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I tried the latest version of Avastar (alpha 6) to see if my dragon head would be similarly distorted in the mouth/chin area like Teager's horse. I used the Transfer Tool to copy my old rig to a new armature and exported my head with the using the options "Only Weighted Bones" and "Export Bone Layers." I believe I might have also used "Export Bone Roll" in one of my test versions too. My results are somewhat similar to what Teager has experienced.



There is a distortion in the mesh rigged to mFaceChin and possibly in the mesh rigged to mFaceLipUpperCenter. The mFaceChin bone appears misplaced from the original in blender.



Here is how the bones are placed in Blender. The head of the mFaceChin bone is moved from its default position in the armature. I cannot exactly recall if I moved the heads of the two other bones.



One difference is that my teeth (rigged to mFaceTeethUpper and mFaceTeethLower) are fine. I am guessing that it is because I did not move the head of the teeth bones. I just moved the tails.

I will keep playing around with it just in case this it is something that I am doing. I figured I would show my results so far anyway. I can send the file over or post it on the JIRA if needed. I am curious if anyone else is still having this sort of problem.

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We have a problem with the finger bones pivots. They are not aligned, and it makes rare or incorrect bones rotations.
This gives us a lot of problems with our mocap animations retargeting.
I attached a picture where we can see the mHandPibky2Left pivot Axis.



this is going to upgrade? or it's definitive ?

thank you

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Here is why sometimes a bone looks different in Blender and in the SL viewer:

Here is a modified version of the Bento head.
I mainly moved the mouth bones forward and i rotated the nose bones
by about 45 degrees upwards. Finally i edited the Tail location of the Jaw bone.
This is the result in Blender:

when i upload this mesh to SL and enable the Bones viewer, then i see this:



When you inspect the 2 images closer then you can see the locations of the joints match.
But for the purple bones the bone ends differ. The reason why there is a difference
between Blender and SL is bloody stupid :matte-motes-mad:

The exported Collada files do not contain information about where the bone ends are.
In the SL Viewer the joints and the corresponding bone ends are just shifted
to the offset location. So for bones which have no connected children the "bone" rotation
never changes in the SL viewer.

But the most important news is: it does not matter how the end point bones are "rotated".
And this is because apparently all scaling happens relative to the Avatar's coordinate system.

About the lip distortion

I have no idea how this happens. Can someone prepare a simple demo head
that shows the issue and publish the blend file somewhere?
(or use the avastar ticket system if possible)

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  • Lindens

We should also note that the bone ends are not used for anything in SL, except for figuring out how to show bones in that "Show Bones" display. They were added mainly for the benefit of Blender users. So whatever the deficiencies of the bone display, it shouldn't have any impact on the actual mesh positioning or display.

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Here is a quick and ugly demo head that I made in Avastar alpha 4 in the same fashion as my dragon head:

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/42991

However, this head is only weighed to mHead, mFaceChin, mFaceJaw, and the lip bones. It too shows the same distortions in the lip and chin area when uploaded in world and worn as an attachement. 

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The hand bones are fine.  Please stop saying they're not.

sk

There may be a poorly set pivot in the maya file.  But rest assured the XML Data is correct.

Edit : I just noticed your screenshot is taken in 3ds max as well:  In light of that~~

You're going to have all sorts of problems with importing skeletons from other sources.  100's of problems.   I found it easier to simply generate a skeleton from the XML data straight in 3ds max.  ( which is what's depicted above ).  I've got a script that does precisely that, ( as well as a few other things )   But I don't want to make it public as ~ I've not addressed the bone-scale issues with the collision volume bones ( they presently do not match the SL collision volumes )  I'm working on getting that all settled out presently ( I'm fighting the good fight against a legion of self-inflicted bugs ) please be patient with me.  I'm literally working on writing the equivalent of Avastar for 3ds max ~ in .. 2 months time?

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I am having all kinds of issues with the latest skeleton update.  I am using the same skin weights as previous versions.  As far as I know, there have not been any changes to the bones for the body.  On the left is an earlier version that I can still wear and looks fine.  On the right is what happens if I upload the same model with the same skin weights and everything else the same.  I also had this issue with the previous skeleton, that with the same weights, the shoulders are scaling out significantly larger.  I have gone through everything over and over to make sure I was not missing something that was different.

I am using Maya.  I removed bones I was not using like the extra spine bones, hind legs, wings, etc.  I also removed unused influences.  I am using the Fitted bones as well.  Is anyone else experiencing anything like this?  Whatever I am doing, I can't find anything that is different on my end from when the model was working properly.



 

 

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Finally got around to updating my rig. Having the same issues as Teager here, I think, with collapsing lips. Also having issues with eyes for some reason. Mesh has joint positions, no animations playing on it:



Can be fixed with deformer animation (or any facial animation, naturally, since we're translating bones here), foooor the most part, pictured next. Eyeballs are sunken for some reason I cannot discern. I guess because I don't have animation on them as I like to keep the eyedarts/eye tracking. But I'd rather not go with deformation/animation-based fixes here...

 There a JIRA for this yet?

 

 

 

 

 

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Hi Leviathan,

If you could file a bug report with more details, we can look into it. It would be especially helpful to have test data like the collada file used for upload.

There are some reference models on the bento testing page which do seem to upload correctly, so you might also want to compare your model to those.

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Hi Tornleaf,

I know Matrice is looking into the lip deformation issue already. Not sure whether the eye problems are related. If you have any supporting details or test models, please add them to BUG-37546 (you can also send test data to me in Second Life if it's something non-public).

I notice you only show ears in one of the images - is that also a problem related to the rig update?

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Hi, All;

Avastar-2 is still in heavy development and we still have trouble with the slider support for joint positions. However i created a preliminary document for "working with joint positions" in Avastar. When you follow this document you should be able to avoid most of the the issues that you see on the face and especially on the lips:

    http://avastar.online/setting-up-joint-positions/

The document has been created with the most recent development version of Avastar from today. However it should also work for Avastar-2 alpha-6.

I hope we can provide something more user friendly soon.

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Leviathan Flux wrote:

I am having all kinds of issues with the latest skeleton update.  I am using the same skin weights as previous versions.  As far as I know, there have not been any changes to the bones for the body.  On the left is an earlier version that I can still wear and looks fine.  On the right is what happens if I upload the same model with the same skin weights and everything else the same.  I also had this issue with the previous skeleton, that with the same weights, the shoulders are scaling out significantly larger.  I have gone through everything over and over to make sure I was not missing something that was different.

I am using Maya.  I removed bones I was not using like the extra spine bones, hind legs, wings, etc.  I also removed unused influences.  I am using the Fitted bones as well.  Is anyone else experiencing anything like this?  Whatever I am doing, I can't find anything that is different on my end from when the model was working properly.



 

 

Hi Leviathan,

What year of Maya are you using and how are you exporting your DAE?  Do you export out as an FBX and then use Autodesk's FBX converter?  Are you using Open Collada or Mayas fbxmaya.mll plugin?

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Leviathan Flux wrote:

I am having all kinds of issues with the latest skeleton update.

Can you tell which update worked for you and since which update your issues started? Is this only related to Fitted mesh or do you also get issues when you export classic rigged characters without using weighting to the Collision volume bones?

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I found the reason why the eyes need to be scaled up by 7 % . This is indeed a wrong lad definition based on a wrong scaled mesh eye. I overlooked that the mesh generator in Avastar scaled the eyes up by a factor of 1.074 while reading the mesh definitions.

Here is what we think is the correct lad definition:

<param    id="30689"    group="1"    name="EyeBone_Big_Eyes"    value_min="-1.1"    value_max="1.1">    <param_skeleton>       <bone        name="mEyeLeft"        scale="0.248 0.25 0.25"        offset="0 0 0" />
<bone name="mEyeRight" scale="0.248 0.25 0.25" offset="0 0 0" />
<bone name="mFaceEyeAltLeft" scale="0.248 0.25 0.25" offset="0 0 0" />
<bone name="mFaceEyeAltRight" scale="0.248 0.25 0.25" offset="0 0 0" />
</param_skeleton></param>

The min/max values are -1.1, 1.1 to compensate that the system eye morphs "overscale" at the slider end positions. The different scale in X compensates the morph's different scaling along the "look forward axis"

The above is based on tests with meshes generated with our current development version of Avastar (Alpha 6 still uses the overscaled eyes, so you can not use it for further tests on the eyes) But i think we also need an ...

independent test outside of Blender

 

  1. Replace the param 30689 in the avatar_lad.xml of the bento viewer by the definition above. On windows you find the file at C:\Program Files (x86)\SecondLifeProjectBento\character\avatar_lad.xml
  2. Create a Mesh eye model that precisely matches the mesh size of the System eyes (the exact definition is in C:\Program Files (x86)\SecondLifeProjectBento\character\avatar_eye.llm) This is the critical step, see below! (*)
  3. Weight the model to mEye[Left|Right]
  4. Create another model that is weighted to mFaceEyeAlt[Left|Right]
  5. upload both models and check if they behave similar to the system eyes. (check they have about the same size with all appearance slider positions, this can be done best in wireframe mode)

(*) How to get a good approximation of the system mesh eyes

3 alternatives:

- If you can read the avatar_eye.llm file then you should be able to create a precise mesh model (This is how we do it in Avastar)

- You can create a default shape in SL, then open the Avatar appearance editor and set the head size to 72 and the eye size to 50. This seems to almost reproduce the neutral head shape. Now your viewer can possibly export the eyes as .obj or even as .dae in the correct size.

- Possibly some older pre-mesh definition files of the system avatar contain "correct" eyes. But i would not count on that.

Thanks for any feedback

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Hey Gaia, I'm a bit confused about your tutorial here. This is a tutorial for working with shape sliders with joint positions - which is awesome, by the way - but I feel like you're implying that not following this exact workflow is what is causing all of the facial deforms we're seeing, regardless of whether we are working with the shape sliders or not. Is that accurate? I know that I and Tornleaf for sure are not touching the shape sliders inside avastar.

 

I'm also confused on how our deforms could be an avastar issue, when I am able to export my avatar through avastar, import it back into blender, and see my mesh and bones lining up perfectly with the file I just exported. This seems to imply to me that the issue is in second life, not in avastar.

 



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I am very sorry if my post leads to confusion. But it all boils down to:

Possible workaround for distortions on the head: Before you start editing the joints, please preset the Avastar skeleton to the SL Restpose (the white stickman icon in the Appearance panel) and then go ahead. Does this fix your issues?

Please note: In the final version of the tool you should be able to edit your joints independent of the sliders.

BTW: importing back the collada file to blender must match the original model. Otherwise the collada importer is broken and needs to be fixed :matte-motes-sunglasses-3:

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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

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This is the first update that has given me this issue though there have been other recent updates that did not include the Fitted bones that I was unable to try with.  It is the fitted bones that are trouble though I think as I was able to upload a model that was not rigged with the fitted weights just fine.

I should probably just try to figure out how to do this on Blender and see if I can export a clean skeleton because I am not as familiar with Blender to know what may be different.  I noticed there was a setting that changed that the  updates since have had "Segment  Scale Compensate" off in Maya.  It was easy for me to switch it on though I am not sure if there are other settings that have been changed now.  The Segment Scale Compensate I only noticed when I entered in the values for the skeleton to fit the SL Male dimensions and noticed if I scaled any of the joints, it was also scaling all parented joints.

It's just odd that some of the joints are shrinking in SL and some are expanding, or one arm will be much thinner than the other so there is not much consistency. 

Have others been using the Fitted bones with success?  I know everyone been working with the face joints and hind legs and tail and all that,

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