Category: Content Creation User Group

The following notes and audio were taken from the weekly Bento User Group meeting, held on Thursday, July 7th at 13:30 SLT at the the Hippotropolis Campfire Circle . For details on the meeting agenda, please refer to the Bento User Group wiki page.

Note that this update is not intended to offer a full transcript of the meeting, nor does it present the discussion points in chronological order. Rather, it represents the core points of discussion, grouped together by subject matter were relevant / possible, whilst maintaining the overall context of the meeting.

Viewer Updates

Project Viewer

There have been no further updates to the project viewer, version at the time of writing. Vir is continuing to try to nail down the remaining bugs, but there are no significant fixes in the pipeline as yet.

The project viewer is due to be merged up to de facto release viewer (which updated on Tuesday, July 5th). It’s currently not clear if this will result in a new version of the project viewer being put out without any actual Bento changes, or whether the Lab will wait until there are fixes and updates to Bento before putting out a new version of the viewer.

Experimental / Test Viewer

There is an updated experimental viewer for the proposed skeleton and slider modifications. A summary of the updates included in this version of the viewer can be found on the Machinimatrix website. In short:

• There is a new bone, mFaceJawShaper, intended to resolve issues around the jaw angle (see my Bento update #17 for background)
• Additional tweaks to existing facial bones
• Some slider changes

In support of these changes, there is also an updated mesh model. Bento creators are asked to take a look at the updates in this viewer and experiment with them, and provide feedback and details of any issues back to the Lab as soon as possible. This model has not been added to the Bento Test wiki page so as not to cause any confusion with the models already there.

Overall, the Lab is looking to lock this viewer down, so that changes and be reviewed and, if approved, incorporated into the main Bento project viewer. Once this has been done, it is very unlikely that any further skeleton or Avatar_LAD file changes will be made.

Those wishing to test the experimental viewer should note that they must use the BentoExperimental1 region on Aditi to upload models or animations that use the new bone, as it is currently unsupported on Agni (the main grid).

These changes will result in some displacement of jaw / mouth joint positions when viewing models with do not have the updates. Matrice Laville and Cathy Foil provided some suggestions on how to correct such displacements, both generally (Matrice) and with specific reference to Maya / Mayastar (Cathy).

Bento Heads and Sliders

Translations  / Rotations and Animations

The reasons for the new experimental viewer lay in the recent discussions about potential issues which could impact Bento’s effectiveness with human heads.

The Machinimatrix summary linked to above (which also forms the release notes for the Avastar 2.0 Alpha 4 update), provide a comprehensive explanation of the  situation. However, in short,  the SL animation system has worked on the assumption that sliders only affect translation and scale whilst animations only affect rotation, allowing both to work cooperatively. With Bento, animations can now also leverage bone translations, and this can lead to conflicts when attempting to run animations on avatars modified using the sliders.

Exactly how severe these conflicts are has been a topic of hot debate within the forum thread for the last few weeks. As a result, Medhue Simoni has produced a video (below) which hopefully defines what is and isn’t possible within the existing project viewer, while the Avastar team and Cathy have attempted to further address some of the concerns expressed by mesh head creators in an attempt to make the system more responsive to their needs.

During the meeting, Cathy, Vir and Matrice gave a further summary on why these changes appear to be coming so late in the day.

Head Appearance Slider Limitations

Another issue with Bento heads – again, notably human heads – is trying to tie all of the available bones to the existing sliders such that using the sliders to change the shape of a Bento head is reasonably consistent with using the same sliders to morph the shape of the system avatar (so users see a reasonably consistent result whether they are using a Bento head or working with the system avatar).

Unfortunately, this has not been possible with either the Head Shape or Egg Head slider, due in no small part to the complexities in trying to control the position of so many head bones with these sliders.

As a result, when using the extreme left / right ranges of these sliders, odd results can be seen. Setting the Egg Head slider to 0, for example, results in the chin bone being pushed forward, rather than down, resulting in an exaggerated pointy chin. It is believed that weighting heads will help compensate for this, but as Matrice, Cathy and Vir explained during the meeting, the sliders are such that issues like this cannot be easily avoided.

Height Issue

One fix that should hopefully be forthcoming when the next version of the project viewer does appear, is for the avatar height offset issue (BUG-20013), in which (mainly) quadruped avatars may appear to be standing on the ground in their own view, but are seen as standing in the ground by others.

In short, an avatar’s position relative to the ground it is standing on is calculated using the position of a number of bones within the avatar and various other factors. However, how and when these calculation is updated within the viewer occurs in a somewhat unpredictable manner, with the result that while an avatar may appear to be standing on the ground in one view, it is standing in the ground when seen by others.

To fix this, Vir has revised the height calculation to run almost constantly. This should hopefully result in all viewers consistently calculating an avatar’s height above the ground, including the impact of any animations which may affect it, and thus produce a consistent set of results: everyone sees the avatar standing on the ground.

Alt_Eyes

Bento includes a set of alternate eye bones, the Alt_Eyes, which are tied to the appearance sliders governing the “primary” eyes (size, position, etc.).

These were originally added so that those wishing to have eyes which are not animated by the default system eye movements could make use of them. However, it is now been confirmed that running eye animations at a higher priority to the system animations is sufficient to override them on the “primary” eye bones.

Further, even where models have been made which incorporate additional eyes (e.g. in Aki Shichiroji’s wyvern), the Alt_Eye bones may not actually be used / it might be preferable to not have them change size / position on the basis of altering the “parent” avatars eyes via the appearance sliders.

A suggestion has therefore been put forward to de-couple the Alt_Eyes from the eye bones (and just have them linked to the head shape sliders). This couple potentially open them up for more varied use, such as with hair, cheek bones etc.  As the Lab is keen to lock down both the skeleton and the Avatar.LAD file as soon as then can, this is something which needs to be agreed ASAP, preferably through forum thread discussions.

The following notes and audio were taken from the weekly Bento User Group meeting, held on Thursday, June 30th at 13:00 SLT at the the Hippotropolis Campfire Circle . For details on the meeting agenda, please refer to the Bento User Group wiki page.

Note that this update is not intended to offer a full transcript of the meeting, nor does it present the discussion points in chronological order. Rather, it represents the core points of discussion, grouped together by subject matter were relevant / possible, whilst maintaining the overall context of the meeting.

Bento Project Viewer and Moving Forward

The project viewer updated to version 5.0.0.317134, on Thursday June 30th. This update includes small tweaks to the avatar skeleton file, but no structural changes, and provides fixes for:

• SL-426 missing string for left pec, right pec attachments
• SL-398 issues with system eyelashes
• MAINT-6380 vertical flicker with some mesh avatars.

With the exception of the facial bone / slider work (see below) the focus is very much on getting the viewer to a release candidate status, and the project as a whole released. The emphasis with the viewer is on fixing Bento specific bugs, rather than viewer bugs which pre-date project, together with anything which has a major impact on the project as a whole. To this end, a request has been made that anyone who has found an issue or problem they have not reported to either raise a bug report and / or raise it for discussion in the Bento forum thread.

Height Issues / Ground Sits

As noted in my Bento #15 report, there are still some issues around avatars standing on / in / over the terrain when seen from different viewers (a person can appear to be standing on the ground in their own view, but knee-deep in the ground to someone else).

The issue appears to lie it the complexity of the information that is being handled for the avatar, and updates between the simulator and viewers not necessarily arriving in the right order, and Vir hopes the Lab will be able to dig into things some more in the hope of improving how the calaculations are handledthem out.

Facial Bones and Sliders

The forum thread discussion on the facial bones and sliders (see my Bento #16 update) has been continuing. A proposal, as requested at the time, has been put forward, and the promised test viewer was made available on June 27th, together with three new test skeletions (bento human male, bento human female and bento angel). See also Vir’s forum thread post for more information.

Matrice Laville has been trying to implement many of the suggestions put forward on the issue, and ideally the Lab would like to get all suggestions / changes wrapped up by the end of week #27.

Jaw Angle Slider

In terms of the jaw bone angle slider in particular, there was a further healthy discussion over where the problems lay and how best to deal with them. For clarity, the audio of the discussion is given below.

Mel Vanbeeck, vir and Matrice Laville discuss the jaw bone angle issue

Pros and Cons of adding a new bone, and the possibility of perhaps doing so in the future

Scaling Wings and Tails to Avatar Height

Currently, the wing and tail bones are not adjusted when changing an avatar’s height via the appearance sliders.  This is because the bones can be re-purposed for other uses, and having them automatically adjust according to adjustments made to an avatar’s height may not always be optimal.

It has been suggested that the hind bones and wings should have their own sliders, but this has been considered outside the scope for Bento, where the emphasis is enabling the existing sliders to be used with the Bento bones as and where they are deemed particularly useful.

In terms of the wings and tail, the suggestion is that they not be hooked into the height slider, but are left as is to allow for the possible addition of dedicated sliders into the avatar LAD file at some point in the future.

Other Items

Pile-on Test

The meeting was abbreviated to allow for a pile-on test to check simulator performance and region crossings with large numbers of avatars. The results will likely be reviewed at the next meeting.

Avastar 2.0 Alpha 3 Release

The Avastar team have issued an alpha update specifically for Bento. Full details can be found in the release notes for the changes and known issues.

Next Meeting

There many be a Lab internal meeting which conflicts with the next meeting. Check the Bento User Group wiki page for the meeting status nearer the date.

Updated June 30th – please refer to note following a quoted comment from Matrice.

The following notes and audio were taken from the weekly Bento User Group meeting, held on Thursday, June 23rd at 13:00 SLT at the the Hippotropolis Campfire Circle . For details on the meeting agenda, please refer to the Bento User Group wiki page.

Note that this update is not intended to offer a full transcript of the meeting, nor does it present the discussion points in chronological order. Rather, it represents the core points of discussion, grouped together by subject matter were relevant / possible, whilst maintaining the overall context of the meeting.

Apologies for the quality of Vir’s voice in the recording, this is my fault. I had to go afk just after starting the audio recording, and I hadn’t adjusted my local pick-up of Vir’s voice before doing so. As as consequence, Vir sounds a little distorted.

Facial Bones, Rotation / Translation / Slider Issues and Relative Translations

There has been further forum thread discussions on issues with the position of some of the new facial bones when they are used in combination with the head sliders. The core of this discussion commences here, and Mal Vanbeeck has offered a feature request for “shape slider friendly” facial bone positions. Some of this is also tied to issues relating to the range of movement of bones with the sliders or under animation.

Matrice Laville has been looking into some of the issues, and has come up with a proposal for making some amendments to the Bento skeleton to try to address some of the problems. However, any changes which are implemented will change the structure of the skeleton and how the sliders work, and will likely impact some initial content using the affected parts of the skeleton.

Because of this, it is likely the proposed amendments will be built into a test version of the Bento viewer, rather than the current project viewer, together with some test models to allow independent testing of the updates so it can be determined if they address the issues sufficiently and do not have unanticipated additional impact, so that a decision can be made on whether or not to fully implement them into the project viewer.

Specific changes in this test viewer, when available, are focused on issues raised around eyes and jaws, and so should comprise:

• Changing the eyelids to have the same centre position as the eyebrow
• Changes to the jaw and tongue positions
• Changing the lower teeth so that they are parented to the lower jaw bone
• Associated slider changes.

Adding to this in text, Matrice said:

All jaw related sliders do no longer translate the jaw except the jaw angle slider; the jaw bone has its default position now right below the faceRoot. The jaw angle slider still moves like crazy but I believe it is not an issue any longer. Actually, I propose to remove the [.LAD definitions for the Bento bones from the] jaw angle slider, because it only is needed for the jaw angle. I bet nobody will miss that slider.*

[NB June 30th: This comment has been updated, as some confusion followed the publication of this report, causing Matrice some embarrassment.  The fault is mine, and is the result of copying a text comment verbatim, rather than seeming clarification from Matrice. My apologies to him and any anyone else for the confusion caused.]

As Vir acknowledged, this has been a major amount of work which should hopefully address many of the issues encountered with the complexity of the new face bones and attempting to hook them into a limited set of available sliders.

Vir also noted that when available, Bento avatars using this revised skeleton in the test viewer may look odd when seen on the Bento project viewer, and vice-versa, and that the work has been carried out with the aim of limiting any de-stabilising influences the changes may have if and when they are integrated into Bento as a whole, while at the same time avoiding being so conservative that Bento ends up going live still with issues like these which might impact its adoption and use.

A notification will be placed in the forum thread when the viewer is ready.

Project Viewer Status

There are some bug fixes that will be upcoming in the next Bento project update, which could be appearing sometime in week #26 (week commencing Monday, June 27th).

The Lab is working to get the viewer to Release Candidate status, with the work focused on identifying and prioritising the bugs which really need to be fixed before moving forward. There will also be the work to integrate the modifications to bone positions and sliders noted above, together with associated evaluation, plus the upcoming testing. However, the hope is the viewer will move to RC status in the not-too-distant future.

Tool Chain Issues

Some of the recent bugs Vir has been investigating with regards to specific content appear to be down to potential issues within the tools used to create the content introducing irregularities in the models and animations, rather than anything specific to how Bento itself is handling the uploaded models.

Obviously, in such circumstances, there is only so far the Lab can go in investigating these types of issues, as they have no knowledge of exactly how the models /animations were defined within the creator’s tools of choice, etc., and so content creators who have encountered these specific issues have been asked to take them back to the tools creators to make sure things are behaving correctly at that end of the process.

Continue reading “Project Bento User Group update 16 with audio” →

The following notes and audio were taken from the weekly Bento User Group meeting, held on Thursday, June 16th at 13:00 SLT at the the Hippotropolis Campfire Circle . For details on the meeting agenda, please refer to the Bento User Group wiki page.

Note that this update is not intended to offer a full transcript of the meeting, nor does it present the discussion points in chronological order. Rather, it represents the core points of discussion, grouped together by subject matter were relevant / possible, whilst maintaining the overall context of the meeting.

Viewer Status

As noted in my current viewer releases page and this week’s SL project update, the Bento project viewer updated to version 5.0.0.316366 on June 10th. This release primarily contained bug fixes.

In addition, the pre-jump / jump / landing issue reported in my Bento update #14 (and see BUG-18239) This issue appears to have been related to issues of animations repositioning the avatar pelvis (also the avatar centre) causing conflicts as Vir explained in the meeting.

Eye Bug

Unfortunately, the new project viewer has introduced a fair number of new issues, which the Lab is now looking into, However, one which (as at the time of writing) was awaiting a JIRA, was raised for discussion at the meeting by Medhue Simoni.

In short, the problem is that models uploaded using the latest version of the viewer which do not have eye positions / animation set for poses such as a default stand pose (so they use the default eye positions and will move naturally), have the eyes incorrectly positioned as soon as the avatar is worn.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that even avatars uploaded using the latest version of the viewer (5.0.0.316366) which do display their eyes correctly can have the eyes reset incorrectly in a person’s view in the Reset Skeleton button is used. however, the eyes will also resume their expected position once any animation affecting them is played.

One possible culprit of the issue might be a new head slider, as discussed towards the end of the meeting.

Relative Bone Translations

A recent addition to the Bento project viewer is the ability to reset all bones in the skeleton. The idea is to correctly reset all bone positions in your view should an avatar deform when changing shapes. However, Gael Streeter has come upon situations where partial bone resets might be required, which prompted a discussion on the forum thread (see follow-ups here, here and here) and led to Tapple Gao offering a proposal (which also sparked further discussion in the thread) to address the issue via relative bones translations, which is also now a feature request.

While Vir Linden see the idea as a “nice to do”, it could entail some deep changes to the avatar system as well as having to extend the animation format; as such, it’s more likely to be something the Lab would consider for a “Bento follow-on” project rather than something they’d might try to implement at this point in time.

Leviathan Flux raises the matter of relative bone translations

However, there is a significant set of issues facing makers of mesh heads / faces, while could be resolved through relative bone translations which avoid making the shape sliders unusable (which would be the case if they relied on repositioning the facial bones).

A concern was raised that any changes made at this point in time risked the breakage of Bento content which is currently a work-in-progress for creators; however, most of those present at the meeting took the attitude better a breakage now if it yields an improvement,  than down the road, when breakage would be a much greater risk.

Continue reading “Project Bento User Group update 15 with audio” →