.com/e44405a8777ad071cdf688769b63fa55.gif https://gyazo.com/3b601b9f54b288828b552c483e18e544 I can't imagine a situation where I want my jaw to pop out of the bottom of my face like that, or where I want to walk around with my mouth hanging open. I think that disabling this specific slider for mesh heads wouldn't have a huge impact on face shape, since all the chin sliders still work (is that right Matrice?), and it would prevent many issues.

Removing the jaw angle slider is a silly idea. They're assuming everyone will use a mesh head. No, leave the sliders alone I say!

I've uploaded my first translation based animation, to some success - does anyone who knows more than I do know why this may be happening?  Some joint seems to be getting stuck in the wrong position after i play the anim. Nothing fixes it except logging out of SL. I've tried overriding with other animations, tried character tests and it just sticks there until I relog and the face goes back to it's neutral setting. [edit] This animation should only be touching the eyebrows but when I first activate it. something happens to the mouth which does not reset unless I log out of SL.  Could this be related to the thing that stops the sliders from working when you upload a mesh with joint positions enabled even though you haven't touched the affected joints? (ie: if I move the eyelid joints to a pivot in the centre of the eyeball, the chin and jaw sliders stop working even though I haven't touched them)

Matrice Laville wrote: To create Translation enabled animations (Avastar): * Ensure that you animate the (green) control bones. * To get translations to work properly you must unlock the Control bones in the tool shelf: Rigging pannel -> Config Section -> Bone Constraints -> Unlock Control Bone Loc * And when you export you must enable the option "use translations" For anyone else having trouble with this, you have to go to the control bone groups panel and enable the group of bones that you want to move, as well as unlocking the control bone locations.  Detach your mesh beforehand and reattach it afterwards. Make sure your bones are reset before you reattach your mesh (select all, Alt R) If you select a bone and it doesn't move, select again (there are 2 bones, one can be moved, which moves the other one) Also, (for Matrice) why do some of the bones go in the opposite directions to the control bones? I can work around this, but it's only some of them that seem to do it. 

I don't have time to go into an indepth post at the moment but this is why that jawbone needs to be locked into a smaller range of movement than it is now. This is my custom head, with the head attached while the jaw height is set to 60 for somewhat of a reasonable, realistic position, and this is what happens when you change the jaw height slider, which doesn't drastically affect the face, but does drastically affect the animation.  First time the anim plays the jaw is set at 60 height. Second time 100 height, third time 0 height. There is no reason that the jawbone height should move the bone that dramatically. @Medhue, @ Matrice, @ Gaia: If you can show me in Blender/avastar how to create animations using translations where you can pick up and move the bones around in pose mode to get the position you need, and I will be more than happy to make animations that aren't rotation based. I'm not talking about using the sliders as translation animations, what I would like to do is select the bones at the corner of the mouth and press G to move them into the correct position for a reasonable smile animation before I lock in a keyframe and so far I have found no way to do this. All I can do is rotate the bones. Pressing G with a bone selected does nothing.

I agree with Mel. The eyelid bones should both pivot from the centre of the eyeball. The way it is now doesn't make sense. I'm not sure why the bones are pointing forwards at all, really - they weren't in the prototype rig I created for this reason. The jawbone I already raised earlier so obviously I agree with that. The root of the jawbone should not move. The end of the jawbone can move with sliders. I didn't mention the mouth corners because I didn't want to push my luck but again, their current position and the fact that the point almost forward doesn't make any sense. Smiling this way is more like a terrified grimace. When I get time later, I will make a few screenshots showing the difference with basic rotational expressions and the bones in the correct place, and in the current places. If we use rotational animations, the rotations need to pivot around a point that works with the natural curvature of the face. People who create non-human avatars will most likely move these bones, but as long as we cannot move the bones AND retain integrity of the facial sliders, the bone roots need to make sense. It's important to get this right now, before the project is in it's final stages, otherwise it can't be changed without breaking content. I concur that we should be able to move the bone positions and not lose access to the sliders. I uploaded a head with Bento, and a head with the normal fitted mesh skeleton and didn't notice the difference that Mel did with his example. There are some differences, but none on the face that are obvious. https://i.gyazo.com/759751f98d8318b80bae5566309d5b95.gif

Hello again (Vir et al). Given that changing the bone positions makes the appearance sliders non-functional, I am trying to work with the default bone positions. However I am running up against an issue that I think needs to be addressed. I am requesting that the pivot point of the bone mFaceJaw be moved please. The bone as it is is in the wrong place for correct jaw movement on a human head. The lower mandible on the human skull pivots much higher than where this bone pivots. Example:   [edit] Re my previous posts, I have just attached this head to a completely new, fresh avastar skeleton, made fresh in Blender 2.77a, uploaded it with joint positions selected, and the jaw and eyes are not responding to the sliders - I have not moved any of the bones, only uploaded with joint positions checked. This may be an avastar problem, it's like those bones don't match what is in SL.

That is possible, I'll pull back and try again from a clean base thanks!

I've noticed it happening even if I don't move any of the bones and upload with joint positions checked. And it's affecting sliders for bones that weren't changed ie: if I change the eyelid bones, I can't change several of the chin sliders. I just need to know if this is expected behaviour before I proceed

Forgive me if this has already been posted (it's a 69 page thread!) but I have been experimenting today, and it appears that if I change the position of any of the bones in the face, and upload with joint positions checked, some of the facial sliders stop working altogether. I moved the eyelid bones to make a better arc for a blink animation. Some sliders still work (nose sliders) some stop responding (eye sliders, chin sliders). The same mesh uploaded without joint positions moves with the sliders properly.

Please *don't* bring back last names. I strongly disliked being forced to select a name I didn't hate from a list of names I didn't like when I signed up. Just.. if you must change it give us 2 empty fields, firstname, lastname. Don't make us be the "Cellardoor" family again please. (no offence, Cellardoors of SL - it was my first avatar's last name in 2003 and I didn't like it then either) Or alternatively, move on, accept last names are a thing of the past, and focus on something that really does matter to the future SL. Like an actually working fitted mesh system.

This happens when a section of mesh is made transparent using a 32 bit targa or transparent PNG texture. It's not "all rigged mesh" or anything like that. If the transparent section is done so using SL's built in transparency setting on the texture options tab, you do not see a "halo" where the transparent section is causing textures with alpha channels to disappear behind it. It looks like you're wearing a mesh item with optional sleeves, where instead of the sleeve being made transparent by simply setting the transparency to 100, it's been done by replacing the sleeve texture with a transparent tga. Hair is another story, since it has to be done with a texture, it's unavoidable. This was bug reported some time ago, apparently LL haven't deemed it important enough to fix yet. :smileysad:

It's like anything. Fast, cheap or quality. Choose 2, you can never have all 3.

1bp creator is not extremely inactive, 1bp creator has been unwell. And to the person who says 3 mins of CG to make the dress in the original image. You need a reality check, my friend.

Actually, when you get a little yellow triangle appearing over an unrezzed mesh item and you click it, for some unfathomable reason it DOES show as a script error regardless of whether there are scripts in the item or not. The more child prims in the linkset, the more little yellow triangles you will get. I think (not 100% certain) that you can increase your mesh queue by going to Advanced, Debug, MeshMaxConcurrentRequests and change the value there (I have mine set at 128) and relogging should make the mesh appear. As to why un-rendered mesh shows a script error.. well ask the good people over at LL. My guess is that certain mesh objects and linksets are clogging the mesh queue to the viewer and causing these errors in place of the rezzed mesh.

Welp, I figured out the issue - I was wearing a hairbase/eyebrow shaper layer where the creator had simply replaced the hair texture with a transparent texture instead of reducing the volume of the Linden hairstyle. So the Linden hairstyle was making my transparent textures disappear! Leaving this here incase anyone else finds this issue. Check your hairbase.

Hello, I'm posting here in the hope that someone might know why this is happening! I have 3 material zones in this hairstyle, when I turn off shadows in graphics, all 3 textures appear properly, when I turn shadows on, 2 of the textures (with alpha channels) lose pieces as you can see in the pic. I don't know why this would be happening, the transparent textures on my eyes and outfit are perfectly fine. I've checked material assignments and vertex group assignments and tried in the latest SL viewer and the mesh deformer project viewer, and had a friend test in a TPV with the same result. [edit] it's fine when it's on the floor, so it's something to do with vertex groups methinks... ... Nope, reweighted it, reassigned all the vertex groups and the fringe and parts of the strands disappear :(

Oh I fixed it! found a bunch of orphan verts in part of the model, deleted them and it's all working

How would I find out if this is the case? I have done a few ShiftD's on this model, I've been working on this one a while

I'm trying to upload a test model which has uploaded fine in the past but for some reason now wants to stick on Lod 2, 3 and 4 at 2240 something tris. Why would this be? I have tried everything (re-exporting, changing the geometry, even rebooted my PC) but can't seem to get it to behave! I'm using Blender 2.62 and the latest SL viewer 3 [eta] changing sims, changing viewers to Firestorm and changing the geometry didn't make any difference. I have rexported it from a different version of Blender, and I have tried uploading it on Aditi and nothing seems to have made a difference to it :/

Maybe it's on the "splash screen" because it's in the destination guide? I see events in the destination guide come up there all the time.

Pretty sure MMM is a resident organised event, not an LL organised event.

Sounds to me like you moved the eye bones and/or are uploading your mesh with joint positions selected, which for a skirt wouldn't be necessary.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SH-2103 posted this in your thread in the fashion forum too, this is a bug that has existed for years.