Tag Archives: Avatar

Bento Feature Request – No Lock

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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

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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 →

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Second Life: NEW BONES, New AvaStar 2.0

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This is a big deal. I’ll get into what it means and what some of the possibilities are.

For years Second Life™ users have been asking for more bones. That would let users make avatars with tails that are easily animated. Or with more than 4 arm-leg appendages. We will be able to have a centaur with 4 legs, two arms, and a tail, something that is way complicated now and pretty lame. Or a spider with 8 legs.  Continue reading →

ALERT: Second Life Avatar Changes!

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Today we have a post from the Lab about changes to the SL Avatar. See: Introducing Project Bento – New Bones Added to Second Life Avatar Skeleton.

What are the changes?

Ever wish you could incorporate a tail, wings, or second set of arms into your avatar? How about having animations for facial expressions and finger movements? Yes, we know that there are some incredibly creative workarounds that give you some of these, but they can’t leverage skeletal animation, so they have been very complex, often fragile, and very expensive in performance and resources both in your Viewer and the Simulator.

Second Life Has New Avatars?

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Did you know Linden Lab has new avatars for the noobies? I had not realized it. But, Cerise @ SLUniverse posted about the new avatars and I noticed that post. Want to see some of the new avatars and mesh clothes?

Linden Lab's New Starter Avatars - Classic is now the default.

Linden Lab’s New Starter Avatars – Classic is now the default.

This image shows the first page one lands on after clicking JOIN. By default they now have ‘Classic’ avatars selected. It is still possible to select Vampires and People. Those are mesh body avatars. But, the Classic Avatars look to be all new. The older avatars are still in the Library. I just don’t see them on sign-up process.  Continue reading →

Comparison: Mesh Bodies

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The site MeshBodyAddicts.com has new reviews and comparison charts of the mesh bodies available in Second Life. So, if you are shopping, this is a good source of information. See: Reviews: Isteni, Tonic & Dude SLink!

Visage Head Becky

Visage Head Becky

As of now there is no Render Complexity Information in the reviews. With the Complexity Feature on the way (See Quick Graphics viewer in Alternates) I think this is a huge oversight.

If you have wondered about the Omega Applier, see: Omega Solutions.

Next Generation Platform-SL2: The Avatars

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Everyone is curious about what the avatars in the Next Generation Platform (NGP), or SL2, will be like and what we can do with them. Now we have some clues. High Fidelity is working on their avatars and has just release a set of improvements. See: Creating and rigging an avatar with Blendshapes in Makehuman. The information is somewhat compatible with the current Second Life™ and I suspect a hint of what is coming for SL2 or the Next Generation Platform.

This is a great video for designers. You’ll find references to a number software tools I have not heard mentioned in relation to Second Life. Some of those look to be handy for SL. Continue reading →