Avimator released as open source

I am totally a newb concerning animating, but why cant you position the fingers? Holding a gun with spread fingers looks totally dumb.

Thanks for providing this great resource.

Constantine G.

this is something that comes up on a pretty frequent basis. Someone uses the GPL on a product, and then posts "this is GPL, but, I don't really mean everything in the GPL". There's a reason the LGPL exists... it's a canned "I don't really mean everything in the GPL" that you can use for situations like this. It looks to me like the LGPL is probably a closer fit for what you want...

Another thing you can do if you don't (for example) want Linden's competitors using it in their virtual worlds, is to release it with a copyright notice that says something like "This program may be licensed under the GPL or under other licenses, contact the author" and then provide Linden Labs with a copy under the LGPL, the BSDL, or even for a fee (why not).

Constantine Giugiaro: Second Life doesn't allow us to position fingers.

Argent, I understand your concerns. I'm well aware of the non-viral nature of the LGPL and BSD licenses. The discussion as to why I prefer a GPL is something that we can take offline if you want to pursue it, but it's definitely something that I've thought about (basically, I want to encourage contribution to the code base, and I'd like it to only be used in other programs that are free to everyone). I may change my mind about this later, but for now, I'd like to go with the GPL.

There is already a clause (#10) in the GPL that allows for providers of free software to contact the author if their distribution conditions are different, so I don't think additional changes to the license are necessary. And as I mentioned before, LL is more than welcome to use the source without restrictions (I'd be honored).

Vince, you're right, but Argent still has a point. Let's suppose that contributions from ppl. start pouring in, and get added to the source. If those ppl. submit their patches with a GPL license, you won't be able to give the Lindens the whole source -- because even though all code written by you can be relicensed any time, code written by others might be harder or impossible to relicense.

As more and more people contribute, it will effectively be impossible to give the source away with a non-GPL license.

I know that for a time you probably don't have to fear 'too much contributions', but it's better to be safe then sorry! (I say the LGPL is the safe way.)

BTW, i have skim read some of your code -- wow, it looks nice and clear! Congrats!

Constantine, the skeleton in the BVH files that SL supports doesn't define individual bones for the fingers. However, when you are in the SL animation uploader, you are supposed to be able to morph the hands, but apparently that feature is very glitchy right now.

As Zonax says, you need to let contributors as well as users know what your terms are. Maybe you need to say "This program may be distributed under the GPL or, if it's distributed as part of a package that is free of charge, under the LGPL"?

That would give you a "free as in beer or speech" license.

Zonax, good point. I thought the primary author held rights to the code, but I could be wrong. I could do more research into this, but I don't really feel like it... BSD license it is. (I'll update the license in 0.5). Argent and Zonax, thanks for bringing these issues to my attention. Now let's get past this and move on to more fun stuff...

I'll post the Visual Studio project file later today. I also wanted to re-factor the code a little bit this weekend so that it's a bit easier to understand and to make implementing some of the upcoming features more painless.

By which you mean, 100 USD for a sub-1 GB program, right?

Well, my Poser installation used to be multi-gig. I pretty much had everythign from Renderosity's free section.

Which isn't really your point, I know, but even if Gwyn was using hyperbole, Poser IS too much for someone who just wants to animate a simple SL pose.

Well, I guess the Windows version is smaller than the Mac OS X one (it's not unlikely), but it takes around 1 GB for Poser 6, on an installation I had access to. Compare that to Avimator, around 8 MBytes or so.

As to the price, of course, I'm sure you can get all sets of discounts, or buy copies from eBay, or get an "educational" discount, etc. to pay US $100 for a product that costs US$249.99 for the discount-impaired among us.

Also, Reitsuki, was your comment was just to provoke me, or did you actually wish to make a valid point?

Some people just can't help but look a gift horse in the mouth.

So, I'm trying to sync up two animations. I remember that was something on the list, but is there any tool to currently out to help with this?

Valid point.

You don't need poser six, for crying out loud. That's overkill OF overkill.

Congrats on Avimator! It sounds terrific. I'll give it a spin when I get a chance.

On Poser, though, even discount-impaired people don't have to pay $256 for it. It's readily available for almost half that at various resellers and eBay, and less if you're willing to use Poser 4 or 5. And yes, you can get it for a very reasonable price if you qualify for an educational or other discount. I sure didn't pay $256. It paid for itself long ago.

Also, could it be that Poser is actually more stable on a Windows PC than on a Mac? Gwyn says it crashes on her constantly, but I don't think it's ever crashed on me. It's far more stable than SL, in fact! I regularly run Poser in the background with SL, switching between the two as I test uploads and whatnot. Then again, I have 2G of RAM, which helps.

As for Poser's interface, I personally like it. It gives me several ways to do the same thing. I can use the dials, the graph, the key interface, or manipulate body parts directly. I do save frequently to minimize downtime if I make an error, but I make fewer errors as time goes on. Sure, it had a learning curve, but nothing like Photoshop.

Lastly, it is overkill to own Poser 6 if all you're going to do is make SL anims, but I've actually enjoyed tinkering with some of its other features. Who knows: they may come in handy in some other context. I know Poser is not the application of choice for professional graphic artists, but for someone who wants to get their feet wet, it's a good first step. I'm actually a fan of Poser.

Awesome program, I was able to make a "scratch head" animation in a couple minutes

Just for giggles I decided to see if I could get it to compile and run under FreeBSD.

FLTK was actually more of a problem, I had to hack it a bit (fix some typecasting issues) to get the built-in PNG support working.

Once I got that working, avmotion was pretty easy to compile. There were only a couple of minor issues (one file included FL/GL.h, but the file was installed as FL/gl.h on my system) and libquat wasn't built by default with the included Makefile, so I had to go make it manually.

Once running it seems to work. I could only play around with it for a couple of minutes before running off to work, but it does seem to do the job. It's not very easy to click on the movement circles though, I had to use the knobs on the right to get reliable movement. I also had to tell the window manager not to bind keyboard keys (like alt), but unfortunatly the window isn't named so I can't save those default (I'll have to set it each time).

Still, it runs way better than Poser on FreeBSD.

Has anyone successfully compiled a Linux_64 binary. I was going to try, but gcc dies whenever I attempt it.

I recall reading something that said this program was not really suitable for doing a dance animation.

Is this true and if so why?

I got asked to help someone with Blender, by someone who sounded like they weren't particularly technically skilled.

I installed this program and while I didn't pursue it long enough to actually make an animation and import it into SL, it seemed ten thousand times simpler and easier to deal with than Blender or Poser. Would it be good to advise someone that is a noob to animation in general and to animation for SL in particular to start with this program in its present state rather than start with Blender?

Is there something like a tutorial on "How to make a 'Scratch Head' animation available"?

Hint hint if there's not.

I am NOT complaining, but a question:

Is the option for grabbing a limb and moving it (as opposed to rotation) going to be an option? With the IK code already implimented, it would SEEM an easy item to add...

The reason I ask, is that IK was made to allow such placement of limbs. The rotation being the only way to move them sort of defeats the IK system.

Thank you. G'night!

Yes, you're totally right. It is an easy item to add and I should have done it in 0.4... It will definitely be in 0.5.

Regarding the tutorial, the avimator wiki is up at avimator.com/wiki. It would be great if someone could add a basic tutorial page! I've been very busy with other RL stuff lately...but as soon as I get a chance, I'll try to put something up as well.

Please and Thankyou. Any place to send an accelleration bribe?

I think this may have been mentioned before, but Avimator seems to clear the clipboard every time you load or start a new animation, so you can't cut and paste things between them.

As has been noted, the default SL animations don't have the neutral pose (whatever it's called) in them, and so I've been finding it really difficult to make animations based on those; if I just add in frames or change things, the whole animation is screwed when I upload it. Also, I can see that copying frames from one animation to another would be generally handy anyway.

Can I make that suggestion for an enhancement?

Ordinal, it does seem like copy/pasting is not working too well right now. Many people have been requesting the ability to copy several frames at once, so if I can do that correctly, it will fix this problem as well. Thanks.

First Vince,

Thank you for doing this, everyone in SL can at last make their own poses now with very little effort.

I was afraid it would take forever, but using Avimator I was able to do what I needed quickly.

As a programmer I became interested in what the BVH file format was like. Much to my surprise I found it to be a simple text file with a header record followed by vectors, and rotations, one line for each frame, space formatted for easy viewing.

I made a simple bow with 2 key frames. Using a text editor I then copied and pasted my 2 frames until I had 60. I then manually changed each line so that every 2 frames the angle on the bow changed 1 degree. The result was a very smooth two-second bow.

Not knowing the gotchas yet and I am certainly not an animator, it seems to me that it would be very straightforward to create plugins that interpolate the required frame changes using key frames and the timeline. I am sure Poser has many complicated tools but basic tools should be easy to write for any programmer.

I bring this up because a lot of people probably haven’t checked into the file structure and are unaware how easy it is to understand and manipulate, and therefore what they might be able to contribute.

Again, thanks for the great program.

Kudos to Vince. I had thought that animation would be way beyond anything I could do (partially because of price!). I build and script, but figured I would have to rely on what animations I could find to accomplish the things I want. Then I saw a post on the avimator. I, too, quickly made four poses for two projects I am working on (once I figured out that I need two frames, and I need to upload looped priority 4!).

Thanks again for the generous gift to Second Life!
Baron Hauptmann

I recall reading something that said this program was not really suitable for doing a dance animation.

Why not? Or is what I remember reading just wrong?