Day: January 13, 2023

2023 SL Puppetry project week #2 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Puppetry demonstration via Linden Lab – see below.  Demos video with the LL comment “We have some basic things working with a webcam and Second Life but there’s more to do before it’s as animated as we want.”

The following notes have been taken from chat logs and audio recording of the Thursday, January 12th, 2023 Puppetry Project meetings held at the Castelet Puppetry Theatre on Aditi. These meetings are generally held on alternate weeks to the Content Creation User Group (CCUG), on same day / time (Thursdays at 13:00 SLT).

Notes in these summaries are not intended to be a full transcript of every meeting, but to highlight project progress / major topics of discussion.

Project Summary

General description of the project and its inception:

LL’s renewed interest in puppetry was primarily instigated by Philip joining LL as official advisor, and so it really was about streaming mocap. That is what Philip was interested in and why we started looking at it again. However since Puppetry’s announcement what I’ve been hearing from many SL Residents is: what they really want from “puppetry” is more physicality of the avatar in-world: picking up objects, holding hands, higher fidelity collisions. 
As a result, that is what I’ve been contemplating: how to improve the control and physicality of the the avatar. Can that be the new improved direction of the Puppetry project? How to do it?

Leviathan Linden

  • Previously referred to as “avatar expressiveness”, Puppetry is intended to provide a means by which avatars can mimic physical world actions by their owners (e.g. head, hand, arm movements) through tools such as a webcam and using technologies like inverse kinematics (IK) and the  LLSD Event API Plug-in (LEAP) system.
    • Note that facial expressions and finger movements are not currently enabled.
    • Most movement is in the 2D plain (e.g., hand movements from side-to-side but not forward / back), due to limitations with things like depth of field tracking through a webcam, which has yet to be addressed.
  • The back-end support for the capability is only available on Aditi (the Beta grid) and within the following regions: Bunraku, Marionette, and Castelet.
  • Puppetry requires the use of a dedicated viewer, the Project Puppetry viewer, available through the official Second Life Alternate Viewers page.
  • No other special needs beyond the project viewer are required to “see” Puppetry animations. However, to use the capability to animate your own avatar and broadcast the results, requires additional work – refer to the links below.
  • This project is taking in a lot of additional ideas – animation standards, improving the current animation system, enabling truer avatar / avatar and avatar object interactions such that it is likely to evolve into a rolling development, with immediate targets for development / implementation as they are agreed upon, to be followed by future enhancements.
  • As such, much of what goes into the meetings at present is general discussion and recommendations for consideration, rather than confirmed lines o development.
  • There is a Puppetry Discord channel – those wishing to join it should contact members of LL’s puppetry team, e.g. Aura Linden, Simon Linden, Rider Linden, Leviathan Linden (not a full list of names at this time – my apologies to those involved whom I have missed).

Bugs, Feature Requests and Code Submissions

  • For those experimenting with Puppetry, Jiras (bug reports / fixes or feature requests) should be filed with “[Puppetry]” at the start of the Jira title.
  • There is also a public facing Kanban board with public issues – those experiencing issues can also contact Wulf Linden.
  • Those wishing to submit code (plug-ins or other) or who wish to offer a specific feature that might be used with Puppetry should:

Further Information

Meeting Notes

LSL Integration

  • See: OPEN-375: “LSL Functions for reading avatar animation positions”.
  • Rider Linden is starting to look at LSL integration  – the first step being to make the simulator aware of what is actually animating.
  • Currently, the code he has developed lets the server know the position of an avatars attachment points; this sends details of 55 points (HUD points excepted). Attachment points have been selected over bones, as the simulator already has a solid concept of attachment points, and it avoids complications with rigged meshes “doing their own thing” with bone positions.
  • A concern with this is the number of updates being sent to the server for processing.
    • One idea is to refine the the code so that only the attachment points which change relative to the avatar centre (avatar frame/Local Position relative to the avatar) actually send information to the server, in order to reduce the number of updates being generated.
    • Another idea might be to only send updates every n frames, rather than every frame. This would reduce the fidelity of movement, but could still provide sufficient data while reducing the load on the simulator, particularly where multiple avatars in a region are using puppetry.
  • This issue is related to synchronising puppetry actions across multiple viewers as well; a long-standing issues, given that animation playback of animations is viewer-side, and not genuinely across viewers (the resync function found in some TPVs only does so locally).
  • All of the above lead to a discussions of ways and means to best allow LSL integration with animations and ensure a reasonable transmission of results together with decent synchronisation between the viewer and the simulator, whether by frame count or time stamp, in order to ensure predictability of results across multiple viewers. .
  • In addition, the discussion included the advantage in enhancing Second Life to support procedural animations as well as the current canned animations.
  • Rider is also looking into a script enhancement to register collisions.
  • There was some conflating of ideas during the discussion – immediate first steps in opening Puppetry to LSL, and more far reaching goals – setting position, registering collisions (per the above), defining better interpolation for positioning (e.g. as defined in the Khronos glTF specification), etc., which caused a degree of confusion.
  • However, the openness towards making Puppetry a good foundation for future enhancement (such as moving more to procedural-based animations, enabling SL to support “industry standard” animation workflows to encourage animators into the platform, etc., remains, together with (hopefully) enabling more realistic avatar / avatar and avatar / object interactions.
  • That said, Simon Linden did offer a not of caution to all discussing the work:
Not to pop the bubble, but every one please keep in mind all the stuff we’re talked about is experimental and really interesting. I have no idea what we can make into real features and what can work with crowds and all the other interesting problems to make it happen well – we’ll see what we all can do this year 🙂

– Simon Linden

Date of Next Meeting

  • Thursday, January 26th, 2023, 13:00 SLT.

Cica’s Scribbled in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Cica Ghost: Scribbled, January 2023

My first memory of Cica Ghost’s art in Second Life came over a decade ago, when she secured a region grant from the former Linden Endowments for the Arts (LEA), and hosted Cica. It caught the eye and imagination of many, featuring two-dimensional stick figures, many of them animated, going about their lives within a 3D setting, with the little chap riding his bicycle in the face of a strong wind that becoming something of a motif for the build within blog posts about it.

Follow-up installations like Ghostville allowed various 2D characters draw by Cica to continue to appear in her 3D installations – and they still pop-up from time to time either directly (plants and flowers forming a part of an landscape) or indirectly (as drawing on walls) within Cica’s installations.

Cica Ghost: Scribbled, January 2023

Now, with her latest installation, Scribbled, which opened to the public on Thursday, January 12th, 2023, Cica again brings us a 2D world within a 3D space. Offered under the description Every day is a new day, this is an installation sitting on the 3D equivalent of a sheet of paper – and just as every day is a new day, so is every blank piece of paper an opportunity for the imagination to take flight, be it through drawings or through words.

Here, we are invited into the former (be sure to Use Shared Environment in your viewer (World → Environment), a crisp white setting suggestive of that sheet of paper on which Cica has “drawn” for us a series of vignettes. From 2D trees through aliens standing before their flying saucer to cows, elephants, cats and deer to monsters whose smiles reveal they are not intent on harm, this is a place where even the hills are given a deceptive two-dimensional edge.

Cica Ghost: Scribbled, January 2023

The order in which you encounter these little vignettes matters not – suffice it to say each has its own charm and some, due to the layout of the scene, may need a little additional exploration to be seen at their best. Also scattered among them are some 3D elements – houses and such – which, as the camera is moved, perform the illusion of appearing to morph into flat drawings before revealing their real depth once more – indeed, the overall positioning of all the elements in the setting present an immersive depth that reaches beyond the 2D form of the majority of the pieces.

This is also a setting with a little secret. Just as every day is a new day, is followed by a night, and should you find your way to it, Scribbled reminds visitors of this by transporting them from “day” to “night”. This is a place where the sky and ground are black, and the trees, animals and objects become white, giving visitors a sense of stepping into a photographic negative of the “outer” drawing. Cleverly, as well, the return trip from “night” to “day” delivers visitors to a different locale from that used to enter “night”, thus ensuring that a part of the setting that might have otherwise been easily missed or taken for granted, might be enjoyed.

Cica Ghost: Scribbled, January 2023

Of course, as with all of Cica’s installations there are opportunities for interaction awaiting discovery, from dances to sit spots to the chance to frame yourself in a “2D” picture frame located to one side of the setting, all of which further adds to the fun. And when wandering be sure to say hello to Cica; whilst she may not always be in Scribbled in person, she is always present in (2D) spirit!

As always, Scribbled is an engaging trip into the imagination with Cica, whose work never fails to raise a smile and the spirit, so when visiting do please consider also supporting her work through a purchase or a donation.

SLurl Details

  • Scribbled by Cica Ghost (Mysterious, rated Moderate)