Hips up/down positions from Poser to upload

When started creating sit and laying animations to use in AO i made some test to understand what the correct Hip position from the ground was in Poser...Not the one i saw in Poser but, i though, at least a determinated and reliable number...
But I just discovered that Hip position inworld seem to be traslated depending even the Hip rotation in every dimension.

For example, if Hip is straight in a simple sit pose i found -50 as correct up/down position to have feet on the ground inworld....But, if the figure is rotated to left (for example with a elbow on a couch arm) or bent I will see the avi floating above the ground 1 meter or even more inworld!

Another example is laying/sitting on the ground: in a pose with a leg laying and another one bending i must put Hip position to -180 while in a pose with both hands on the ground behind figure and the torso slightly bent back the correct position was -86!

It seems changing pose by pose (using the same avi with the same shape) depending not only from the axis position but from rotation too.
I dont care very much for furniture animatons, but for AOs its a pain!

Did you had similiar experiences? How avoid hours in beta grid to test and retest every pose doing attempts?

Thanks

I have not found an easy solution to this - just test and adjust until it looks correct. It is easier in pose balls or furniture because you can adjust the position in the script, therefore it is not quite so critical.

In fact i don't care if the pose is for furniture, but I cannot find a general rule to apply. The anims looks the same in all programs, and different inworld, so Its a uploader issue.

Almost all my problems are about uploading and optimizing function, and not in the animation program itself. My lastest one is for a lounger pose: in Poser a knee raises (thigh up and shin down) ... I check the bvh with other programs too and I see the same movement ... In uploading preview i see my thigh raise about the half the total movement while the shin moves correctly...As result the leg and feet dive into the ground (or lounger)! That means tha the optimizations decided to cut off the thigh movement!
Now again I must mess a perfectly done animation just to see it correctly inworld...Sigh.

The actual size of the avatar makes a considerable difference as well - things like height and leg and arm length, shoulder width etc.

It could be that the avatar you are testing with is a very different shape from the SL avatar figure you are using in Poser.

Because there is so wide a difference between avatar sizes and shapes, you have to be very "general" in the type of movements you decide to put into an animation for SL.

I know but this is not the situation: i did a similiar animation, raising the other knee and tested with the same avi (me): it runs good. the only obvious limit is height and heels...but sometime i simply have a weird behaviour in upload.
I can show you in beta grid

this is a 'bug/feature' i have noticed.

even in the same animation, rotating the hip causes it to become confused as to how far it is supposed to be from the ground. for example, someone jumping up and falling back. as you tip the hip back, you have to raise them further and further (sometimes to crazy extents) to keep them going up. and then lying on the ground is NOT the same position as the 'ground' they were originally standing on.


long live the beta grid!

I wonder if this has anything to do with the avatar size compensation.

SL puts smaller avatars lower (on the world Z axis) than the sit target plus animation height. When standing, the compensation is reasonable. When sitting, it makes small avs sink into the chair.

Concerning "optimization" on upload, the simplest workaround is to use the lowest frame rate you can, for your animation. It's better to build the animation at the lower frame rate than to downconvert it when it's done.

If you use a lower frame rate, you have bigger movements per-frame. The optimization code looks at the difference from frame to frame, without considering the time factor. Ergo, slower frame rates provides smaller motions that don't get optimized out.

If only we had Ground in uploader preview...And a size & gender changer...
And what about posing hands separately in different ways...
I guess that 90% problems we have are about Uploading and Optimizing feature not making animations! Is it a Viewer only component?
Why an animation should be reduced to 60kb when a script or a texture not?
Even the height correction that SL does according with our size or heels presence is unlogical if the pose is sit down, sit on ground or laying.

Sigh. I use a lot beta grid but I've not my latest scripts or objects there...

Another example just now.
Sit on ground pose: move hips at frame 2 only and at -71...load in beta and see its above the ground. So i set it at -86...still some cm above the ground...
When i set it at -90 and bent a lower arm (i swear i didnt touch other on Hips), the pose goes again floating 1 meter above ground! Much higher than before!
Totally insane.

I was going to post a new thread, but my problem seems to fit in here.

I often combine animations playing over each other, say, a more or less static sit pose and some action such as reaching for something on the table.

Of course, I'm starting the action anim with the sit pose, that is, the position and rotation of the hip is exactly the same in both animations in Poser. I've never had any problems with this at all, until today.

Suddenly, as soon as my action anim kicks in, my hip jumps up about 20 cm and a notch forward. I've double and triple-checked, in Poser they're exactly the same. The hip isn't even moved or rotated in either of the anims, it remains static.

Any ideas what might cause this?

The only thing I can figure is the reference frame is part of the cause. In my posing program I use all zeros for the reference frame. When developing it I tried one from a default BVH file but had slightly unpredictable results. Once I used a reference frame of zeros everything fell into place. Not sure if is possible to change the reference frame in Poser. It is seems like SL takes the difference between the the reference frame and the following frames to figure the final angles in the animation. Never fully understood the reference frame. But once I found a method which worked for me I stuck with it and have not run into any problem since then.

Try the Green Life Emerald viewer (http://modularsystems.sl/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=sections&Itemid=5)... it lets you preview animations in-world on your own avatar.

This is correct. For each joint, SL compares the reference frame (a.k.a. the "T" frame) with the next frame (first animation frame). If none of the position or rotation values from the T frame differ from the next frame in that joint, SL ignores that joint for the rest of the animation. I believe that is the only use that SL makes of the T frame.

Oddly, though, it does upload the T frame -- it would have been simpler and used less bandwidth to just optimize out all the ignored joints and omit the T frame. But perhaps it's due to their using open-source animation software that expects it, and they didn't want to reconstruct one in the viewer (as simple as that would have been).

Worse still, the T frame isn't ignored properly when the %loop-in parameter is interpreted. If you use 0%, you'll see a glitch where the animation plays the first animation frame twice -- once for the T frame and once for the actual first animation frame. This is only noticeable with lower frame rates, but lower frame rates are best to minimize the damage that optimization does.

Er, sorry for the rant!

BTW, I also use all zeros for my T frame, for simplicity. It makes it easier to see if I missed a joint in the next frame.

I usually animate all joints, but for sits I often leave the head free, and for guitar poses I've left lower body joints free so that it works (well, sorta) with different sits and stands.

Cool. I'll have to try that one!

Thanks! This solves a riddle that's cost me a lot of hair!