New free animation tool

Hi everyone,

We've just released a new 3D animation tool which can be used to create Second Life animations. It's called Animeeple, it's free, and it's available at http://www.animeeple.com. We really would appreciate your feedback, good or bad.

One of the features of Animeeple is that you can pull your Second Life avatar into the workspace so you can animate it directly. You can export Second Life compatible BVH files, or you can upload animations (or poses) directly to Second Life from Animeeple. You can sequence, layer, and edit animation using forward and inverse kinematics.

General instructions: http://wiki.animeeple.com/
Tips for Second Life users: http://wiki.animeeple.com/Tips_for_Second_Life_users

If you have a chance to check it out, we would really like to hear your suggestions.

- Sparkle

hm looks interesting, I'll check it out this weekend.

From the website: "Choosing File > Import > Second Life will bring up a dialog where you can enter your Second Life login information. "

Thanks for your replies, Johan and Monalisa.

Monalisa, if I read your response correctly, it seems like you're concerned about privacy issues. I understand where you're coming from. We need SL login information to bring in your specific avatar from SL, but I understand your concerns about sharing that information.

Here is one solution I can think of. We could also have a generic SL avatar mesh/skeleton which you could use to make SL animations. Then you could export a SL compatible BVH file from Animeeple to upload yourself into SL. The drawback is that since the skeleton is generic, the body proportions will not match your avatar, and thus the animation may not look totally right.

What do you think of this solution? Any other ideas?

- Sparkle

I am certainly very concerned regarding this program. I was very excited about animating my specific avatar, but when I saw it ask for my password, I became a little unsettled. Have you contacted LL in the hopes of gaining LL's support for the application? I have nothing to make me trust this program.

If I create animations I do so to sell them so I *want* the skeleton I work with to be the most generic possible. The avatar I use most of the time is much shorter than the average SL avatar. I cannot see any point in using your own avatar when creating animations.

That is cool, but having rendering issues on my side :/

http://nexii.info/bug.JPG

I love your forum avatar, Nexii, where'd you get it?

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your feedback. You bring up good points, and we are definitely not after your account information. We will contact LL about the possibility of accessing avatar geometry without passwords. This may not pan out, but we will give it a try.

In the meantime, it seems like a generic SL mesh/skeleton is a good workaround (and may be desirable for some users). We will make a generic rig available. Again, please be aware that animations you make on a generic rig may not look right on a specific avatar.

Nexii, thanks for the screen shot of the rendering bug. Please contact me IW so that we can figure out what's going on.

Thanks,
Sparkle

I am not an animator but was cruising thru and this seems interesting- however I would echo the others' concern- and also I would believe more generic is better. As a consumer of the product, I am sure that is preferable.

Two generics, please, male and female?

It takes some time to check out an animator program - Sparkle, could you say a few words about how your product differs from Qavimator?

Thanks!
.

Tall and short, male and female.

No, wait, we need tinies too. And mermaids...

And loco pocos, which don't seem to use the standard tiny stuffs.

Thanks again for all this great feedback, everyone.

Nika, yes, at least two generics is definitely possible.

Here are some of the main differences between Animeeple and QAvimator:
* Animeeple automatically retargets animations to work on the SL skeleton. For example, you can retarget the Ohio State BVH dataset, which has a different skeleton than SL. (BTW, the Ohio State database is free for any use)
* Animeeple supports procedural editing. You can make your animation look at a particular spot, warp the path an animation takes, etc.

Once I get the generics up and running, would it be helpful if we made a video tutorial to show you how all this works?

Hi Lee and Meade,

Sorry, didn't mean to ignore you... It took me awhile to write the last post and in the meantime I didn't see your posts. Tall and short are definitely doable. Tinies, mermaids, and loco pocos might be a little more difficult, but I'll think about how that might be done.

Sparkle

Looks very interesting from my newb point of view...will have to play with it this weekend and read the information to figure out how to make my own poses. But, I do agree a generic male and female AV. Also, would be nice if classes were held on how to use the product like the do with QVanimator.

Can we have fat people too?

This is awesome, great potetnail for such a simple program. Keep up te good work!

I have an Intel Mac running Leopard. I'm following the instructions on the Wiki on how to get a figure into it. When I type female or ever warrior (as per the wiki) I get a "searching ...." and nothing ever pops up in that area. Also I tried to get my avatar from Second Life, it said it was connecting to SL, then the window closed and nothing, no avatar, etc . . .

Would it be possible to edit the avatar shape in the animation program? Something similar to the sliders in SL? I realize it might be a horror to implement, but would allow ppl to animate all different shapes without having to provide account information.

If not, I would cast my vote for having a variety of shape templates available.

Hmmmm, just a thought... what about providing a custom service, for a fee, where a user could send YOU a shape in world and you could use YOUR account information to upload it as a template...

PS. And YES to the video tutorial!!!

If you want to give the ability to animate your own avatar, why not make it so a user can enter in the shape numbers? Just a thought, as some people I'm sure would like to make animations that fit their avatars precicely.

Wow, all your interest, feedback, and suggestions have been very inspiring. A big thank you to everyone!

Morgaine - Classes sound like a good idea. Something to think about a little down the road.

Jennifer - Yes, I think a variety of body templates makes sense.

Gusher - Thanks!

Amariah - Sorry for the problems! It sounds like a network issue. Assuming your network connection is working fine with other programs, could you try restarting Animeeple and searching for something? If that still doesn't work, could you message me so we can figure out what's going on?

Malia - Thanks for the suggestions! Providing sliders could be difficult as you said, but definitely something to think about. We'll think about the custom service idea too.

Lazink - Thanks for the suggestion. As Malia was saying, that might be difficult to implement, but we'll definitely think about it.

Could we import a custom skeleton .bvh file that would be at least be rendered by simple thick lines between each joint? This would enable say animation of prims that can read a .bvh file.

Like say I customised a .bvh file, the skeleton part at the top, of each joint, to be how I want it to, then export animations for that, which I could use in SL for animating robotic arms or anything for that matter!

Website info looks good, pity I get this when I try to run it...

C:\Program Files (x86)\Animeeple\Animeeple.exe

The Application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log for more detail.

-

Activation context generation failed for "C:\Program Files (x86)\Animeeple\npanimeep.dll". Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC90.CRT,processorArchitecture="x86",publicKeyToken="1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b",type="win32",version="9.0.21022.8" could not be found. Please use sxstrace.exe for detailed diagnosis.

--------

Looks to be a WEE problem

Vista 64, 8gb ram, QuadCore processor...

Okay, complete newb to all this animations stuff (<---does not know all the techie stuff or vocabulary)...so I am looking at this project from a completely newb persepective. I liked the canned animations...they were nice

I have used QVimator (took several of the SL classes ..classes in-world will be important on this project for the newb) to make a simple static pose for a particular building project. It was not something that I needed to animate, although I could have. Does this new product allow me to simply pose/position the limbs/skeleton and upload it? If so, how is this accomplished? Nothing in the documentation other than how to animate the object/canned AVs.

Probably not understanding the concept here of joining the blocks and doing something wrong because when I tried to join some blocks in the program there there was a pause between the actions not a transition between say a walk and skip.

Thanks