Feature requests for new animation editor

First, Vince, thanks for attempting such an ambitious project. I'm sure there are many who will appreciate your hard work once the program is finished.

For now though, I downloaded and tested your program but am having some difficulties uploading the animations into SL.

I can adjust the animations, frame by frame, by altering one of the included bvh files. However, I think something goes wrong behind the scenes when I save the altered file as a different bvh file. When I upload them into SL it resembles nothing like the animation that I created.

One way you can see this for yourself is to simply log into SL, and attempt to upload the yoga animation. At least for me, the leg positions do not match what is shown in your editor.

I hope you can help resolve this issue. Even though making animations is very time consuming, as I have just learned, it would still be fun to do now and then.

Malicite, animation editing hasn't been implemented yet, but you're right, you can make the guy/girl look like spaghetti if you want At least until I add the rotation constraints.

Vicky, can you download linden lab's original yoga float animation from here: http://secondlife.com/community/avatar.php and see if you have the same problem when you try to upload it to SL? I think it may be a problem with their original yoga float BVH file. If you try other animations, I don't think you'll have that problem. If you still do, please let me know. Maybe Xenon Linden can chime in on this?

There are a lot of new features in this release:

1. Camera rotations are now similar to SL:

1. Drag mouse: rotate around X and Y axes
   
2. Alt+drag mouse: Zoom and rotate around Y-axis
   
3. Shift+drag mouse: Pan around the X-Y plane
   

2. You can select parts by clicking on the mannequin directly.

3. You can also rotate parts by clicking and dragging a part while hitting SHIFT/ALT/CTRL.

1. Shift+drag part: rotate the part around X-axis
   
2. Alt+drag part: rotate the part around Y-axis
   
3. Ctrl+drag part: rotate the part around X-axis
   
4. You can combine these together as well to rotate around multiple axes at once.
   

4. You can set the number of frames in your animation by clicking on the second number in the bottom right corner and dragging the mouse left or right.

5. Whenever you change a part's rotation or position in a frame, it is smoothly interpolated. You can add a keyframe by clicking on the "key" button to the right of the play button. Currently, only linear interpolation is supported, but spline curve interpolation is coming soon.

Coming up in the next release:

1. Automatic perturbation of the first frame so SL thinks all your parts are moving and renders your animation correctly (Vicky, I think this is why you were having problems).
2. Multiple Undos
3. Copy/Pasting of keyframes
4. Additional interpolation methods (splines and break splines)
5. Adjust frame rate

As always, feedback is very much appreciated... Also, i may be taking this into a private beta-testing stage soon, so send me a PM or an IM in SL letting me know if you want to participate. Thanks!

I haven't tested it yet, but that part about automatic perturbation of the first frame worries me. Does it twitch all body parts? If so I want an option to not do that because I don't want my animations to effect all the body parts most of the time.

No worries, that part hasn't been done yet. If I do implement it, I'll make sure you can select which body parts to twitch. If this isn't that useful of a feature, I may just put it off 'til much later.

it is actually a useful feature, but somehow you've got to be able to select which body parts should be included in the exported animation. Maybe create a keyframe editor, and allow body parts to be checked or unchecked, those that are checked will be included in the exported bvh, and have the first frame auto generated.

This is a very welcome project, I was just about to start making a weapon from an anime series and I was thinking about how I'd go about making the animations to go with it. I'd offer my services, but my realm of expertise is network coding and path finding routines. Damned quarternions, why couldn't the 3d API designers have stuck with Euclidean geometry?

Addendum:
I noticed while trying to make a pose just now that I can't enter a negative sign for a rotation. That's problematic, considering I need to make my right leg rotate to -5 for it to match up for a seamless looped animation and all I can enter is 5. >D

Feynt, thanks for pointing out that bug. For now, you can get around it by typing 5, then hitting backspace, then typing -5. For some reason, the minus sign can't be the first thing you type when you edit a number. This will be fixed.

Alternatively, you can just click and drag the leg (with alt, shift or ctrl) to get it to -5 degrees.

Will do. It's always the little things that get ya in the end. ^.^

Vince, good job. It worked well on OSX, too. I really appreciate this.
But aoubt 0.2, when I started it, the terminal opened and was still there on the screen.
It also leaves a message, "/Applications/AvMotion/AvMotion; exit". The exit command seems not to work. And I can't get the AVMotion's main screen as the top.

Fixed. Sorry. Just grab the 0.2 zip again. Also, please let me know if the shift/ctrl/option keys work for you when you drag body parts. thanks seagel. (oh, i forgot to tell you, i also fixed the path problem, so you can run the program from anywhere)

Wow. I just stumbled on this today and already turned two people onto it, this is great.

I own Poser, but unfortunatly I've been trying to hunt down the CD I burned the installer on... I opted for the slightly cheaper purchased download, and am paying for it now :/

So, I was glad to find this, because I've been stuck on a couple projects for want of a pose.

Some initial feedback that hasn't been covered...

Uh...

Well, most of it has been said, actually, so far. Would be great to have inverse knimatics for some poses, but I can work around that right now.

Only thing I can think of right now is a "Mirror" button might be nice on each of the limb joints... Its a nice way to save a little time if your doing animations or poses that are fairly symetrical, and shouldn't be hard to impliment.



Echoing everything Rickard said right here...

Thank you very much. Yeah, dragging body parts directly is fantastic. It is more friendly than Poser. But about Thigh, Y-Rotation and Z-Rotation are bit odd? It's not biggy though.
I'll test uploading much while the preview grid is available.

Sorry, I do not know the terms, but say you want the av to squat via clicking on his hip and dragging him lower to the ground.

This is my favorite option with poser, maybe because I am lazy or unskilled. I have to rotate, bend, move forward, and lower the av just to get him to squat in the beta's state correct?

Your prgm is great by the way. Poser uses so much resource, something like this is perfect.

That's Inverse Knimatics. It's very handy, and simpler than one might think, but give him time. this is version 0.2, remember

Vince,

I'm not an animation creator, primarily because I took one look at Poser, and was so befuddled by the whole thing that I decided to just stick with Photoshop & Scripting.

What absolutely amazes me here is that you're a brand-new resident to SL, and are already coming up with not only something incredibly cool, but something that could potentially be an asset to everyone in the community.

So many cool things in SL depend on animations, and up until now the ability to create animations was only in the hands of a few - limiting the creativity pool.

My hat goes off to you, Vince! - Hopefully we'll be seeing a lot more of you in the future - and I look forward to ultimately trying my hand at creating my own animations because of your tool

Keep up the great work!

Oh, another couple features that would be very handy:

Copy frame/Paste Frame - Kinda self explanitory, the ability to copy a frame and paste it elsewhere in the animation, or, more importantly, between animations (Say you want to make a second animation that starts from the same pose as another animation finished, for example)

Pose Pallet - Poser has this, but IMO it's implimentation really sucks. Some way to save, store, or even export individual poses (IE, single frames) that you use alot. For example, as a vehicle designer, I make custom poses for most of my vehicles... But all of them start from a fairly similar basic pose, and I tweak the legs, arms, torso, etc, to fit exactly what I want. If I could store a basic "Sit" pose, for example, it would be handy.

Holy WOW!

I think you did a very good job and i thank you for saving me so much money and i think you could sell it in sl for about $L1000 eazy but i hope you keep it free. Now if you'll excuse me I have to take over the world now thank you.

New features:

1. Mirrored body part motions
   (double-click body part to activate...thanks to Reitsuki for the suggestion)
   
2. Copy/Paste Keyframes
   
3. Shiny new mannequin and less distracting floor
   

Screenshot of mirroring feature on first page.



Reitsuki, you can activate mirroring by double-clicking on the part you want to mirror. I hope it is usable for you this way. I'm trying to keep as much of the interface away from menus, checkboxes, etc... as possible so that you'll never have to leave the 3d edit window. The goal is make editing as fast and easy as possible. That's also why I have all those SHIFT/CTRL/ALT key combos. It might take a little getting used to, but I think in the end, you'll get things done a LOT faster.



Yeah, I noticed that the rotations are messed up too. Will get to this soon. It's lower on my priority list right now until get some of the other major features are done.

Cold Heart, inverse kinematics is next on my list. Hopefully will get this done by the end of the weekend.

Thanks to Travis, Kendra and PlanetKiller for your kind words.

Having said that, you'll probably not going to be too happy to hear that I will be selling the program as soon as its ready for final release, but I could really use the money to achieve my dream of owning some nice waterfront property and a small sailboat Don't worry, it will still be pretty cheap (L$1000-2000) and you can probably make your money back with the animations you sell.

If you want to get in on the beta-testing, send me a PM or an IM in game and I'll add you to the list. There are still a few spots left.

Also, if you don't feel like paying, you can still grab the free versions of the program posted on this thread while they're still up there. You can still make working animations with these pre-release versions, even though the interface might be a little clunky right now and there are a few bugs to work out. If you don't plan on buying the program, feel free to donate to the cause. I'll take anything... a new shirt, a couch, some nice shades...

New version looks great but im afraid im going to be a little picky and say the floor needs changing Its really hard to line up the animation with the floor since its the same colour and not solid, with the old floor i could line it up as the feet disapeared through the floor

Thanks,
Henry

oops, that would be a bug about not disappearing through the floor. Fixed.

also, the checkerboard is back by popular demand. grab the 0.3 zip again.

Id just like to ask if your planning on putting in a way to import "props" or other animations to help with the posing? Would be extreamly helpfull when making a 2 part animation if you could import the other half to get it matched up perfectly.

Thanks,

Henry

Yup, here's the list of new features that will be added over the next few weeks (in most likely order of implementation, but not set in stone):

1. Inverse Kinematics + Joint constraints
2. Multiple Undos
3. Playback Rate Adjuster
4. Load/edit Multiple BVH Files at once (for partner animations)
5. Spline/Break splines
6. Pose Pallete
7. Automatic perturbation of first frame (w/ selectable joints)
8. Keyframe editor
9. Welded vertices for smoother looking mannequin
10. Skins/genetalia

Plus, lots of bug fixes along the way.

Any chance of this supporting more than just two avatars? I'm sure I'm not the only person in SL who sometimes likes to cuddle up to more than one other person, and three-person poses are excetionly rare. (I know of two, and I've made afew by combining things but they are often a little kludgy)