Category Archives: Animation

Casting Call for Project Bento

by

0

Here’s your chance to be in the movies. The Lab has posted a Second Life casting call for a Drax machinima (1/14/16). If you are interested in showing off what you are working on, be at Bento Island, ADITI January 19 at noon (SLT – PST). The region won’t open until noon.

They'll change the avatar when pigs fly... WELL!?!

They’ll change the avatar when pigs fly… WELL!?!

While you cannot enter Bento Island early, I advise you to log into ADITI, the preview grid, early. The last few weeks have proven the log in process for ADITI is slow and flawed. I have yet to see my inventory update as the planned changes are supposed to. So, I’m pretty sure the new ADITI login process is not in place.

The notice advises those with avatars to show contact Draxtor Despres inworld. Provide him pictures and as much information about your creation as possible. I suspect he is looking for color and human interest and has less of an interest in the technical. What tools you are using will probably be pertinent.

Project Bento is one of the biggest changes to the Second Life avatar ever! More than 90 new bones have been added to accommodate features like subtle facial expressions, articulating fingers, smoothly-flapping wings, waving tails, and much more that was previously impossible or required complex workarounds.

If you’re a creator who’s testing out Project Bento, or one who’s eager to give it a try – now is the perfect time! We’re looking for creators to show off some of the possibilities of Project Bento for an upcoming episode of The Drax Files. There are detailed instructions on how to get started and how to get to the beta grid (aditi) on our wiki page. (TIP:Testing on Aditi does not cost you upload fees!)

Bento Meeting W#1

by

0

The first meeting of Second Life’s™ Project Bento User Group was held today. There was a good turnout, about 33 residents and 3 or 4 Lindens. We got new information about the Bento Avatar and lots of questions were answered.

First Bento UG Meeting 1/7/16

First Bento UG Meeting 1/7/16

The meeting is Lindens in voice and residents mixing text and voice. The plan is to have the meeting each Thursday at 1 PM SLT. But, scheduling conflicts will push that around so all are encouraged to see the Bento UG page to confirm the meeting time.  Continue reading →

Second Life: History – Who Made the Skeleton?

by

0

The Project is months old. But, it has a history already. Cathy Foil was one of the developers aske into the project and under NDA. Now the NDA has been lifted and she has made a 52 minute video relating her experience in the project. I have an index of the video below.

0-11:00 – Mostly audio talking about the people involved in the project. Cathy talks about her MayaStar and cooperating with the Machinimatrix AvaStar people to solve various problems.   Continue reading →

Second Life: New User Group

by

0

Ron tipped me off that there is a Linden new user group: Bento.

The list of Second Life User Groups, formerly Office Hours, has been shrinking over the years. So, I am initially surprised we are getting a new user group. But, creating a group for a large new feature is a common practice of the Lab. It was done most recently for mesh and pathfinding. So, it isn’t all that surprising.

The first meeting will be Thursday, January 7th, 2016, 1PM SLT. The location is in the Mesh Sandbox, ADITI – Preview Grid.

The group is hosted by Vir Linden.

Get the word out to your animating friends.

Second Life: Bento Rotation-Translation Debate

by

2

For those making animations this is an important issue. While I haven’t been sure which side of the debate to take because I am pretty much an amateur when it comes to making animation. Medhue, of Medhue Animations, made a video that explains the problem. I’m not sure it depicts the problem as well as it could.

I think because Medhue does so much animation he can see the problem in ways those of not as familiar with animating can’t see it. So, if this still doesn’t explain the problem for you, read on.  Continue reading →

Bento Feature Request – No Lock

by

1

Adeon Writer has filed a Feature Request in the Second Life JIRA: BUG-10990 – [Bento] A formal method of bone-translating animations is vital for the creation of proper facial expressions.

Included in the JIRA is this quote:

[04:28:52 PM] EpicGordon Broome: I don’t like getting involved in development, JIRA’s or forums or whatever. But disallowing bone translation in animations is ignoring some very basic fundamentals of animation theory, dating back decades. I’ve scrapped multiple projects because of the lack of squash/stretch in walk cycles (Toony characters). This update is also going to break features in an upcoming avatar of mine, regarding facial animation. Which is funny, because they give us so many new facial bones – that we just can’t use properly. Raise eyebrows, pull up mouthcorners for a smile, extend a tongue, using only rotations? I cannot for the life of me see a GOOD REASON for this limitation.

I have this feature – http://imgs.moyloon.com/i/05d71e3d26.png – almost done for a new avatar of mine, a pose-able tongue. The new rig has two bones for this explicit purpose. But they are useless, as I cannot pull the tongue out of the mouth in any good fashion. I cannot pull the mouth corners around without arbitrarily locking them to rotating around a bone.

Not to mention non-humanoid avatars. We’re getting so many new bones – and yet we’ll be limiting the design freedom so much, since anything non-humanoid will be unable to avoid issues caused by inheriting rotations, since locations cannot be transformed.

Allowing animations to do this is a trivial change, as I’m fairly certain that limitations were put in place to prohibit this (Hence why .anim’s were able to do things .bvh cannot), rather than requiring lots of labor on the engine.

It doesn’t affect me personally, too much. If this is the way it ends up being, I’ll just hog more resources by alpha swapping meshes, and using more animations for each of these different states. However, it’s unnecessarily clunky, and will ruin a lot of content creator’s livelihoods in its current implementation.

Visit the JIRA and click WATCH. You’ll get update emails as this ticket proceeds. DO NOT voice opinions in the JIRA! Opinions and ‘me too’ is for the forum: Project Bento Feedback Thread. The discussion there is growing quickly.  Continue reading →

Second Life: More Project Bento Information

by

0

AvaStar 2.0 is out and supports the new Bento Avatar, or maybe we can call it Avatar 2.0. After all we have been talking about it long enough.

Where's Dim Sum? #348 - Moonhouse (Telrunya photo contest - Opal Lei)

Where’s Dim Sum? #348 – Moonhouse (Telrunya photo contest – Opal Lei)

Actually, Bento doesn’t have all the changes we have been asking for in Avatar 2.0. Also, if we call it a number it should probably be 3 or 4 or something higher as there have apparently been other significant changes to the avatar over the years, before my time. But, this change does make it possible to get all the things we have been asking for or at least comes close. Continue reading →

Pages: 1 2