AnyPose: The pose tool to rule them all?

AnyPose has now been released, it is on XstreetSL

Ilsa Munro has graciously offered a demo site for AnyPose. Please come by and take a look.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Loch%20Avie/143/147/130/

If you would like to see example poses/machinima created with AnyPose, check the flickr group:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/anypose/
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OK, so maybe that is overstating it a bit, but I am closing in on a project that might make some people say "You can't do that in SL."

I've built a pose stand that allows you to move each joint independently... many joints have 256 or more possible positions. Surprisingly, you can create nearly any pose you can imagine. The great thing is... you are posing YOUR avitar... so you see visually how exactly the pose will look.

In minutes you can create a pose that fits your avi... no hands stuck in legs or other problems associated with animations built for a different size avitar.

For photographers, the poses can be exported as a "pose string" that can be stored in a pose box to playback for anyone on the stand. This doesn't require uploading anything.

If that doesn't get you interested... how about instant export of the current pose to a .bvh that gets emailed to you?

You can turn around and import the emailed pose into SL for a single frame animation... or import the .bvh file into a program like Poser to use as a keyframe for a longer animation.

Lots of other features are done, only a few more details to work on.

The last bit to do is build the hud for hud control (although everything can be done without a hud.)

So.... given this list of features... what might you think it is worth?

Sounds great! If I had a chance to try a demo and it turned out to be really easy and fast to use, I'd probably shell out 3k for it without thinking. 5k if the bvh export could be handled without having to rely on an external server.

Not sure, but IM me if you need a tester. OR if you do a demo.
The possibility of using it for frames in a longer animation is what is interesting, as poses are pretty simple to make.

I'll prolly do a demo soon. I'm gonna ask a friend if they would be willing to host a demo site. Another is testing it now for major bugs.

So far, the bvh files it spits out match the inworld pose exactly.

No external server needed. All the work is done inworld.

Since it spits out a 2 frame bvh, it can be imported anywhere in the timeline of Poser, and poser can deal with tweening.... well, poser has the annoying habit of inserting an extra keyframe when importing even a 1 frame bvh that has to be deleted.

I haven't tested imports into other utils like avimator... but the bvh files should be compatible.

You wouldn't want to use the stand to generate every frame, since the joints do have a roughly +-8 degree rotation for each movement. Not that big a deal since you can compensate with other joints, and tweening makes smooth transitions between keyframes from the stand.

No - not every frame, but it might help for some things.

This sounds very interesting, Phate.

I'd pay 3-5 thousand for this just to have it in my arsenal.

OK, just from the description, I know how you do that, it's very clever, and within six months people will be cloning it and undercutting you... so first, I think that you should go with other people's suggestions of L$3000-L$5000... but be prepared to drop it to L$500 or so in a few months when the clones start showing up.


Also, what about just chatting the BVH as an IM or llOwnerSay and letting people copy it from the chat log?

Chatting has a limit of 1024 characters, so the BVH would have to be split into at least 3 llOwnerSay/llInstandMessage commands.... and require you to do more editing. Not out of the question, but more confusing. That capability is already there, I'm just not sure I want to turn it on and deal with the "my file didn't upload" im's because the extra junk wasn't edited out correctly.

Yeah, I'm sure someone will replicate it. Hopefully all the technical hurdles that had to be overcome will throw a wrench into most peoples attempts If I can manage to recoup the upload fees before having to get into a clone war would be nice.

Thanks for all the feedback!

This is great! I, too, would pay a good penny to have one handy.

well there is U-poser and there is another one out there that already allows your pose you AV and it emails you the BVH file but has many limits. so if you want to do any non human poses you will have some problems. I spent many years working on my system and am just write the manual for version 2. Which has a plethora of improvements.

if you were to make pose angles for every joint at one degree increment that would be...
360 x 360 x 360 x 19 = 886464000 @10L$ per upload
8864640000 L$ to upload the poses
about 34,094,769 UDS to upload

Gearsawe, I was wondering if this thread would catch your attention. Adjusting joints 1 degree at a time would be impossible because of the upload count, but I have found that even at +- 8 degrees (or about that) works quite well.

Curious about the other one that lets you pose your avi... hadn't found anything similar to what I did... well... other than stands that give you maybe a handful of preset anims per joint set.

I had the pleasure of checking out the AnyPose last night, and will definitely being using one in the future. The ability to make and tweak an animation inworld, specific to my avatar size, is an incredible boon.

Phate, I guess if I had all the poses I would not even have to alter the code in my HUD, Just need make a translator for the data is out puts and play the right aniamtions which should not be to hard. Even at 8 degree increments that is about 63,000 USD to upload all the poses. Or 3500 USD per joint

Here is the other in world pose tool.
It okay. I have had people that have both this one and mine, prefer U-poser because it was not so limited. and did not like the Email of the pose file. At least from those which spoke up.

As others have said this does sound interesting.
The one thing that i am struggling to get to grips with is wht everyone is so set on getting poses that fit their own personal avatar? Surely if you are thinking of doing poses for commercial reasons then they will have to suit more than just one avatar so its not that important? I do see how it would be handy for non retail stuff though. The question then is would people be prepared to pay a reasonable price for something that is basically for personal use only? You would have to sell a lot of these to recoup your upload fees for the code.

I don't think "everyone" is, but I would sure like a "sit pose" for my ferret form that doesn't put my hands high in the air. And a pose like that would be useful to other people using the "Bunkies" ferret avatar.

And I have over 300 avatars, so having to tweak a mannequin to match the avatar for each one I'm making a custom pose for? I don't think I'd bother.

Originally, I built the stand for photographers.... so they could quickly pose avi's and if a hand or leg was sticking through another av, or another limb, it could quickly be adjusted out.

I got a bit of advice from Robin Sojourner that the real benefit to a tool like this is to create bvh animations that could be uploaded and used outside of the pose stand... and so that is where it headed.

Not having your hand jabbed in your leg is a side benefit, that doesn't mean it is ONLY a tool for avoiding those problems, or only a tool for avis that are exactly your size, or only a tool for photographers.

Say you want to create a fighting animation for 2 avies. Set out 2 stands. Now email (or IM) yourself a keyframe from both stands. Drop that into a 2 person Poser scene. Use the hud to move both characters in unison, and the keyboard (or hud) to adjust their joints.... sending keyframes as necessary from both stands to put into Poser at equal points in the timeline.

When you are done, the two animations should match up... sword to sword so to say, as long as the two animations are started the same distance apart and in the same orientation as the stands were when the keyframes were exported.

(Thanks to Osprey for the example.)

You can always put on a "typical" avatar shape, for M or F, which will be much better than the Poser defaults.

I would still like the option to copy and paste from chat instead of waiting for email.

Already in there. It is broken into 5 sections... not a whole lot to edit out. Or if you have a template text file with the bvh header.... only need to copy one line from chat and past it at the end of the text file. Did that a lot during testing.

Some poses I'd likely make for commercial use, but a lot of what I do is inworld photography. As such, having poses that fit my avatar (she's a lot shorter than most) would be a huge boon.

Mari, was the 'zilla photo at the train station a pose from AnyPose?

Yeah, this sounds really interesting to me for a lot of reasons. I want to see it in action!

This has my interest also, just need to know the details when it is ready

I had the opportunity to meet with Phate yesterday and get a little bit of time to play with this new system.

This is a very clean and efficient little system. The controls work well and very fine adjustments can be made. He's working on the HUD at the moment and that will really do the trick once he has that working / connected.

The only one caveat that I could see, and it is NOT SPECIFIC TO THIS TOOL, is that IF this is being used in a highly lagged SIM, making the fine adjustments will make a person crazy! That is just SL being SL (SNAFU).

I'm hoping to see the finished version soon.

The hud is coming along, not as quicly as I hoped. Mostly because I despise UI design

Something I should clarify:

AnyPose can't take an existing uploaded .bvh animation and modify it further. There is no way to access that info.... So, to create poses, or animations, we will have to build up a library of poses and frames for common animations. So far, I have only done a few example poses, like the Crane pose from Krate Kid, the "Egyptian" pose, the "Thinker" and a few others to show what you can get away with. Trading poses is very simple... each pose is just a string of 68 characters. Each of the example poses was created in less than 2 minutes, just by looking at photos on the web and matching the pose using the built-in arrow key controls.

Something else to clarify, is if you have a non-human avi, that uses a body crusher or folded limbs, then this may not be a tool for you.... but I'll make sure to build a demo version so anyone can try it out to see for themselves if it will work.