New free animation tool

Hi Marlon,

Thanks, and sorry for the confusion!

Importing a BVH: I'll update the wiki since our interface has changed a bit. In order to make the "OK" button show up, you tag the motion (first tab), label the bones (third tab), and check the Tpose (fourth tab). You don't need to worry about the size (second tab) since you're just importing an animation; size only matters for geometry. If you're not planning on selling the motion, you can tag the motion with a dummy name, description, and tags ("a" or "blah blah" will do just fine), then choose a random category. You'll know when you've done everything when the first, third, and fourth tabs show green check marks instead of red X's. Let me know if that doesn't work for you or if you need more detail.

Multiple characters: I assume you mean multiple generic SL avatars? Select File > Import > Second Life > Generic multiple times. You'll probably want to move them out of the way as you're instantiating them since they all show up at the center.

Exporting a pose: Oops, sorry, that's a bug. We'll fix that for the next release, which should come out sometime this coming week. Just be sure to save your work (File > Save workspace) so you don't have to redo what you already did.

Thanks for your questions!
- Sparkle

If any software is so careless that it expects me to enter my login into a third party website, I assume that they have not really thought security through at all, and go elsewhere.

I find that it basically just doesn't work.

I have a fairly normal system, Win XP SP3, 1 gig, 3.2 gHz Pentium dual core, the old kind, ATI Radeon x800 with 256 megs of video ram.

Right clicking a limb will sometimes produce a menu, but not most of the time. When it does produce a menu, it takes so long that you've gone on to other business in the meantime.

It has white flashes in the black area on the left, and it makes the hard drive run with no apparent result.

It's so unresponsive it's impossible to connect what is happening on the screen with what you did to produce the result.

I believe this is the only program I've every seen anywhere that works badly in this way.

Thanks for your feedback and constructive criticism. We know that Animeeple doesn't run well on every machine, and we're trying to work out the kinks. We appreciate your patience. Please stay tuned for more updates.

- Sparkle

Bug fixes and optimizations would happen quicker if this was open source. =)

Does this offer anything Blender and Qavimator don't? Not trying to be a negative nancy, just wondering before I have to set up a Windows VM to test it.

Hi Crafty,

I would say the thing we've worked the hardest on in Animeeple is the user interface:

* Our marketplace is hooked up directly to the software, so you can drag & drop content directly from the marketplace into your scene. No need to download content; it's already there. There's lots of free content too.
* Any animation you get in the marketplace works on any character from the marketplace. We do retargeting behind-the-scenes so you don't have to worry about it.
* You can easily sequence motions using drag & drop.

We made some tutorial videos so you can get a look at what I'm talking about before installing anything: http://www.animeeple.com/tutorials.html.

(My original post had the wrong tutorial link -- it's corrected now.)

- Sparkle

Thanks for the information. Unfortunately, the link you provided returns a 404 error.

You asked for something QAvimator does and Animeeple doesn't... I found a big one: QAvimator runs on Linux.

Add .html

http://www.animeeple.com/tutorials.html

They've designed their main page tall enough that the useful "Home Download Market Documentation Tutorials" links near the bottom are invisible until you scroll down, on my 1024x768 display. Might be better to put the useful links at the top and tighten up the vertical spacing such that the entire contents, including the Google ads, are visible all at once on this decreasingly so but still popular size display.

At the very least the links near the bottom should be moved to the top. I had trouble finding the download link earlier, I didn't notice the scroll bar.

Wow just installed this app and I can see a lot of potential here, great job, really, imported my avatar and just makes it that much cooler. One thing though I can't figure out, and thats how to move the avatars torso. Im trying to do a little leap, i can move the feet and the hands and rotate the rest of the body but i cant seem to figure out how to move it so the torso crouches down... if anyone can point out where the options are to move that..would be great. Otherwise very cool, I would describe it as a mix between poser and qavimator... a little better user interface and this program could really shine.

Oops, sorry for sending the wrong link. Thanks for the correction, SuezanneC! I'll fix my original post. Thanks also for your feedback about the webpage. Yes, the navigation bar should be moved up, or the contents on the main page compressed. We'll work on that.

Robustus, thanks for the feedback and encouragement. I'm not sure if I totally understood what you want to do, so correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you want to translate the avatar's root? You probably want to use a warp block (more info here: http://www.animeeple.com/tutorials/warp).

Kaluura, yes, that's true, Animeeple doesn't run on Linux but QAvimator does.

ill try this if i dont have to input my login information into the program to use it and upload animations, otherwise it just looks like your phishing.

Hi Felix,

Yes, you can use Animeeple without entering your SL info. Once you've launched the program, go to File > Import > Second Life > Generic. A dialog box will pop up where you can enter gender, height, thickness, and body fat parameters. When you press OK, a generic SL avatar will appear in the scene.

Once you've got the animation (or pose) that you want, make sure your generic avatar is selected, and go to Export > File, then choose BVH from the drop down menu. Then choose a file name and hit save. This will create a BVH file you can upload into SL yourself.

The tutorials are a good place to start: http://www.animeeple.com/tutorials.html

- Sparkle

Hi, Sparkle. I don't know if there is a bug in the latest release, but while I can export to SL just fine, I cannot export to file. The Program crashes when I try. Not sure what would cause that.

Thanks!

Hi Marlon,

Oops, yes, I'm sorry, I just verified the bug you found. We'll fix it for the next release, which should come out in a couple of weeks. In the mean time, export to file seems to work for generic SL avatars.

If you saved your workspace before the crash, you can copy and paste animation blocks from your avatar to a generic (http://www.animeeple.com/tutorials/cutCopyPaste) so you don't have to redo what you did.

Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for the bug report,
- Sparkle

Hello there...

I installed this app today and it looks good and I'll have some time to play with it, but it looks like the ticket for what I needed.

I worked at importing my avatar from SL and discovered some quirks which should be documented.

You cannot be wearing anything that is NOT full Perm. This will cause the download to get hung, I consistently hung at 94% complete. After logging into SL with the regular client, I changed to Full Perm Clothing & Hair, etc... trying One at a Time. Step by Step.

When I was finally All in Full Perm materials and NO AO on my avatar, I successfully was able to import my avatar.

Therefore... IF you want to use your SL Avi, get into Full Perm stuff and unload AO's and other scripted widgets....

Download the AVI, then Save the Scene, which you can then reuse time after time.

Hi WhiteStar, thanks so much for figuring this out! I'll add this info to the Animeeple wiki too.

- Sparkle

Does it work on Macs?

Hi Modesta, yes, it should work on Tiger and Leopard.

Must I sell my bvh files everytime I import my files. I just want to use it for myself but not the public? I think this might be a newbie question.

I've been playing around with amineeple. The exportable tags seem to be working well but when I wanted to make my own animation in amineeple from scratch, I've seem to hit a wall. I tried to find information about key frames but I'm having trouble finding info on it. I'm sure I don't have to animated frame by frame to get what I want. Could you direct me to your tutorials or wiki where I can get info in amination from scratch within animeeple without importing or using any tags.

Hi Modesta,

Thanks for your questions. No, you don't need to sell files you import. You can use any content you've imported for animation. One tip: once you import files you want to use, you probably want to save your workspace so that you don't have to re-import them every time you load the program. Here's a video tutorial on importing: http://www.animeeple.com/tutorials/import

You can do posing using the edit block (http://www.animeeple.com/tutorials/edit). Then if you set up your edit blocks so that they overlap slightly (you can do this if you put the edit blocks on different tracks in the timeline), the poses will blend into each other. But, true keyframing is not yet implemented, sorry. We're planning on adding it. For now, Animeeple is more of an animation mashup tool with editing capabilities.

- Sparkle

Downloaded Animeeple when it first started here- and only now decided to give it more than a cursory glance. I had to DL a new version and that one is crashing immediately upon startup. Any one else? I only get as far as Importing generic Avatar and then it crashes before the av appears.

Hi Amaranthim,

Thanks for your post, and sorry for the difficulties. Does other content draw okay? You can check by clicking on the "Tags" button in the upper right, and clicking on one of the tags there, like "male". Can you check and let me know?

- Sparkle

Here is what I got- and yes- crashed again.

ETA- does tht show for you? It does for me in FF but not IE