Avatar Changes for LL

[Medhue Simoni]

Well, Oz keeps mentioning that we(the SL community) needs to speak up about changes we want to the avatar now, because they are working on it now with Fitted mesh. Yes, I think I know what you are thinking. How far is LL willing to go? Where do we, or who do we talk to? Do they want an email? Here in the forums? A user group meeting? Of course, LL doesn't say much other than we better do IT now.

Since they were not specific, I'll just say all my thoughts on the subject here, and be done with it.

 

Mesh of the Avatar

I'm assuming this is not up for change. If it is, I would appreciate it if LL, or any1 that knows, would correct me.

 

Animating Bones

This could be infinite, but I will try to stick to things that make the most sense. I will list them in order of their importance to me. The Avatar is king in SL, and I think having more bones to make more detailed avatars would greatly improve everyone's experience.

 

1. Finger bones
2. Ear bones
3. Tail bones (at least 5 bones)
4. Jaw bone
5. Wing bones
6. Multiple Arm bones (for people with many arms, or a spider)
7. Multiple Leg bones (for centuars, spiders, crabs)

 

Collision Bones

I haven't kept up with everything that is going on with Collision bones, other than the initial announcement of Fitted Mesh. Of course, I would think it would make sense to make collision bones for all the new animated bones that are created.

 

If anyone else want to chime in, please do. I'm sure I'm missing alot, and would like to hear what others think. Don't let this opportunity pass us by without voicing your opinion. I have no idea if LL will read this.

 

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Not sure what bones to ask for but the biggest problems I have with fitting mesh clothing is in breast size, butt size with the mesh being either way to large or too small, and shoulders clipping through the mesh.

[Perrie Juran]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Well, Oz keeps mentioning that we(the SL community) needs to speak up about changes we want to the avatar now, because they are working on it now with Fitted mesh. Yes, I think I know what you are thinking. How far is LL willing to go? Where do we, or who do we talk to? Do they want an email? Here in the forums? A user group meeting? Of course, LL doesn't say much other than we better do IT now.

 

Since they were not specific, I'll just say all my thoughts on the subject here, and be done with it.

 

Mesh of the Avatar

I'm assuming this is not up for change. If it is, I would appreciate it if LL, or any1 that knows, would correct me.

 

Animating Bones

This could be infinite, but I will try to stick to things that make the most sense. I will list them in order of their importance to me. The Avatar is king in SL, and I think having more bones to make more detailed avatars would greatly improve everyone's experience.

 

1. Finger bones
2. Ear bones
3. Tail bones (at least 5 bones)
4. Jaw bone
5. Wing bones
6. Multiple Arm bones (for people with many arms, or a spider)
7. Multiple Leg bones (for centuars, spiders, crabs)

 

Collision Bones

I haven't kept up with everything that is going on with Collision bones, other than the initial announcement of Fitted Mesh. Of course, I would think it would make sense to make collision bones for all the new animated bones that are created.

 

If anyone else want to chime in, please do. I'm sure I'm missing alot, and would like to hear what others think. Don't let this opportunity pass us by without voicing your opinion. I have no idea if LL will read this.

 

 

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Regarding the Avatar Mesh see and note Oz's comment:

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/STORM-1800

 

Oz Linden added a comment - 17/Dec/13 9:19 AM

We've decided not to delay the release of Fitted Mesh for this, so whatever happens it won't be imminent.

Since this does not modify the skeleton, the two do not have to be linked. After the New Year, we will take another look at when/whether we can incorporate these fixes.

There is more to this than meets the eye. If we can do this, or something else that solves the same problems, we will try to do so. Please refrain from just emoting here... we get it that you care, but constant posts about it really don't help that happen at all.

[Drew Bhalti]

I use a mesh body that keeps me away from the LL body,  while nice and all, if they are very serious about doing this they need to get with a certain creator (damn naming policy) that sells them and has like an anime type following. 

because that body, I can do quite a bit with, custom texture for the skin was a HUGE plus,  the other mesh bodies I've found wont let me change the skin texture and I think I've went on a rant, instead of staying on subject, but oki doki, I'll shutup now rofl.

[Pussycat Catnap]

The only change I would want to see would be to the shape dials.

Make a baseline proportionate to-scale shape, 5'6" female, 5'10" male - set the dials so that this shape is 50 on every dial. Make 1 50% of it, 100 150% of it - except for things where 1 means flush to the body like breast / ear size.

Zap through the database adjusting every shape out there up/down appropriately.

If an and 83 arm size right now is only 90% of proportional, then that would become a 40. If a 27 in X was 105% of proportional, then it would become a 55. etc...

- Easy to math that out with a formula. And a global replace on a database is something that is easy in modern computing.

 

Right now some of the dials are severely messed up. Like arm length, which for femals is too-short at any setting below 90, and for a shape above 5'7"... below 100... while other dials often need to be near 0.

- that limits anatomical possibilities. Not enough remaining range in either direction.

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

1. Finger bones
2. Ear bones
3. Tail bones (at least 5 bones)
4. Jaw bone
5. Wing bones
6. Multiple Arm bones (for people with many arms, or a spider)
7. Multiple Leg bones (for centuars, spiders, crabs)

 

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I would say fingers for the default avatar plus the option to add a limited number of bones anywhere you want. That way you can add wings for an angel, a neck for a giraffe (might be difficult because the new bone is "inside" the existing hierarchy), legs for a centaur, arms for Vishnu, a belly for the pregnant, hair for Medusa or a face for Kuato (etc etc). If that's possible the options would be so much greater than with just a new standard skeleton.

[Coby Foden]

Fix the crotch!

It's one the of most horrible looking areas in the avatar mesh. Looks like an upside down sharp V-shaped canyon - not like a human crotch at all. Thanks.  :matte-motes-big-grin:

PS.
Maybe the avatar crotch was created like this?

[Pamela Galli]

Making chairs fit a sitting avi is not easy, because the butt sticks out so far, and the lenght from butt to knee is SO long that if you make the chair seat fit the legs, the chair is distorted. Plus from knee to foot is so short the feet are too far above the ground. This is one reason chairs tend to wind up being too large for the avi.  A chair made to perfectly fit the avi would be a very ugly chair.

[Medhue Simoni]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

1. Finger bones
2. Ear bones
3. Tail bones (at least 5 bones)
4. Jaw bone
5. Wing bones
6. Multiple Arm bones (for people with many arms, or a spider)
7. Multiple Leg bones (for centuars, spiders, crabs)

 

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I would say fingers for the default avatar plus the option to add a limited number of bones anywhere you want. That way you can add wings for an angel, a neck for a giraffe (might be difficult because the new bone is "inside" the existing hierarchy), legs for a centaur, arms for Vishnu, a belly for the pregnant, hair for Medusa or a face for Kuato (etc etc). If that's possible the options would be so much greater than with just a new standard skeleton.

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For the most part, I agree with you. I think it would be very beneficial to add the first 5 in my list as part of the default SL avatar tho. The reason is that then every1 would be using the same bones. The animators, like me, could make tail movements, or wing movements, and they would work on every1. The same goes for fingers and ears. Wings and tails are very common and it would be nice to have those standardized just so every1 has more options.

Ultimately, it would be great to have custom bones that could attach, like CP has. I don't think this should replace what I'm talking about in my list, well the top 5, for the reasons I stated earlier.

[Poenald Palen]

Basically more bones and appendages. Range of motion of appendages almost unlimited.

Everything benifits from this. All markets, sub cultures or creators of anything. Seriously, vehicles can be attached to an avatar and you can use a weight painted stuff with appendages to move stuff like tank tracks, mayeb even gun turrets. Monster trucks, animals, robots, and mainly hair, dangly thingies on shoes if the extra bones are not simply left unattahed to and SL's avatar not attached to them.

Scaling of bones is also another needed feature to work this all out. SL av would look funny, but retaining the appearence sliders and have them work on the av in a way that makes sense BUT allowing overide is what I think would work.

I bet mesh (butts) are the main focus though. Hands as well, feet to. The attachments are not so bad, but slightly limited. People like them though and the market that it brings in keeps people busy and entertained. This sort of does the same though. wigglng toes vs using those bones for appendages?

Sorry, appendages trump finger and toe bones in my book. More possibilities, not just animals, monsters, draping clothes, hair that flows in the wind and doesn't interesect with the body as much, there is also machines that can benifit. You attache a vehicle to your avatar, sit on the vehicles clear prim to scoot around on and trigger the animations. You end up with tank tracks that bounce as it drives and teh whole things moves right. Turret movement as well, in both directions. Maybe even cars or simulated wheel movement while still having the avatars legs and arms still more or less normal position. I remember thinking of attaching somethig to the avatar feet while driving because no one sees them.

 

BUT, finger and hands are used for expression. But I do question how much and to what extent it is useful in SL because of the way the cam is set and the way peple speak or interact. It is cumbersome to trigger hand animations, though may work well with a HUD that parses speach and looks for emoticons or reacts to /channel# chat messages sent to the hud or attachement. But, who remembers to do this or who would notice exactly what is done with fingers?

But I am thinking chat, not the more detiled and close up encounters. Romance may lean toward hands. style and fashion fans want better butts, busts and clothing attachments. I say appendages with all rotation angles allowed would mean even butts and busts may be better for those making attachments. They could animate parts or clothing that covers parts. A limb here and another there, viola you have a shirt that you can partially open and it looks smoothly animated. This obviously is flexible enough to also make cool fun stuff like monsters or parts of monsters that move, liek a limb for a flame attachment or slime spewing attachment.

Basically, limbs are not limbs if you give them scaling and more bones. But they work to make more complex animals legs. Dogs and cats become more feasible, and are already very popular.

So, this is not for people wantin got make monsters only, it is far more for just animation sake because prim animation is not that great. frames per second is so low on alpha swapping (or lots of mesh to load and render!) with texture swapping forking for somethings but not covering as much and appendages with extra bones of human arms and legs help a whole bunch of different catagores.

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Ultimately, it would be great to have custom bones that could attach, like CP has. I don't think this should replace what I'm talking about in my list, well the top 5, for the reasons I stated earlier.

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No idea what CP is, but that sounds promising.

Standard bones for tails and wings I'm not so sure about. I can't remember the last time I saw wings, but I see shoes, pants and shirts every day and pretty much everyone has fingers. Most mesh attachments are clothes, not bodyparts.

If LL could rewrite their importer a bit (I'm not a coder/scripter, but how hard can it be to read a dae file with less than the total amount of bones?), people could work around a human skeleton or a winged/tailed one. If that was the case, standard extra bones would work pretty well. I think a lot of clothing creators would be annoyed if they had to work around tail and wing bones they never use. The same might be the case for fingers, although they wouldn't get in the way so much.

[Medhue Simoni]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Ultimately, it would be great to have custom bones that could attach, like CP has. I don't think this should replace what I'm talking about in my list, well the top 5, for the reasons I stated earlier.

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No idea what CP is, but that sounds promising.

Standard bones for tails and wings I'm not so sure about. I can't remember the last time I saw wings, but I see shoes, pants and shirts every day and pretty much everyone has fingers. Most mesh attachments are clothes, not bodyparts.

If LL could rewrite their importer a bit (I'm not a coder/scripter, but how hard can it be to read a dae file with less than the total amount of bones?), people could work around a human skeleton

or

a winged/tailed one. If that was the case, standard extra bones would work pretty well. I think a lot of clothing creators would be annoyed if they had to work around tail and wing bones they never use. The same might be the case for fingers, although they wouldn't get in the way so much.

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CP is Cloud Party. They announced earlier this year that we can now attach bones. I haven't played around with it much, but they already had custom skeletons, and I have played with that enough to say it works, as long as you stick to they strick guidelines. I don't do much there yet because they still don't have a way to cash out. What is the point unless we can cash out?

I don't see how clothing creators would have a hard time with wings and tails. They just wouldn't weight anything to those bones. We have extra bones in the skeleton now, and it's not an issue. I'd wearing wings and a tail all the time, if they were bone animation based.

I do see a problem with fingers, as important as I think they are. The problem would be the morphs. How would LL have finger bones and still have the old morphs work when there is no bone data, or how would they know when for the bones to work, and when the morphs should work. I think the only way to have finger bones is to eliminate the hand morphs completely. This probably would not be exceptable for many, not that the hand morphs actually work proper now. Since LL "fixed" them, I can't get them to trigger correctly. Of course, since they are "fixed", we have to open a new jira for the new issue. LL needs to be less OCD about their jira system, and rely less on their customers.

The animation importer needs a complete redo as it is. The looping bug is far beyond any kind of actual workaround, and seriously limits creation, outside of your standard human standing upright. The only way to fix it is to redo the importer, as the problem is the importer.

[Medhue Simoni]

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Poenald Palen wrote:

Sorry, appendages trump finger and toe bones in my book. More possibilities, not just animals, monsters, draping clothes, hair that flows in the wind and doesn't interesect with the body as much, there is also machines that can benifit.

 

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Hair bones would be interesting.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

I don't see how clothing creators would have a hard time with wings and tails. They just wouldn't weight anything to those bones. We have extra bones in the skeleton now, and it's not an issue. I'd wearing wings and a tail all the time, if they were bone animation based.

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I haven't done a lot of rigging, so it's hard for me to comment on that, but the fact that you would be wearing wings and a tail all the time is in no way representative of the average SL dweller. Unlike fingers, they are anomalies.

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I do see a problem with fingers, as important as I think they are. The problem would be the morphs. How would LL have finger bones and still have the old morphs work when there is no bone data, or how would they know when for the bones to work, and when the morphs should work. I think the only way to have finger bones is to eliminate the hand morphs completely.

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For finger bones I'd like to see a complete new avatar, whether that's offered by LL or a third party as attachment. I don't think finger bones will work well with the current SL avatar. I like my SL vintages and don't want to see anything broken.

[ScarlettHunterr]

We have bouncing Breasts, tummys and bums perhaps its time to let the guys have a more realistic **bleep** mesh/bone?

Lets face it sex/nudity/realism is a big part of Second life and like it or not we need this.

[Perrie Juran]

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ScarlettHunterr wrote:

We have bouncing Breasts, tummys and bums perhaps its time to let the guys have a more realistic **bleep** mesh/bone?

Lets face it sex/nudity/realism is a big part of Second life and like it or not we need this.

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Yes, it is time we had real boners in Second Life.

[Medhue Simoni]

 

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ScarlettHunterr wrote:

We have bouncing Breasts, tummys and bums perhaps its time to let the guys have a more realistic **bleep** mesh/bone?

Lets face it sex/nudity/realism is a big part of Second life and like it or not we need this.

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Being that it is the only real market that has been growing since the beginning, I'm surprised LL doesn't consider it. lol

[Knowl Paine]

There is a rumor that the size will be based on how many L$ a resident has.

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Knowl Paine wrote:

There is a rumor that the size will be based on how many L$ a resident has.

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Before tier or after?

...Dres