Category Archives: Animation

Second Life: Bento Wings Kit

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Everyone is excited by the new Bento heads. They are pretty neat. I am also excited about Bento Wings. I have a collection of prim/sculpty wings in my inventory. Some are way gorgeous. But, they are mostly just there, when worn. Project Bento is going to change that. We will be able to animate the Bento Wings in ways not before possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpGUKowqim8

Damien Fate has a Bento Wings Kit out. See: FATEplay – Animated Wings Template. This is one of those Full Perm with an agreement type things where all the mesh and animation stuff is done. You only need to supply textures.

These show some of what can be done with Bento Wings. I expect some really impressive wings to start appearing.

Second Life: Another Bento Head

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Strawberry Singh recently revealed a test Bento Head made by Akeruka. Now the site Honey Junkie has an article showing a Catwa made Bento Head. See: Catwa Bento!

These heads are using the viewer’s shape panel to adjust the head’s shape. Daeberethwen Arbenlow has the thought that we will likely need multiple heads. I pretty much agree in the sense that we can’t deviate too much from the base look without getting distortions.

As you watch these reviews you’ll notice that some shape sliders don’t work. That is probably a metter of how the designers has weighted the head. I’ll point out the under bite slider not doing much is an on going source of problems. If you watch the Project Bento user group meetings you know teeth and lower lip overlaps have been an animation problem.

Second Life News 2016 w37

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The main channels are getting a roll today, Tuesday. This update is described as a security update. The release notes describe the update a minor changes, logging changes.

[ kunst ] - Cinema lightbox

[ kunst ] – Cinema lightbox

The RC channels remain as is, no update.

Viewers

The main viewer remains 4.0.7.318301, as of this morning. The same as last week.  Continue reading →

Project Bento Update 2016 w36

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I have my new computer running. This is the first large video I’ve done with it. The viewers perform way better than on the old computer. I bottom out at about 20 FPS instead of 2 and average 40-50 FPS. Look at last weeks video to see the difference.

I haven’t decided on a video capture program. I tried the XBox recorder (Game DVR) built into Win 10. It isn’t what I need. It automatically shuts off at 60 minutes. Problem. Plus it only records what is in a window, meaning not good for tutorials. Plus the voice recording was horrible. I spent most of my time editing this video just getting voices intelligible. Some of it is still a mumbled blur.

The video is 1080.

The news on Bento is we are nearing the end of phase one. Several people expect the Project viewer to change to RC status soon. Continue reading →

AvaStar 2 Alpha 7 Released

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Gaia Clary has released AvaStar 2 Alpha 7. This version has what we think is the final avatar skeleton. The big change in this version is Matrice has the Blender-AvaStar sliders working as they do in Second Life, an impressive feat.

We still have to use the Bento Project Viewer to see and upload Bento animations. The project is active on the main grid. So, we can seriously start yo play with Project Bento.

I think the big result of Project Bento will be way better mesh heads. I’ve avoided them because I hate the frozen-in-place expressions. That will be a thing of the past.

See the announcement here: AvaStar 2 Alpha 7. If you purchased AvaStar 2, you can download this version from the Machinimatrix web site’s Product Page.

Second Life: Project Bento Update 2016 w/35

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There was no Project user group meeting this week. Some of the users showed up and there was some discussion. Not much of substance was related while I was there, about 30 minutes. Also, no one was using voice. Conversations were in local chat.

Since there was no voice used I sped up the video by 100% (x2). I also added some of the Server Scripting user group meeting. It too is in local chat without voice… x2.

It is looking like several people expect Project Bento to go into RC status this month. I expect the project to stay in RC status for longer than most candidates do. We have to wait for AvaStar and MaysStar and possibly MaxStar (?) to stabilize, people to learn to use them, start uploading animations, and reporting bugs.

Once the project has an RC my interest jumps up. I’m not a good enough animator to deal with the mechanics of how it works and be helpful. My ‘why does it…’ questions with ‘because you did or didn’t…’ answers would slow things down.

Second Life: Animation Tool – Free

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Tapple Gao is providing a free tool for those doing movement animations, e.g., walking. You’ll find a copy in the marketplace here: Walking and Turning Test Treadmill. It is free.

Animation Tool

Animation Tool

The idea for the tool was to provide a way to eliminate skate from animations you create. With some walking and running animations my avatar appears to skate across the floor/ground.

With this tool you can play the animation, as opposed to wearing and having to ‘move’ to play it, stand in place, start the treadmill, and see if your feet and the treadmill are in sync. If not you’ll need to adjust the time scale of your animation.

Handy.

I’m  into math. So, I think it would be nice to have a control that would let me speed up or slow down the treadmill by a known percentage. While there aren’t any buttons for that. Apparently I could do that via the chat interface.

By knowing how much to speed up or slow down my animation I would be able to eliminate a lot of trial and error testing.