Opinion Poll: How do you think Custom Anims will affect SL?

Opinion Poll: How do you think Custom Anims will affect SL?

I'm interested in viewpoints both general and specific...
some things I'm particularly interested in hearing opinions on:

Would you be more interested in creating or purchasing anims?

If CAs become something ppl are willing to purchase, what range of cost do you see them occupying?

Do you think this could potentially provide a (formidable) new money sink besides land/shopping/GOMing?

Also, I would love to see a list of anims that you would like to see available.

Thanks!!
Nephi

I do think CA will creat a new market.

I'm most interested in ones that express common practical shared experiences - hugging of friends, hugging of lovers, various greetings, walking arm in arm, sitting together, fear, joy, other types of laughter, thoughtful poses, etc. etc.

Quality animations i would guess could be in the $500 price range - as I feel scripters work very hard and are under paid.

I also have an idea for a group of custom animations for fund raising events and would like to hire a scripter to develop. If anyone is interested please PM here or IM me inWorld.

It will be just like building or making clothes: skilled people will rise to the top but everyone will try their hand at it. Some people will look smooth and awesome and others will jerk around like spazzes.

At first custom animations will cost ridiculous amounts, say $2,000 for something ordinary and up to $10,000 for sexx0r animations. This is only natural since they will be a major novelty, they require uncheap software, and there is real skill involved both in manipulating that interface and in making convincing motion. The price will come down in a month or so, probably to around $200–$500 per animation. Before it does, it will spark a huge forum flamewar about the haves and have-nots, and how you have to be rich to get anything out of SL.

Griefing will enter a new renaissance as immature people with too much time / disposable income on their hands crank out butt wiggling, pelvis thrusting, nose picking, and hippo molesting animations.

Dancing will explode all over SL, but the animations will largely suck, and they'll be stuck in animation bracelets that make even users with the best dance animations look like Ed Grimley being electrocuted.

I'm keeping my animation list to myself so no one beats me to market but here's one for free: air quotes.

I forgot to mention: new idle animations for your personal style / mood / idiom.

Porn and a new addition to the economy of skill.

I've posted my thoughts about custom animations in my last SL article here if you're interested in such things-
http://www.clickableculture.com/comments.php?id=P1919_0_1_0
See "Shake Your Booty".

I agree largely with Julian.

My fear is that the sex animations will hit us rapidly, in quantity, and at great expense.

And Neph: land, shopping, and GOMing aren't really money sinks. That money doesn't get removed from the economy, it just circulates. :-/

good point- my bad on the term. I meant more something for ppl to spend that money on, to keep it circulating

I think one thing CAs might (and hopefully) engender is more detailed and specific performance art.

I hope to see real dance contests with choreography that differs between dancers and dance teams.

I think CAs will allow for a wide range of physical comedy-- who knows we could see an in-world improv group. I hesitate to mention mime, but, well, it might be funny in-world.

With custom animations there's a new possibility for dramatic art forms as well -- i'd love to see some short plays performed.

The kind of self expression that CAs will allow, I think, will transform the world in a lot of ways. The market will probably be similar to clothing. I imagine inexpensive CA packs that everyone will get and also customs expressions done for individuals at top dollar so that only certain people will have them.

Also I think it will re-instill a bit of the "wow" factor and surprise that I know has been missing for a while for me. Hehe i sound so jaded now. But meeting new people and seeing the individuality that custom animations will provide will be exciting.

I think CA's will do so much for the SL experience!! People will be able to interact with each other in soo many ways (not just sexual) and I think it will help the community as a whole.

As for my intrest in them, I would much rather make them than buy....but if I see something I like, I will definately buy it! But I guess whether I make or buy will depend on my Poser skills...whcih don't exist at this time, so I guess I'll just have to wait and see when I get the program.

Pricing? Who knows what it will be...I assume it will be just like everything else and just depend on who made it and how much time they put into it.

*screams at UPS* Bring me my Poser 5 dammit!!!

it's like learning a new language. Which words do you learn first?

I expect the first aniimations to be gestures like flipping someone off & sex related. Once that is out of peoples system I hope to see some really great stuff.

My one thought is how will they be protected for sale? They will need their own permission system to protect the original creator unlike earlier clothiers & scripters.

I only fear the expense part, myself. More seriously, this does mean that PG-area rules will have to be enforced for gestures as well as speech.

One other aspect will be animations not as sale items in their own right, but as simple enhancements of other objects, to improve their verisimilitude. Like a "hands on the wheel" animation for a car or plane. It will become another way to differentiate the quality of scripted objects: lots of people sell pistols, but how many sell pistols with an anim for chambering a round as the weapon is drawn?

Everyone mentions dancing, and rightly so; but I also expect to see some fancy swordplay. Different moves for different types of swords: claymore, rapier, scimitar, katana. Lightsabres may come back into fashion, this time accompanied by Jedi sword-fu moves.

This also opens up possibilities for contact sports. Moves for a particular sport, and the commands to activate those moves, could be incorporated into a worn item, and we could have competitive fencing, karate, boxing, even soccer.

Lots of cool possibilities.

I think that's absolutely a given. Very insightful. I suppose the TOS applies to all forms of content present and future so this might not be an issue per se.

although ALL of these posts have been purely theoretical based on the fact we have no idea how the nw animation system is oging to work heres my thoughts on what will happen IF animations are transferrable. Also a little note on the way poser works, first of all I have no idea how LL is going to handle this... we are going to need a model with which to animate... I seriously doubt the skeletons and joints are going to be the same as thy are for the standard poser models. Also, the files that models come in are not the same for multiple programs (there are some crossovers of course) before we start spending our money for making sex animations, lets contnemplate how difficult this may actually be. As an avid user of Poser for almost seven years, I can tell yah folks, please prepare for shock now:
there is a learning curve. No seriously... as intuitive as poser is, its not just point and click. And if the models arent the same as previous poser models, youre not going to have much to work with to show you how its done. Yes they probably should be relatively expensive, an ANIMATED pose is far more difficult then a still pose (like a sitting anim) and should be priced accodingly. Ive been eagerly EAGERLY awaiting this feature and I have a sneaking suspiscion its going to be the coolest feature theyve added yet. but lets not count our eggs until theyre hatched... none of us know how this is going to work. We'll need models, we'll need templates, well need to figure out how to keep certain IK chains still while other are free to move, some o us our going to have to learn a little something called #d animation" which is not a walk through the park, and its not like going into PS or paint and making something spiffy. HOWEVER, theres no reason to go spending 100000 L$ for a *ahem* "all fours anim" because its not THAT freaking hard. However... if the market bears it... (i.e. all of you are SO eager to get your hands on sex0r anims) you can contact me in world... seven years of poser experience and Ill make you waht you want for 10000L.

thats a very valid caveat spider, and one im thinking more and more about- the actual difficulty of producing these anims in poser.

I also wonder what hoops we will have to jump thru if say we would prefer to animate in maya or lightwave, for example. almost certainly some sort of melscript or lscript for conversion, at least.
additionally, if someone DOES take the time to write a conversion script of some kind for one of the larger 3d packages, would they be able to sell that convertor for USD without backlash, considering that writing it is most definitely NOT novice-work, and any distribution of it would have to happen outside the game.
little things like that also, i think, bear considering.


I think one of the big factors in determining how steep the learning curve is will be the quality of documentation that is provided to us. i'm really curious about this aspect- might we be provided with a copy of the rig and mesh similar to how we are given templates for clothing creation?

or, will we be pointed to where we can acess coordinate information ect for the bones of the rig, and recreating it is individual animator's responsibility?
That's an option I'm really not adverse to, though it would not be feasible for everyone.

I wonder about the amount of accesibility to those not previously trained in animation...
It's been over a year since i rigged a charachter- I know i could do if i worked with it for a while, but I would be concerned about the future sanity of someone who's never done any kind of animation before attempting to pick up software cold and rig a charachter.
thats the stuff of nightmares

theres so many unanswered questions, i know they will get cleared up in time, but until then a LOT of wildcards remain.

In the meantime, aspiring animators, I have a book to reccomend:
Acting For Animators by Ed Hook

at the very least, its exciting to finally see this feature being implemented!!!!


anyway, thats my .02
pls do keep the responses coming!! im enjoying immensely hearing what everyone thinks of this, and sees in the future!

One of the things I most hope for from CA is that dance will become more interesting, more like the RL artform. Performance, party, couples, all sorts of dance possibilities leap to mind, that would enhance our Second Life. Even with Kris Ritters excellent Dance-O-Matic tool, the present animations do not allow much leeway in the creation of a coherent single person dance, and offer almost nothing for performance or couple dancing.

Govi

I suppose these new animations will have to download to other people's machines before they can be seen, just like all other content. This may lead to heavy delays between you triggering your bird flip and someone finally downloading it and seeing it. Especially when a large event of people gets together and starts flinging the custom animations.

Maybe you could create an object to "preload" your animations. When you arrive at an event you could run it and trigger a 0.1 second timer that runs llStartAnimation / llStopAnimation pairs for each animation, just enough so they download to people but not enough that you visibly do anything. I expect we would see complaints like, "I flew by an event and suddenly I had 250 downloading animation streams!"

/me *snickers*

well, frankly, if were expected to be able to make custom animations theyre going to have to supply us with a model. We *could* make our own but unless the IK chains and bone parameters etc. etc. are EXACTLY alike... extreme weirdness will ensue.
so I am ASSUMING we will be getting at very least a bone structure to work with. There are programs already written for importing stuff from other suites into and out of poser, quite a few actually. They are however cumbersome and not very intuitive. As fas as documentation... Im not sure what the lindens are providing as far as using poser but good news aspiring poser users... assuming you BOUGHT poser and didnt grab it from a torrent or something the manual you receive is only 850 some odd pages... you should be able to breeze through that in a matter of hours. BTW creating your own bone structure and joint properties etc. with or without mesh is not simple business... poser makes it easer to import a model from maya or LW and give it bones... but only "easier" not "easy".

*chuckle* thats charachter animation in general for you.
sometimes easier than others, but NEVER easy

*sigh*.. if only theyd give us interactive gestures..
But perhaps this is close enough for now.

Good questions, all. I'll try to answer some as best I can.

The animation file you will be able to upload into SL is BVH format, a "standard" motion capture file. Standard in quotes since a BVH is just a text file with bone names, bone hierarchy, frame rate, and a list of bone position data for each frame. This format is meant to be flexible enough so someone could mocap a human, or a dog, or a bumblebee. What this really means is there is no one standard BVH file configuration.

There is a specific naming convention and hierarcy for the SL avatar's bones. Any BVH file that doesn't conform to this particular setup simply won't work on upload into SL. Fortunately, you will be able to preview an animation before upload to make sure it works as expected.

Poser is recommended since it is one of the few animation packages that lets you export a BVH file out of the box and is geared towards creating human character animation. An animation created using any of the standard Poser human figures will work in SL without modification since the SL skeleton has been configured to match Poser's.

Other animation packages could probably be configured to output compatible BVH files. That would involve creating a human character model rigged correctly and some plug-in or script to generate the BVH file from whatever internal formats those packages use. Linden Lab doesn't have the workforce to do that for all the animation programs out there, but that's not to say some enterprising SLer won't do it!

We will try to provide some helpful information via tutorial and/or FAQ, etc. These will probably be Poser-centric, but information on the structure and naming conventions of the SL skeleton will also be provided.

On upload, the BVH file is converted to SL's own format which is compressed and streaming. This means there shouldn't be much delay between you triggering an animation and someone else viewing it. An animation will be a tradable, sellable asset just like any object, texture, or sound, and it will be triggerable via gestures and/or scripts. Certain variables such as loop points and priorty are set prior to uploading the animation via the preview window.

Regarding the quality of user-created animations and the accessability of Poser; It's true, while Poser goes a long way towards simplifying the process of animating, the fact is character animation is an art and it's not easy. I'll argue that creating animation for interactive 3D apps. is more difficult than animating for movies since in 3D the animation must look good from all angles, whereas in a movie the animation need only look good from a single viewpoint.

But like any other asset you can upload into SL, there will be no pre-approval process or bar you must pass to contribute animations to the world. Doubtless there will be some animations that only a novice animator's mother could love, but I'm sure there will also be some truly inspired and unexpected work. Frankly, we're all excited to see what you guys come up with, and will be quite happy when "dance 4" is nothing more than a footnote to SL history.

-Xenon

Thanks for the additional info Xenon! I can't wait

The one thing I'm most looking forward to with custom animations is the ability to really give avatars a distinctive character. We can do that now with how they look, but not how they move. People with the motivation and a bit of skill will be able to really make themselves unique in the SL world. Imagine a shuffling bitter old man, a swaggering drunk, a hip swinging tight rope walking supermodel. I think in the beginning CA's will be used for sex and comedy, but as the community matures with the tools and how best to use them I think we'll see them used to create genuine character.

Regarding the "normal" animations... would we be able to change how our avatar walks, for instance? Or will this be basically a replacement for the "type this command to make your avatar do this" type animations?

I'm curious, because I wouldn't mind replacing the idling animations with ones that are more akin to my personal effects (shifting my weight from side to side, stuffing my hands in my pockets, folding my arms, etc.) rather than the odd idle animations we have now.

However, that doesn't sound like what we're getting, but I'd thought i'd ask anyway.

LF

Lordfly,

Correct, uploadable animations will take the form of custom gestures that you will need to be triggered like the current gesture system or through a script. The "hard-wired' locomotion animations like the walk, run, stand idle poses, etc. won't be directly replaceable yet, though that is part of the continued plan for future development.

However, in 1.4, you *will* be able to trigger custom animations that have a higher priority than the hard-wired ones. This means you can create a script that triggers an overiding custom animation while you are walking, sitting, etc. You will also be able to save gestures as assets withing outfit folders, so you could have a whole set of custom animations that work with your cranky old man avatar and another set that work with a ninja, etc. Vehicles could also have custom animations attached to control the seated position of the avatar. Ski attachments could have a custom animation so that even though you would still technically be walking, visually you would appear to be skiing. You could create some custom swimming animations that are attached your line of custom swimwear.

-Xenon

Custom animations will be drag and drop? This seems to imply we can "wear" them like clothing or attachments.

Does that mean we would drag custom animations into an object's inventory and use them there like textures or sounds are used now? And whoever used the object would be affected by the animation?

How will this work? I could see it if, as above, the custom animation lives in an object's inventory, but clothing doesn't have an inventory (or will it?). Does this mean something similar to the first point about folders with clothing, custom animations, and shapes?

Should we assume the permissions system will apply to custom animations? Can they be moddable by a buyer, for example?

I anticipate that, like Havok 2, there will be widespread disappointment with custom animations.

The fundamentals of the basic default animations are still broken, no matter what we do to make new ones.

For example, feet don't stick to the ground when walking and running; arms dislocate behind your back to select an object; and animations sometimes get stuck. At the very least it'd be nice if object animation permission errors are sent to the owner by IM instead of spamming everyone.

More directly to the point, I highly doubt two-person (hugs, sex, high five, etc) animations will work smoothly, if at all. For that matter, who knows if they will even be scripted. They might be entirely pre-recorded with no ability to modify or fine-tune in LSL (just like clothing).

Even if they are scriptable, there isn't enough information about body target points. If a short person hugs a tall person, will they suddenly launch into the air to be at eye level, or will they wind up stuffing their face into their groin? (though that'll probably work well for some people)

How will we have an animation that hold hands, when there's no llGetAttachPos(other_person_key, ATTACH_RHAND) and llGetAttachRot(other_person_key, ATTACH_RHAND)? Maybe these will be added?

Currently all we have information about is is one position for the whole avatar, and their overall direction of rotation. That's not enough information to create the fine details of expression that a lot of people seem to have their hopes up for.

Sorry to be the pessimist, I'd just thought I'd post and point out why I think this probably won't be as smooth and simple as we're anticipating.

At worst, I will be wrong, and it will be better than I predict. I'm just noticing that lately it seems to be best to keep your expectations low, so you don't set yourself up for disappointment.