That is a ‘double take’ inspiring line. For a couple of days, people have been writing about M.I.T.’s project to make digital copies of people that can look and speak like the person. Of course, it is hype based people’s curiosity.
M.I.T. has developed an amalgam of technology that allows the creation of an avatar that looks and sounds like a specific person. (Example) But, that is about it.
Second Life has been doing the ‘looks’ part for years. The voice part is new tech. Prior voice imitation was about almost only pitch and word speed. The new tech controls pronunciation, word choice, cadence, and the other factors that make voices recognizable as a specific person. The idea is to have more AI interacting with people. Sort of a replacement for customer service people.
In psychology, the idea of the soul is self-aware life. Figuring these things out gets complicated because we can’t know what another person experiences. There is the challenge of whether the color you perceive as red is the same perception I have.
All your life you have looked at a color people call red. So, you too call it red. We can measure the frequency of the color we all agree is red. The color-blind show us that we are not all perceiving the color the same. For me, there is a huge difference between a bright green and bright red. That isn’t true for the color-blind, as the colors are nearly the same.
We can’t know what color others actually perceive. So, how do we know when another person or creature is self-aware? Are animals self-aware? If so, do they have souls?
Who is stomping on our free speech rights? Who is working to silence public speech?
Kathy Griffin 2017
This is where you find out if YOU are into democracy or fascism. Are you allowing free speech? What about hate speech? What about the speech of climate skeptics? Liberals, anti-Trump’ers, pro-Trump’ers, and Conservatives?
Talking with Eleanora Newell (AvaStar) and Siddean Munro (Slink) We have come to the conclusion the updater in AvaStar 2RC8 has a bug. It will supposedly be fixed in 2RC9. Fortunately, we don’t have to deal with the bug.
Siddean Munro has updated the May 2017 Slink Dev Kit. The May Kit updated to AvaStar 2.0.30. It is now a June 1 Kit updated to 2.0.46, the newest AvaStar.
So, just download the Kit again and get the latest version.
Also, if you are moving older projects to the new version, Append those objects to the new updated avatar. It is easier, faster, and presents fewer problems than trying to update the rig.
Talking with Siddean,
Heya, I’ve been chatting with Eleanora and Gaia [AvaStar peeps] about the update process. It’s not entirely unique to my kit.
There was some bug with the update process that Gaia says she’s fixed, will be released in the next version of the release candidate, and Eleanora says you need to have the little snowflake enabled on the update tool for the female body, and to uncheck “male” under the appearance sliders on the male body.
I found it just easier to add the new rig and attach the bodies to it, than mess around with their update tool. It’s always been problematic.
I will be advising anyone who asks to download the latest from my DropBox though, I will try and keep on top of Avastar updates as much as I can.
The thing you described with the bones all rotating from their individual origins – I asked about that in the Blender channel the other day, and someone responded she’d had the same issue as me, and locking and unlocking the bones did the trick. 🙂
I don’t really know why they lock the bone rotations. It’s like they have AvaStar all setup for animations, but we have to jump through so many hoops to get the rig ready for creating mesh with it. I’m going to send them a NC with some thoughts today so I will put in a suggestion for a rig setup toggle – animation to skinning maybe.
The best thing you can do with your older projects is append them into the new kit, rather than updating the old rig and risking errors from the old body meshes.
…
Eleanora just messaged me that the update tool is broken, the sliders don’t work. So appending to an updated rig might be better in the short term until they figure this out.
The rest of the article below is mostly outdated now. However, if you need to update a rig, you may find some help in it.
Having some problems with newly released Slink model? I did. Took me some time to figure out how to get it working. This is the ‘step-by-step’ to getting an integrated Slink-AvaStar working base.
PS: 6/1/2017 – Various people and myself are running into additional problems. Be sure to read the comments. BUT…
Siddean Munro has resolved the problem. A new Dev Kit was released 6/1/2017 that is updated to AvaStar 2.0.46. So, save yourself some heartache and get the new file. If you are updating one of your older files, the information in this article may help.
As it appears now, the fix is to replace the old rig with a new AvaStar generated rig and avoid trying to update.
The model released by Slink is made with AvaStar 2.0.30 (or 2.0-Beta-30). The latest release of AvaStar as I write this is 2RC8 (or 2.0.46). The original Slink file works just fine. Whether you are Skinning and Wight Painting or Animating.
Here is the problem I found.
The file as received works as I expected. In Blender Weight Paint and Pose Mode, the bones behave as I expect. Once I ran the AvaStar Rig Update, the bones were screwed.
The main channel got a new package: #17.05.05.326149. This version has some fixes for the Parcel Access Override feature.
Blue Steel and Le Tigre get a new package: #17.05.19.326482. This version fixes Parcel Access Override and BUG-100704 “[Server] If Anyone Can visit is selected after Allow Group was set only group members can enter”
Magnum is to roll, but as of today, it hasn’t been decided which package.
Wake up, rise and shine 😉❤️
Second Life AssetHttp Viewer version 5.0.6.326593 – This one updated from 5.0.5.325940.
Second Life Voice Viewer version 5.0.5.325998 – This one didn’t update this last week. The viewer has a higher crash rate than the Lindens think acceptable. So, they have been working to make it better. In general this version changes:
Adds support for a higher quality voice
Fixes the apparent position of the speaker in nearby voice
Improves retry behavior when there are problems connecting or during temporary connection problems
Logs more detailed information to the Lab for quantifying connection issues
Improves security of the communication between the viewer and SLVoice
Unrelated to voice, improves the validation of TLS certificates (security improvement)
Second Life Project 360 Snapshot Viewer version 4.1.3.321712 – Still no change. But, work is said to be progressing.
Second Life Project Alex Ivy Viewer version 5.1.0.505089 – No change from last week.
I saw people talking about AvaStar 2RC8 (2.0-46) in group chat. I can’t find any announcement of it being released. There is update information in the release notes: Fixed in Avastar 2.0-46 (Avastar-2-RC8).
Adding more detail and making a texture look real takes some effort. The know-how is in a tutorial in this series: Creating a Realistic Head in Blender – part 08 – Clothing Textures. In the 8th of the series, CG Cookie Blender is working on the clothes. So, don’t let the title put you off.
You’ll notice Cycles and the Node Editor are not used in the early creation part. So, it is mostly an older workflow. Still, I found the video helpful on a number of levels.
