Animation issues with hip movement since 1.7.0

We are trying to track this problem down, but the test files that we have look the same to us on the main grid as they do in our testing version where the bug is supposedly fixed!

I would like to ask for the help of any and all animators who have seen this issue recently with uploaded animations. Please email a copy of the animation *pre-upload* (i.e. the .bvh file) to [email]dan@lindenlab.com[/email] -- it doesn't need to be anything elaborate, just a short example file that clearly illustrates the problem. He will use the known-good files to reproduce the problem, and work with the engineer tasked on the issue to get it resolved ASAP.

Thanks for your help!

Karen just posted this in Known Issues and I've mirrored+stickied it HERE for maximum visibility.

Thanks for your attention to this. I'll send you a few examples today.

I reopened my problematic files, which I had animated at 30 frames-per-second, and tried something Luth suggested: I redid them at 15 FPS. This obviously makes the keyframes appear more frequently. Voila! Most of my problems disappeared. My problems seem to have been dropped keyframes. My legs in particular refused to animate at 30 FPS, but presto, they did at 15 FPS. Luth said SL will drop keyframes if you don't have them often enough, and if the keyframed movement isn't significant enough. She seems to be right.

Now, that said, I still see a little jerkiness in feet with some sways, but that's minor compared to the huge problems I was having with dropped frames.

I'll send LL a 15FPS and a 30FPS version of the same dance so you can see the huge differenc e in how they uploaded. I don't know if this is the issue you're after, but it's certainly an issue.

Unstickying this because the identified problem has been fixed for Second Life 1.8.3:



Source

Emphasis mine.

And I've heard of that dropped keyframes problem before too, which is something else, as I've heard it, a bigger problem related to animation compression that's been around awhile (like back in 1.6)--what you describe is a known workaround. Please do send a bug report about that too!

Originally Posted by Karen Linden
The 1.8.3 release (scheduled for Wednesday February 8, 2006 from 7am to 12pm PT/SLT), contains the following fixes and features:

* Improved ability to buy land and currency inside the Second Life client
* Improvements to the look of water which will also reduce load on systems where it is enabled
* Issue with avatar hip movement being wrong for uploaded animations has been resolved
* Can only zoom in on a HUD if you are in Edit mode
* Text in llDialog window no longer truncated
* llDialog boxes no longer display "Script Dialog:" and extra line of text
* "Apply to Selection" button now gives an error for non-terraformable regions
* Parcel pass expiration affects only intended user
* Collision image should no longer be displayed using the default base texture and should always be loaded
* Resolved an issue where a updates to a complex object would sometimes cause linked prim to disappear

Does this mean it has been fixed??

I sent Dan my anim examples last week. And yes slowing down the frame rate makes it less noticeable. But its rather difficult to produce an anim that is very active (ie: running, dancing) to then slow it to a believeable rate. You could no longer lock the feet in place when rolling/rotating the hips.

Sure, in Poser you have several ways of working around this (locking the feet in place), repositioning the feet/legs, manipulating the spline or using inverse kinetics. But the WHOLE issue of this matter is that no matter what technique you used to lock the feet in Poser..it was undone by SL's Anim Previewer IF you rolled the hips.

It did not USED to behave this way. Prior to 1.7 if you used Inverse Kinetics on the legs the feet would stay relatively locked in place during an anim upload to SL. This is NOT my imagination, I have peresented this to some very skilled animators in SL whom acknowledge that this was a serious isses. I am concerned about the way Karen wrote the bug fix.

* Issue with avatar hip movement being wrong for uploaded animations has been resolved

The "Hip Movement" was never wrong...the problem was, IF you moved the hips the feet and legs followed. Maybe its semantics. But I would feel a lot more comfortable if it had been written as "Issue with avatar hip movent affecting lower body during uploads has been resolved"

So my question is...according to Karens post, HAS this been resolved or WILL BE resolved on wednesday? I intend to test it right now. I will make a followup post

Someone PLEASE..PLEASE..PLEEEEASE send me an anim where the hips roll and the feet stay firmly in place, without shuffling, shifting, wiggling or sliding.

I just did a test. It is still doing it in current version 1.8.2 (9).

So hopefully it has been resolved in 1.8.2.(10)??

Several people have sent me IM's thinking the post meant that it has been fixed.

My bad, if I jumped the gun.

You can stop sending me animations! I verified this is fixed in 1.8.3. By fixed, I mean it works exactly the same way it did before 1.7.

Thanks to all who sent in animations for testing.
Dan

OMG! OMG!!

OMG!!

Its FIXED!!

Thanks to all..Torley, Luth, Ricky, Jesse, Tink, Dan, Richard, Karen.

/me is one animatin' fool!!

HALLELUJAH!

I'm glad it all came together... just happy to spread the good word.

w00t

Woot! Glad this is fixed!

I still do indeed have the problem with dropped keyframes in 30FPS animations, even after the fix, but I understand that it's a separate bug, and I'll file a report accordingly. Coincidentally, these are different bugs with the exact same consequence: dances in which feet slide, jiggle, move, etc. I still get this problem after this recent update, if I try to upload something I did at 30FPS. But at least I know how to work around dropped keyframes -- I animate at 15FPS, with keyframes every 5-15 frames. Are the rest of you animating at 30FPS and just inserting keyframes every 7 frames or so?

Ricky, I'm curious about this dropped keyframe issue. BVH files don't specify keyframes at all (when you export a BVH from Poser, all keyframe information is lost). They are just a series of frames, with the angle rotations for all the joints specified for each frame. I think the reason that it works better for you when you drop the FPS is because there is more movement of the joints from frame to frame. I believe this is actually due to another known issue with SL's animation optimization that Xenon Linden describes here. I'm new at this, so I could be totally wrong.

NOTE: Just to clarify, the important thing here is not how often you insert keyframes in your animation, but rather the FPS of your animation. If you are losing movements because they are too subtle, just reduce the FPS of your animation (use the retime feature of poser and then change the FPS value). Don't worry about adding or removing existing keyframes since that's not going to affect anything.

Vince, thanks for the link to that post. I'd been trying to find something that documented the dropped-frame issue, and that fits the bill.

Yes, running at 15FPS seems to have solved most of my problems, and, as your link suggested, I don't really notice any difference in how animations look in SL. Even at 15 FPS I occasionally do lose some dropped frames. I noticed a few minor leg and arm bends didn't animate in a recent effort, but they were only a couple of degrees every 10 keyframes or so. Easy enough to work around.

Also, running at 15FPS has a couple unexpected side benefits. My Poser files seem a bit smaller. And the key interface is half as large, making it less unwieldy to copy/paste stuff within a 30-second animation.

I don't know if this could be related but I'm having a rather strange issue with some recent sitting poses I created and uploaded. It's difficult to explain it thoroughly without writing a small book so forgive me if this is a bit long.

A few things to mention;
I'm currently using Poser 5.
I have been animating in Poser 4 for over 4 years and uploading animations made with Poser 5 to SL for over a year.

I make all my own AO poses and they function as intended but recently, I decided to make some new sitting poses. When I upload them, they function as intended in stand-alone mode and they function as intended in pose balls but, when I load them in my AO and sit on a prim, the legs and hip stay locked in the default sitting pose and the rest of the body poses as intended.

I tried changing the upload priority from 2 to 3 and 4.

The animations preview as intended and they are looped.

I considered that it might be my AO (ZHAO) and asked a friend to come over and load my poses in his AO(WET IKON) and the result was the same.

If I sit in a chair or any furniture with a pose ball on it and turn on my AO, my custom sitting poses override and function as intended. But sitting on a simple cube or any non-posed furniture results in my upper body posing while my hip and legs stay locked in the default SL sit position.

I have alot of experience with making SL animations but I realize I may be overlooking something here.

Could someone please create and upload a sitting pose - perhaps a crossed leg one, play it in stand alone mode to confirm it works, drop it in a pose ball to confirm it works there and also put it in your AO and sit on a cube prim to confirm if this is a new issue and not something I'm doing wrong please?

It may very well be something I'm doing wrong but I have checked and double checked my Poser file. Everything looks fine on the animation pallet and this is driving me nuts.

Thanks for your time.

Zach

I did it by using the file from this thread, and made sure no problem with ZHAO.

Well thanks a ton for doing that, Seagel. It's so weird. Sit poses I uploaded a few weeks ago are working fine in the AO but the ones I uploaded the past few days are hosed. It must be on my end I guess. I'll take a look at the thread. Thanks again.

Zach

Today I was working on an animation. Basically the arms and legs are using inverse kinematics and I'm moving and bending the hip joint. Of course it looks smooth in Poser but when I uploaded it into the 1.9 preview the movement was jerky with unintended twitchs in the lower body.

Is this what the previous bug was? And is it rebroken in 1.9?

EDIT: When I switched the animation from a spline section to a linear section, the twitching went away.