Poser only?

Are there any other 3d programs that can be used to create animations for SL? Or is Poser the only way to go?

Based on its ease of use and compatibility, I'd say Poser is the way to go for almost everyone.

However, for those who are either technically savvy or in possession of an expensive modeler there are some options. A free modeler, called Blender, works with a bit of effort and the use of perl script I wrote that converts Blender BVH output into SL-compatible BVH format (posted in this forum). For those with other software packages with BVH compatibility problems, send me the BVH file by email and I'll modify the perl script to convert it.

The conversion between BVH flavors is trivial. It only involves the changing of the bone names and significant digits of the numbers.

~Ulrika~

I think it rather unfair to those without the funds to invest in Poser

And sure.. Blender might work... for people who know how to convert it such as yourself.

What I am saying is if Linden Labs wants us to waste our money on expensive software such as Poser, then why not come straight out and tell us?

I don't see them giving us any useful information on any other maybe "Cheaper" Software that works with there Animation format.

So for people like me it's either take the 150bucks out of my check to pay for a software that I am probaly not going to use much or. Become Pearl savvy over night, download Blender, then begin making animations.

So ask yourself. "Am I willing to buy $168 Software?" To buy something you will almost never use.. is it really worth it?

Linden labs should provide us with there own Animation creation software.

Regardless of them wanting to or not they can and know how to do it, it would make the players happy and would draw more attention to the game, Because then everyone could make there own animations and sure maybe some smarts would be required, but then again.. wehave to script almost everything in the game ourself if we want something done.

There also are other commercial packages that can output BVH, but they're not any less expensive than Poser. There's even a motion capture system where one single data glove is priced at $12,000 I don't know of any viable free as in beer alternatives (including Blender - couldn't get it to work a couple of years ago and never tried again )

But then, the format is documented; go ahead and make your own software

And well, no it is not a responsibility of Linden Lab to provide for cheaper alternatives. They probably just always used Poser themselves, and the way I see it it's better to make a means of importing animations public that only few can use instead of not at all.

I was under the impression they DID use poser.

If your asking them to MAKE animation software that probably wouldnt be a tenth as good as poser, its kinda like re-inventing the wheel.

If thats the case then they are most likely getting paid to have players use poser therefor stateing that they are only cash cows and care not for the players but only there own wallet size.

Put it this way, if you get good with poser you can prolly make back its cost in game pretty easy.

Ok angry people...take a deep breath and calm down.

LL gave us this amazing feature that I can only imagine all the work it took to implement it. It's only been out for what, maybe a month, maybe wait and see what they have up their sleeves.

And to use Blender, you don't have to be a Perl wizard, I believe Ulrika made her script available to everyone to use.

AND...I heard a rumor that LL was working with Curious Labs to A) make a deal on Poser for SL customers and B) to make an in-game tool for creating animations.

Wow, all this work just for the customers....LL must be full of money grubbing bastards......

Not LL, but SL seems to be these days.

Huh?

I don't follow the logic.

The lindens gave us the ability to do something they've been able to do since the begining -- upload new animations to the game. It so happens that the game understands a certain flavor of BVH... Which is most commonly produced by Poser. Not exclusivly however.

I don't see how that equates to them being "cash cows" that "only care about their own wallet size", honestly.

It's not like they could afford to give every player a copy of poser... Even the cheaper version (which is what I'm using quite successfully right now to do animations) is over 100 USD. Yes, linden is ultimately a buisness... If they provided copies of poser to everyone who wanted it, well... Lets just say that they would be loosing a lot of money. As an act of goodwill they already gave away five copies.

If your suggesting that Curious Labs gives them a kickback of some sort for using BVH format? I doubt it, seriously. First of all, BVH can be created by other programs, it just happens that, for this application, poser is the best at it. Secondly, I honestly suspect that Curious Labs is not making very much off second life. Most people who are doing animations right now either had poser to begin with (Through one means or another), or, and I'm being delicate about this, "obtained" it. The number of people who actually went out and bought poser just for SL is probably a fairly limited number... no more than a dozen or two would be my guess, at least at the moment. I could be off on that, I'll admit, but I know I winced when I bought it, and I had the money to spend without guilt (From winning the parade float competition).

Nobody is suggesting though that it's cheap or anything, no, not by a longshot. But then neither is Photoshop or Paintshop Pro for 2D work. Just like with Poser, there are alternatives, but they aren't as good (I'm about to be lynched by GIMP fans, I'm sure).

And in the end, I'd much rather LL spent their effort trying to fix the neigh-on countless bugs, flaws, etc, with SL itself right now. Programing a poser-like application that was even halfway decent would take a large chunk of time that, apparently, the lindens dont have to spend (Since we all know how long it takes for some simple fixes to be implimented... We're still waiting on a lot of them...).

Poser or Blender is good for making animations, Photoshop or Gimp is great for making clothes, and either x86 or Apple hardware is required to play the game. My personal choices are Poser, Gimp, and Apple.

I hear in a future upgrade they will allow the uploading of complaints about their game. For L$10 you can have your AV walk about and gripe about such things as having being forced to buy a computer just to play the game.

~Ulrika~

If you could choose the format to use - BVH, or something else - are there any low-cost animation tools available? Even something pretty basic?

Azelda

As for the file format, BVH appears to be optimal. It's in text format (great for editing and converting) and is supported by many programs.

As for Poser, I looked around with Google and couldn't really find any other "character animation" software packages out there. There were larger more expensive programs and add ons to Maya that would give it Poser functionality but not much more. I'm not saying they're not out there, they're just more than a couple of pages down on google's search.

If you follow up with your own search, post what you find!

~Ulrika~

I've been looking into converting 3DS Max5 animations to the Biovision (.bvh) format as I don't have Poser either or the funds to buy it for myself. A possible work-around might be to convert the animation to a FiLMBOX (.fbx) format then import this file into another program called Motionbuilder which exports to the Biovision format. Although to do it this way it seems you have to build your skeleton with a standard hierarchy and name your characters bones in a particular way that will be recognized by Motionbuilder. I found this out after trying to convert a .max file to a .bvh file a friend had. This limits the ability to use existing animations built in MAX, unless the model was built specifically for being exported to .fbx. I'm not saying this is a viable way of doing things at all. Just that it might be a work-around. If anyone else has tried this please let me know if you have any suggestions. FBX plugins for 3DS MAX and Motionbuilder can be found at www.kaydara.com .

I'll ask the silly question Ulrika, and ask how to export to bvh from blender?

File -> export appears to have nothing
blender files are in binary format.

I finally got that python script working under the OSX version of blender (some hacks required), but couldnt see a way to export - is this another python script I need?

The instructions for extracting bvh from Blender can be found in the following thread:

/52/15/16690/1.html

In summary, you'll need Blender, Reevan McKay's Blender python script, and my perl BVH conversion script.

For those who don't like running perl from the command line, my perl BVH conversion script has been integrated into an HTML form for easy cut-and-paste conversion. It can be accessed here:

http://www.palewind.com/convert.html

~Ulrika~

Yes I know that thread. I had a fight with python as I said in me previous post

From what I can see that script only imports the bvh file.

what I am wanting to know is SPECIFICALLY how to generate the blender bvh file. do I go file -> export, file -> save as?

So far there has been no where stated clearly, in simple terms the menu location for saving a bvh file in blender, only how to import them.

Well! Snippy snippy.

Let me retort that the instructions for getting the bvh out of Blender are clearlly stated in Reevan McKay's readme.

~Ulrika~

apologies if I sound snippy - I am not trying to be, and its 3:30am

ok, I think half the problem is I dont have the readme file of reevans - I am only going off wants on michaels page, which just tells me to use other software. could you perhaps post a copy of the readme somewhere?

http://www.google.com/search?q=Reevan+McKay

http://www.google.com/search?q=Reevan+McKay+blender+bvh

http://www.centralsource.com/blender/bvh/using.htm

Look in the zip files in the last link.

~Ulrika~