Medhue Simoni

Worked well for me Gaia! The ELEPHANT lives again! I just started recreating the elephant's rig. So far so good. Here's some images. The color bones are the control rig, controlling only the trunk, mouth, and ears.

Oz says RC within the week. YAY!!!!! @1:30 into the video.

Teager wrote: I'm not having the same success. I'm still seeing largely the same deforms with alpha 8 that I saw with alpha 6. Could you walk me through your process? Perhaps I'm doing something wrong. Alpha 8? Downloading now! As I said in my original post, "after some messing around", I finally got it all to work. It's definitely not obvious. I'll update to 8, test it, and maybe I'll do a video on it.

Feynt Mistral wrote: Been taking a break from SL and just now getting back into things. Glad to hear Bento's progressed so far. One thing that's caught me up in the past (which I'm now tackling because I'm getting deeper into 3D modelling) is the bones not being arranged right. I'll import the collection into Blender using the Collada files, but they're all miniscule and not attached to each other. Instead, they're offset parented, almost every one of them, and X aligned (again almost all of them. The new mSpine# bones are the only ones which are correctly linked to each other. Unfortunately SL's searching is still ass so I can't find any posts regarding this. So a few questions are in order: Do I need to keep all the bones? I don't think I'll be using the hind legs or wings any time soon for example, and I probably don't need all the spine bones. No, you do not need all the bones. That said, you will likely need to include the spine bones, as they are deep into the hierarchy, so you need them. 2. Can I relink everything so they're properly oriented and relationally everything makes sense at a glance? (applying rotations afterward of course) No, but what you can do, is create your own, or a copy of your skeleton with better parenting, and then make the Bento skeleton move with your skeleton with better parenting. You just constrain the Bento bones to your new bones. 3. Are Collada files acceptable for animations yet? Or are they still just for mesh and bone positions? No. Yep, still for mesh and bones. 4. Assuming I can't relink all the bones, what is considered the bone's location? Blender doesn't use the bone's mid point, it only gives the head and tail positions. No clue!

The Alpha 7 version of Avastar with Bento is out, and after some messing around I have successfully imported a dae with custom joint positions, meaning the Reset Skeleton works properly. Fingers crossed! Yay!

I know that many of us are a bit burnt out on all the development stuff. What excited me about bento is all the exciting things I'd be able to make. Now is that time tho. Most of development is over and now the FUN begins. Here's a little inspiration!

Here is 1 with the uploader showing that the bones are all set to the default joint positions. So, something is messed up. Here is the new jira I filed for this. Of course, it is basically the same as Teager's jira, but I can't comment on it or add files. So, I made my own. Files are included. I can also give the full avatars inworld to use my system to test with. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-37633

There is definitely something wrong with the Reset Skeleton feature. Here is the latest version of the Coyot Avatar. Here is him after using the Reset Skeleton feature.

I'm on the record advocating to have the Eyelid bones on the same pivot point as the eye. I was wrong. It seems to me, that offsetting them is the smartest route, but it needs the proper position. After some playing around, I found something closer to this to be the most desirable. They aren't exactly opposite offsets, because the top eyelid usually moves farther than the bottom. That said, I'm not really advocating for any skeleton change, as unique joint positions really doesn't, or shouldn't change anything else. At this point, they could be irrelavent.

Gaia Clary wrote: However, you mentioned that FBX would be more useful. I am curious what makes FBX superior to Collada in this case? And which version of FBX do you recommend? I've worked on teams where we traded files between Blender and Maya. We used FBX and did not have very many problems. I've even trouble shot problems with an avatar with a Maya user, trying to figure out what was wrong with it.

Well, I'll chime in a bit, as I do think being primarily an animator allows me to more easily envision what is possible with a rig like this. Animation touches every aspect of a character, and learning all aspects of animation forces you to learn all aspects of the avatar. The Bento Rig far surpasses what even I envisioned was possible. It really does say something about just how ingenius some of the parts of SL actually are, despite it's issues. The whole animation system is somewhat of a work of art. Again, despite it's issues. Slider support tops it all. To do anything like this with a custom skeleton, would need that same genius, completely redone for a new system. Bone translation support changed everything. When I first got ahold of the initial Bento rig, my excitement quickly turned to a realization just how limited we were with only using rotations. I've been creating Unity characters and animations for years now, creating my own custom rigs. I knew that bone translation was key to all those rigs, because bones aren't always bones, but also muscle and skin deformations. Without translation, there is no way an SL character could ever be as good as any character in modern games. I knew it was possible, because I've used it on the original rig. It just didn't work with all bones. This is why I lobbied so hard for bone translation. Kudos to LL for seeing and understanding how important it is.Now, anything is possible. For a creator, it's like all the chains have been lifted. There are limits, but the possibilities are endless. Bento is HUGE! Again, Kudos to LL for seeing how important this is. So, what's next. That's what I'm thinking about. And what other change could be as big as Bento. Well, to me, custom skeletons for NPCs is as HUGE as Bento is. It changes everything. Not only is it awesome for creators, but also for SL reputation and pocketbook. 1 of the big criticisms about SL is that there is not enough to actually do, outside of fashion, socializing, and creating. Engaging NPCs changes all that. They allow a sim to be fun, without any actual other people around. LL made this crazy awesome pathfinding system, but it is useless because we don't have good NPCs to use it. NPCs with skeletons is a game changer.

Vir - As we discussed weeks ago, it does seem like something isn't right with the Reset Skeleton option. This is what happens when I use it on the latest version of my Coyot avatar. This is very problematic, especially after I tested the default human skeleton. Not using translation on bones is crucial to getting as many sliders to work as possible. If the skeleton never holds it's initial joint positions tho, then animations with bone positions is the only way to fix it, which will destroy many of the slider options. As I've shown, we can still have some customization, but unless this is fixed, avatars using unique joint positions will be less customizable. To me, it looks like some of the bones, primarily in the head, are reverting back to the positions of the default skeleton. Edited: It seems to be only a few bones, so most of the customization will still be there. That said, still should be fixed.

Krystal Silverweb wrote: So I got a question... I've been experimenting with a mesh head and exporting some animations that use only Rotation, and a few that also use Location. When I play the ones with Location in world, they do screw up how the mesh looks(which is understandable from all I've read here), but then when I play an animation that only uses Rotation after it, the bones which were translated stay in place...I can't seem to get them to revert back unless I play another animation with translation. So I'm unsure how to use both types of animations? Or are you just supposed to choose one or the other? This is on a mesh that only has skin weights imported into SL, not joint positions. What you need is an underlying animation with a lower priority that is always playing in the background.

Aki Shichiroji wrote: The voice dot sits above my head. Odd thing is it too moves - but in the opposite direction from the avatar. https://i.gyazo.com/1b8a903bd2db46018f049a3f3323020c.gif Yeah, that is strange.

Cathy Foil wrote: Hey Medhue, I just has an idea that might make it easier or quicker for you to convert your original animations using the old Bento skeleton to the new one. What if you open your animation in Blender and then import the new Bento skeleton and constrain it to the original Bento skeleton? Once constrained you should then be able to export out the animation of the new skeleton. Hopefully you only need to constrain the new skeleton to the old one once to be able to export out all your animations you made. Hope that helps. Cathy Maybe, but let's also remember many of us used Avastar, which has many skeletons to deal with all the different bone sets, and now you want to constrain a whole different Avastar skeleton to it. I have no doubt that it can work, but how confusing is that going to be dealing with it all in the end? Then, if I need to make more animations, I can't use the latest version, as it is constrained to the old version, so now I'm constantly animating on the old version, and hoping I don't have any problems, because figuring out which rig is causing the problem would become a nightmare. I like to keep as clean a file as I can so that I can understand it all later. Plus, let's hope we all never have to update this Bento rig again, lol.

Aki Shichiroji wrote: I should note the COG isn't any higher or lower than normal - it's just that some bones are much higher than they would normally be with an average SL human. Oh, Ok, I get it. If it works, then it works, and outside of unsupported ways, there is no arguing against something that works. That said, when I think about doing a ridable, I'd be very weary about not keeping the COG with the human avatar, but maybe I'm being OCD about it. On a side note, I'm wondering where your voice indicator is on the ridable set up? If the voice indicator is directly influenced by the COG, and the COG can technically be placed anywhere, that could be good to know.

I would imagine that compatibility between all these options is pretty complex, and crazy for the end users. I'm a guy, with hardly any interest in trying to match up parts, so I can only imagine. I have watched some videos of users reviewing many of these options, as I figured these videos would give a good incite into those markets. Plus, I'v rigged countless clothing items for many of the clothing designers that make clothing for these bodies. So, although I can understand the technical side of it all, I have limited understanding of the items in the grand view. I will say tho, because I believe in market forces and I sell products myself, that the end users have much more power than most can imagine. The problem, to me, is getting the consumers to have a united voice. So, if the end users are united in wanting a particular feature, like compatibility, and express it loudly enough, the creators will respond. Hmmmm, kind of like LL did, lol.

Aki Shichiroji wrote: Here is how that standing animation looks in Blender. No changes have been made to it since the animation was uploaded. It is priority 4. https://i.gyazo.com/c596455e31170aac699363cc352663b2.gif What's interesting to me, is where your COG is. It makes me wonder if that COG placement is your whole issue, especially with hover height. Have you ever tried adjusting your body shape? I would think it would have some influence on hover height, possibly because of the COG placement.

Outside of appliers, which LL has talked about, it's not possible to make all the bodies and heads compatible from LL's side. LL has nothing at all to do with these mesh bodies, so how exactly would they make them compatible? If the mesh bodies and parts are to be compatible in any way, it needs to be done by the creators. I will mention that I have seen many of the mesh bodies in Blender, and some of the weights on these bodies are actually worse than the default weights. IMHO, if things are going to be compatible, the creators of these bodies need to adopt 1 set of weights to go off of, and not every single body using different weights. Take note, I sell weights for fitted mesh avatars. lol

I just want to talk briefly about a comment I made at the last meeting. I didn't want to harp on it more during the meeting, but I'll expand on it here. I talked about how much work it is to keep redoing avatars for all these skeletal changes. Yes, it is fairly simple to convert the skeletons, but that is only 1 small part of updating an avatar. After that, weights need to be adjusted. After that, ALL or most of the animations need to be updated. For my wolf and Coyot avatars, the face alone has more than 30 animations, and then I still have to update all the animations in the AO, and the hud animations. This, ALL, just to test things. And while doing all this, trying to figure out or deal with problems. Oh, and let's not forget any clothing that gets made for these avatars. My Coyot avatar is now on version 10, and my wolf is on version 9. Many of the other avatars I've made and tested, I just stopped at 1 or 2 versions, strictly for testing specific things. So, my point is, updating an avatar is FAR more complicated than simply updating the rig, as a custom avatar is nothing without the animations.

Hmmm, it makes me wonder if the internal breathing animations are affecting your avatar. Sometimes, I do this on purpose. I'd be interested in seeing that animation in Blender.

wherorangi wrote: this is really good Medhue. I like it (: + is it possible for you to show us what happens when use the sliders on the default LocRot head ? I'll do another video today showing the sliders working.