Strange Drift Issues in Looped Anis

Hello all... I'm just now getting back to SL and have been playing in poser the last several days. Tonight I started coming across an issue. Here's how it lays out.

Creating animations to be looped in a frozen pose, i.e. entry motion, pose, exit motion, then uploading with loop set to 50/50, works fine.

Creating an animation that loops on a level of motion, i.e. 80 frame animation, which should be looping at 25/75 ends up with drift in one or more joints.

All joints are locked in frame two (changed by at least 1 from the default), then the animation starts. I tried again with a new file and simple animation of someone bowing, staying bowed for 2 seconds, then unbowing. I wrote the bow from frame 2 to 20, then copied from 20 to frame 60 and copied frame 2 to frame 80. In poser, this is fine, however in SL, it drifts at the torso and the arms. I re-imported the bvh and it's fine in poser.

What is causing this drift and how do I fix it. I can't believe this is happening on a new, simple animation.

I am attaching the PZ3 file and two bvh files that I imported from the bvh export and tried to see what was wrong and correct, but had no success with.



I'm using Poser 6 SR 2.

Anyone who can help, I would appreciate it.

Ok, I've since tried about 15 variations on the test, which all end up with the same issue. I also went back and retweaked frame 2 to try to "lock" all joints, including the two torso joints (abdomen and chest). None of these worked.

Test 2: I downloaded and installed QAvimator (which I don't like compared to poser where I can use multiple characters at once and move body parts with the mouse). Once installed, I duplicated the test animation. It uploads perfectly. So is this some failure of Poser 6 (SR3)?
The Poser BVH, even imported, doesn't have any problems. However the QAvimator bvh uploads correctly. What could the problem be?

This is weird. I'm almost tempted to upgrade to Poser 7 to see if this helps. I just don't want to pay the $$$ for it. I've already bought Poser 5 and Poser 6. (I don't have 5 anymore, I lost the bloody thing or I'd be testing there as well).

Any thoughts anyone?

OK, I tried switching to a brand new animation again. This time I switched from the SL Characters to the Poser 2 Lo (the ones we used to use) and redid the test ani exactly the same. This one works fine.

So what's going on here? What's wrong with the SL Avatars? I've figured that the problem is actually the Avatar breathing, even after locking that out of the animation. The breathing is slower (or so it seems), but there is still that motion, where there shouldn't be.

I'm attaching the files for Test2 which is working (in a zip file of course).

Any ideas out there?

One last test:

I renamed my folder in poser's runtime containing the SL Avatars. Once that was done, I downloaded the avatars again and installed them into Poser's runtime character folder. Once this was done, I did the exact same test animation again (more or less, the numbers probably don't match between tests, but I locked the animation via frame two, broke spline, copied that to frame 80, the in frame 20, I did the bow, made it key, broke the spline, the copied that frame to 60. I uploaded with priority 4, looping 25% to 75%). This netted me the same glitch with the drift (breathing not locking out?). This is only happening with the SL Avatar. Poser 2 lo (femme) works fine. WTF?

Any ideas why this is happening with the SL Poser Avatars, but NOT with the Poser 2 Lo Avatars, nor in QAvimator? The exported BVH files using ALL the avatars are clean (i.e. locked and not variation within the loop to the torso). But when uploading, only the SL Avatar based animations are doing that.

I'm uploading test 3 for anyone who wants to see it.

This is very weird and doesn't make a lot of sense. I remember when the SL Avatar Characters first were released there were a few glitches here and there, but that was a long time ago.

So why does this happen with the SL Poser Characters, but not other Poser Characters or QAvimator?

I look forward to hearing the cause of this.

Same thing happening to me since yesterday. I have done umpteen different things trying to figure it out. Getting a drift on the "re-loop" on parts that shouldnt be drifting. Nothing I am doing different than my normal routine, and it is happening on anims made on different machines. Wish I had a soulution for you, but just so you know you arent the only one.

Poser 6 SR3 here also

As I said in one of my "self replies", once I stopped using the SL Avatar Character inside of Poser and switched to the Poser 2 Lo character that comes with Poser, the problem stopped. It has to be something with uploading animations made with the SL character. I don't know why, the bvh imports into Poser fine with no glitches, but this is the only solution I've found in the last 24 hours.

I'm sorry I don't have any good ideas or suggestions for you, I wouldn't think the BVH would end up with different numbers based upon a different AV, that sounds so frustrating!

However, you can have multiple characters in QAvimator, by loading another saved animation via the Add menu item.

Also, you can move parts with the mouse, you just need to hold shift, ctrl or alt while dragging, depending on which axis.

Getting the same effect in Poser7. I talked with livehelp last night. They recomended I rebake my avatar textures --O.o--
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I haven't read the entire thread or looked at your file, but the problem you describe in your original post sounds familiar to me. I've also encountered erroneous drifting to movements that should be holding still. It's pretty random so I have no idea what causes it. I have discovered however that I can often fix it by going into the Animation Palette and messing around with the interpolations. This is also pretty random, so I just go by trial and error, like I'll set one keyframe around the problem area to Linear interpolation instead of the normal Spline, then upload and see if it works. If not, go back to Poser and try something else. Bizarre, I know, but that's just SL for ya.

I still haven't seen a change, so I'm just using the Poser 2 lo models for now. I don't see rebaking textures as being the problem when you see the glitch in the preview as well. Motion + Textures makes no sense. Personally I think it was a cop-out from LiveHelp. But then again, I could get no help at all during the 24 hours I was fighting with this.

I didn't realize that you could do that with QAvimator. I'm so used to poser, that interface has always irritated me. I may play with it some more later though, since I know you can do things a little more fluidly in there now. I actually just used it to duplicate the test animation that kept failing with the SL Characters within Poser, which is what made me think to try the Poser 2 lo models, which is what you used to HAVE to use, for decent results.

Just as an aside, I'm thinking about buying Poser for my Mac. I have Poser 6 on Windows, so no biggie there, but I'm curious how folks using Poser 7 like it, especially compared to 6, 5 or 4. Any comments?

I have now noticed this happening some with anims done with the Poser2_Lo models.

The Jira entry for this is
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2207

Maybe it will fix with the rolling restart they just initiated....doubtfull, but one can hope.

Hi Chavo,
I took a look at the first files you uploaded and as Johan suggested played about with interpolations and still had drift.
Took a closer look at where the drift was coming from and it was the chest that was drifting. You have a bend vale of 11.4615 entered for the movement of the chest. I increased this to 13 and uploaded and presto the drift was gone.
Tried it with a lower value and the drift was back.
All tests done with the SL poser figures.

From what I have read here when uploading a bvh file all sorts of normalizations take place and you get unpredictable drifts on joints. A slightly higher bend value for the chest seems to have normalized for a predicted result in world. I forwarded on the adjusted bow to you inworld.

hmm, I thought I'd adjusted the chest several times without success... but once the joint is locked from frame 1 and 2, it Shouldn't be able to drift, non? Especially when spline is broken... this has always worked in the past, except when I had corrupted characters once and when SL was hosing all uploads another time.

I'll remember this trick next time I have the issue and I'll take a look at what you sent me in world.

Merci

Animation drift issue has cropped up again. Apparently it happens when there's an inner loop on the animation, but if you loop from 0 to 100% it works. There's obviously an issue with the uploader as the frame are good, even exagerating the frame difference from 1 to 2 doesn't help, nor does doing large changes at the beginning and end of the loop (or within it). Several people I've talked to are having this issue.

I've submitted a Jira ticket, please take the time to vote on it so that hopefully LL will get it fixed and not ignore it.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-667

Thanks

I posted a new test file to

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-667

the file shows the problem in action. The arm holding the avas head drifts causing the hand to move and then jerk back on the repeat. These parts are solidly locked in the animation program. Attempt to upload the anim to SL and set the repeat at 50.5 to see the effects. The file was exported with Poser6, and also reread and exported with Poser7 witht he same results.

I had a support ticket in on this, as well as the jira one. I have responded to that ticket to reopen it and provided the jira link.

Hi, oh lord how I have come to hate limb drift over the last few months. Even now im struggling to rid myself of mid loop drift in a current project….grrrrr. But that aside I took a look the bvh file Mliss Ristow posted.

When your getting limb drift take a close look at what parts of the body are drifting.
In the case of the newtest.bvh the left shoulder had gross drift and right shoulder had subtle drift.
First break the spline on frames 1 and 2 of the entire animation.
From the bvh the all the left arm components don’t change from frame 2 to 80. So why bother adding frames for these components through the animation. Just delete them so for the left arm all you have is frame the T pose frame and then frame 2 with the arm posed.
Uploaded the animation, looped at 50% and hey presto drift gone for the left arm.

The second drift is in the right arm components. Took a closer look and found it was in the right shoulder. From the BVH file the twist and reach up/down components change from frame 2 to 40. From frame 40 to 80 they remain the same. The reach backward – forward component only changes 17 degrees from frame 2 to frame 40.
For the reach backward – forward component moved frame 40 to frame 2 so again all you have for the reach backward – forward component is the T pose frame and then frame 2. This doesn’t have any adverse affects on the look of the final animation.
For the twist and reach up/down components I deleted frames 41 to 80. On frame 40 of twist and reach up/down components I set the frame as constant selection. Uploaded the animation, loop at 50% and all the drift is gone.

Something I have found while animating in second life is that the less additional frame information you feed into the upload the better the results are in terms of ridding yourself of drift.
I agree that the way animation values are normalized on upload is far from perfect and could do with a closer look with the view of improving final result accuracy.

I have forwarded a copy of the fixed animation example to Mliss Ristow inworld.

…time for me to get back to ridding myself of my own animation limb drift demon