Qavinator question

[friscolives]

I'm new to working with animations, but just did my first witn Qavinator. It seems the timeline is only for one second, but what if the animation needs to be longer? Is there a way to add more time? I'd imagine the animation I'm working on might last 10 seconds or so.

Also, is there a way to add a second figure? Not so much to animate both at once, but as a reference point, since the animation will--hopefully--end up being a two person animation. I'm trying to make something using two people interaction in a fight, but obviously it would be easier to have them both on screen to coordinate this.

A second issue regards facial animations. Obviously, being a fight related animation, can expressions be used in this program or does the avatar have the same expression all the time?

 

[Medhue Simoni]

If you look at the bottom right hand side, you will see 1 of 30. The 30 is how many frames you have. You can change this to whatever you need. I think 900 frames at 30 fps is the max for SL.

 

To add a second figure, you just need to choose add, under the FILE options. You need to choose a bvh file in your computer to do this, and it might put the avatar directly over top of the original, so you need to move 1 of them out of the default position to see both.

Facial animations are added when you upload the animations to SL, along with hand animations. They aren't really animations, but morphs. You choose them from a list of options. Facial animations will only play for the first few seconds, unless you script them into your project. Don't ask me why it works that way.

[Kayaker Magic]

  When you download the free bvh files for all the internal animations from LL (see here), they give you one for each of the expressions. What gives with that? I looked at them and they seem to be posing the joints. I did a test, animation my avatar with "express_anger" and uploading "avatar_express_anger" and trying that one out. Of course I had to request the angry facial expression when I uploaded that one. The two animations are not the same! "express_anger" just morphs your face while "avatar_express_anger" shakes the head back and forth and poses the arms in a angry shaking way. (I should have requested fisted hands as well).

  I also requested that the animation loop, hoping that the expression would loop with it. No such luck, the facial expression happens the first time through the loop and then never happens again.

  I tried an experiment,:I built an animation (with Quavimator) that had just one frame with a T-pose, I hoped if I marked that on as loop it would loop the expression. Well it did not, and it posed me in the T-pose.

 So I tried one more experiment: I built one last animation that had two frames, both T-poses, hoping that this animation would loop and do nothing except the hands and face. But the system would not let me upload that one at all!