The Artiste Mover System - Pairing - InitialOffset

We have prepared our Palette for an object move by changing the Moveable entry to on in the *palette nc. (I decided to create a simple object-mover first. Then after that we will do an avatar-mover).

Moveable,on

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The first step in creating a move is pairing a Palette used as a mover to the Anchor.

In the *palette nc insure that the AnchorName matches the actual Anchor you are using.

AnchorName,ArtisteAnchorYumz

If they match then upon reset of the Palette you will get an acknowledgement:

[10:45:09] ArtistePalette_25_RC_d: [LDR] 10 - FOUND: ArtisteAnchorYumz - AnchorKey: 43b6b5ff-8ee1-d093-b8ef-518fbe03a99a @ <225.55920, 17.63139, 3501.32700>


If you have 2 anchors named the same then you will NOT get the acknowledgment and you will also get  a velocity error. 

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There is a *moves nc that is used to store move information.  If all you are doing is changing move information then there is a button on the Palette menu called ReloadMoves (Page 2) to reload JUST the *moves nc after you make and save changes.  This is a huge time saver as the Palette will not reload the other ncs.

InitialOffset

We need to get this value. It is in the *moves nc.  It tells the Palette where to go when it is rehoming (reset, reloadmoves, GoHome button, GoHome command from autofx).

1 - Position and rotate your palette to where you want it to start its move.  In real practice this seems to be behind the stage wall.

2 - Press the DumpInitial, a button on the Palette Menu.

You get this as output:  ArtistePalette_25_RC_d: InitialOffset,<0.99988, 1.00007, -0.00073>,<0.00000, 0.00000, 0.00000, 1.00000>

All you need is the part that starts with InitialOffset.

InitialOffset,<0.99988, 1.00007, -0.00073>,<0.00000, 0.00000, 0.00000, 1.00000>

Replace the existing value with a copy/paste of this value. 

Then either Reset or ReloadMoves the Palette.

THATS IT!  

Your Palette is now paired with the Anchor and knows where its home position is. Note that if you move or rotate the anchor, the Palette, upon a GoHome command, will reorient its position to stay in sync relative.

You can test your pairing by moving and/or changing the rotation of your Palette then pressing the GoHome button on the Palette menu.  It should return to its home position.


GoHome Video


Note: The speed of the move back to home is set by an entry in the *palette nc called:
GoHomeSpeed,3.0

If this is value is too low and you are moving a big distance, then you could get a velocity error as an object can only move so fast but this is rare.

The Artiste Mover System

The Artiste Mover System

Movers and dancer-movement (as opposed to dancer animation) seems to be a very popular addition to SL Dance.  Sometimes the curtain opens and you are already in position as a dancer to begin your routine. Other times you may walk, skip, jump, or use another move-affiliated animation to get you from off-stage to on-stage and ready to begin your dance routine.  The same often happens at the end of routine where you 'move' one or more dancers from on-stage to off-stage.  Multiple dancers can move in unison or independent. They can turn as well as move.  They can move in 3 dimensions.

Some forms of dance in RL, the dancers seem to already be in position as in music videos as an example while in ballet you see them prance on and off. Also in dance competitions they stroll on and off.

Movement does add scope and can maximize use of big stage.  It often offers perspective, variety, and added interest.

I have attended workshops for some other products and watched how movers are used in many shows.  I thought it was time to present the Artiste's version of movers for comparison and analysis.  I have demoed and highlighted many Artiste features but have not delved into the Artiste Mover System.

The purpose of this expose is to document as well as inform owners and non-owners.

The system has evolved over time from what I envisioned peoples needs would be to also include what peoples needs actually turned out to be.  A couple of key features were created at the request of users actually using the mover system.

I want try a new approach to informing.  

Very slow. In byte-sized deliverables.

So this will be presented in multiple parts.

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Overview

The Artiste Mover System I will refer to as AMS from here on out for convenience sake.

We use an object we call a Palette.  It is one-prim, copy/mod. It consists of scripts and notecards.  

A Palette can be a lot of different things (abilities), one of which is a 'mover'.  You tell it what it can be and do by editing its notecards (ncs).

It can be more than one thing at a time (abilities). (See the State-Of-Shock video as an example of a Palette being a: mover, light, and animated-texture.)

Anything which is mod can be a Palette and as such, can also be a mover.

Unlike some systems, there is no required linking involved to move an object...but you could.

The AMS allows for objects or avatars to be moved.

If all you want to do is move an object, you can prepare it by making the Palette 'movable'.  It requires changing one entry in a nc.

Ex:

Moveable,on
Sittable,off
Animatable,off

If you want to move an avatar, then you prepare it by making the Palette moveable, sittable, and animatable. It requires changing three entries in a nc.

Ex:

Moveable,on
Sittable,on
Animatable,on

When a Palette is movable then it can home to an anchor upon reset, reload, or specific chat command. So if you move the anchor then Palettes which are movable will change position (and rotation if need be) relative to the anchor to stay in sync when re-triggered (reset, reload, or specific chat command).

There are a host of other options available but these are the key entries to identify the character of a Palette as a mover.

***

Movers need an anchor.  Movers have an entry in a nc that names the anchor it is looking for.  The anchor must be owned by you (owner of the Palettes) so there is no conflict with anchors owned by others.

The Artiste Anchor

You can see the Artiste Anchor is just a 1-prim object. It used be just a dumb object with no scripts. Now it has intelligence , a menu and options, but its main purpose is just as a point of reference. (click on it for the menu). You seldom need to use its menu. It does have some nice options of convenience as well as advanced options for when using our bread-crumb-based marker system....a system for movers that most of you are familiar with.

I suggest rezzing the anchor in an accessible place in case you need to access it during a show.  

You can can show or hide it from its menu.

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The Artiste MasterRezzer

The Artiste MasterRezzer performs functions similar to the Multi-Scene rezzer.  You can rez sets or objects in predictable and consistent relative or absolute placement.

(You, of course, do not need to use the MasterRezzer when you are just creating your routine.)

The Artiste MasterRezzer was developed with the SL Performance Dancer in mind.  Its main purpose was to simplify the task of set cross-fades and set transitions.

Unique to the Artiste MasterRezzer is that you can:
1) Rez more than 1 set at a time
2) Rez NOCOPY objects
You can also rez NOMOD objects

By adding 1 script and 1 nc to the Anchor, you can make it rezzable, along with anything else you want to rezz. It can be its own set or part of a set.  You can have up to 6 sets per MasterRezzer.  (A MasterRezzer can also rez another MasteRezzer referred to as Rezzer-Chaining).

You would pack (place) the Anchor inside the MasterRezzer not unlike you do with other rezzers.

You can reset (rehome) your movers using:
1) the Anchor menu or
2) the Artiste Performance HUD Auto-Access menu or
3) the movers (Palettes) menu.

The movers will look for the Anchor and re-position and/or reorient themselves.  Movers depend on knowing where the Anchor is in order to perform their moves and turns.


Yes, you can use the Multi-Scene rezzer instead of the Artiste MasterRezzer.

Also, the Artiste MasterRezzer can also be used standalone as it now accepts chat commands.


Ok so now you know about Anchors and how to rez them and how they are used with Movers.  

I hope this was not too much or too confusing.

Next up we will begin the process of creating an Avatar Mover.

Your Heart is as Black as Night 

Watch the Video ==> Your Heart is as Black as Night 

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BREAKDOWN OF THE "YOUR HEART IS AS BLACK AS NIGHT" VIDEO

Technical Details:

SCENE ONE:  Stage Set

Rezzed a palette (01_A) and set its position.  Sat on palette and adjusted position. Chose suitable bow animation which I placed in the palette for simplicity.

Took the "guts" out of a palette and loaded them into the Stage Curtain, re-naming it "01_B" 

Simple up and down move.

SCENE TWO: Backstage

First shot shows the hallway with the swinging light-bulb.  I Attached a palette to the bulb array and used the swing function.  Took a while to work out which axis to use but once I got it I could use the size of the palette object to obtain a suitable arc and speed of swing.

Second palette "walks" me down the hallway and out through the end.

SCENE THREE: Dressing Room

I replaced the dressing room door with a palette to animate the swing open and closed.   The trick is to have the original door then create an identical invisible prim.  I attached both of these to a central "rod" which was the palette.  This allows the door to pivot on a central axis i.e where the door hinge would be.  I set the two movements at a different speed: swinging open faster than it swings closed to suggest a push opening it and then the door swinging closed under its own steam. 

  Second palette, as a mover, was propelling my avatar through the door.  Trick was to get them lined up so that you had a reasonable interval between the door opening and me coming through it.  Its very quick so I had to find a way to get around the 5 second interval in events.  I could have used one palette to trigger the other but for expediency, as I was filming and not performing live, I adjusted by altering the length of a dummy move in the mover palette which came before the walking animation.  I could then adjust when I started walking.  Just another way of doing it, there are several ways it could have been done, some of which would be much better for a live performance.

Yumz and I talked long ago about the old "flipping the clothes over the dressing screen" trope.  Again, because it is filmed rather than live I could fudge a bit with editing, but it could be done live with some more playing around.  The bits of "dress" (a mesh shape and some flexis) were attached to a cylindrical palette which was sitting on the top edge of the screen.   I had envisaged that it would be one straight rotation to flip it over but I actually used a couple of tiny linear moves (up and forward) as well to make it look a bit better. 

The one thing that I would have liked to do better was when she came out from behind the screen..obviously in real life we don't walk in discrete lines with angled turns but rather automatically start to turn our bodies as we walk.  It would be possible to track this on a palette but the problem is actually the animation as it could look very odd unless you found the perfect walk.  Plus it was a very cramped space between the screen and the armoire.  Anyway, standard walk turn walk... might have looked better with a pause and an animation before she turns.

The rest of the action is pretty straightforward...palette used to position the sits at the dressing table etc.   The very last shot where you see the police lights in the window didn't capture that they were actually on a mover and slowly moved up into shot behind the windows.

That was purely to do with the tracking speed of the camera I was using.  I had originally wanted to pan down on to her as well so that you could see the poster above the dressing table was for a movie called "Meet John Doe"  :D

Anyway I hope that has given you a useful insight into the making of the video from a technical point.  This was originally planned years ago as a stage piece and believe it or not, everything was possible to do live!  The original would have been much more focused around dance and emotes though.

  I changed the look of the piece a lot for the video, deciding to give it a much more film Noir feel.  The sets were kept to greyscale for that reason but each splash of red has its own significance.  The dress and the underwear, the "Sinners" sign almost like an entrance to Hell; the roses were the love and passion and the make up the artifice each one builds up until eventually it leads to the blood on the sheet.  She takes off one layer of red but she is still "red" underneath.  

Anyway I hope you enjoyed it!  It has had wonderful responses so far.   I hope you will leave your comments too :)

Reflections on...

I haven't made a video in a while and  had been itching to get back to it, so I finally went for an idea that had been kicking around for a while.   I really love the illusion of deep reflections that you see in some clubs and stores.  If you have ever looked at how its put together you will have seen that they just flip the set up and put a semi-opaque "floor" between.   I figured that if you could do that with a room then why not with dancers?

Yummy and I had discussed a long time ago the concept of using some kind of reflection but obviously it has its limitations with  live performances.  I did start working on something a while back that would have worked around this by using a tilted stage but got distracted...look a squirrel!!

Anyhow... I had the skybox with the pillars etc set up and had been playing around with it in photos, so I figured why not.  

I used an anchor but in this case I didn't have to include any movement with the palettes.  I could have used Yummy's adjustable poseballs I guess but I like the smooth adjustments of a palette.  Plus they are boxes so you can easily see which way up they are.  The key thing with this one was getting the alignment of the avatars as close as possible.  Now because I wasn't using two avatars with identical feet this could be a bit tricky at times because the mesh body I was using for the hologram effect below had a very stiff rigging for its ankles and foot movements so it was never going to be exact.  Haven't tried it out with two identical avatars but it might work a lot better.

As you probably guessed, its just a matter of flipping one palette 180 degrees.  I used mirrored dances from Abranimations to match the moves and the AB system in The Artiste to regulate the dancers.

Technical point for filming: if you let the "under" dancer go out of frame when filming then the system "ignores" it as if its not there, so when you bring it back into frame the animation starts over for that avatar, meaning that your dancers are out of sync.   If you are filming and synchronised dancing then make sure you keep even just a little bit of the other dancer in frame.  Otherwise you just have to edit your way out of a mess.

The second avatar is wearing an old experimental mesh body that will take scripted textures, so that is how the "hologram" effect works.   Again, something left over from another old routine that never made the cut.

My editing is a bit lazy,  I still need to work on matching one take to another as far as the choreography is concerned.  So forgive me if the moves seem a bit repetitive in places.    I now appreciate more than ever how much time Sterling used to spend matching the shots.  However the main concern here was showcasing the effect for Yumz and matching to the song's cadences.

You can watch the full video HERE

Do you get Frustrated Trying to Use The Artiste?

Yummy and I have tried many times to emphasise that learning to use The Artiste is a learning curve.  

I know that it seems at times to be a very steep one, but the truth is it isn't.  It is just  a very long series of baby steps.   Learning to walk means falling over a lot.  I say this as someone who has spent four years learning the basics and then moved slowly through the pathways...and I still haven't mastered it!  in fact there are some of you out there who know more about certain aspects than I do now, and all kudos to you.   

I want to offer this video link to you.  I have never come across anyone explaining so clearly (and amusingly at times) how learning something works.  I think it fits exactly what we have been trying to explain to you, things like how important it is to have a firm foundation of the basics.   Please, please do watch it and let us know below if it has been useful to you :)   

Keep on using The Artiste to create Awesomeness!

The First 20 Hours - Josh Kaufman

Moveable Lighting Techniques

If any of you have been to the Sinner's Burlesque shows in the last 6 months ago you will know that we have gone back to using a "midnight" windlight setting for our shows.

When I first came to SL, most shows used this windlight and dancers used face lights which made them look like mini-lighthouses as their face lights were just that - attached to their chins.  Back then I experimented a lot with different body lights and using glow orbs to simulate spotlights but I was never satisfied.

For everyday use I have my windlight set to Starley as I love the crisp look for skins and objects.  We have had forced windlights using this setting at different theatres but again, people can just choose to ignore that and the whole effect is ruined.

So I started thinking about the whole lighting issue all over again.  It would be nice if we all had the processing/graphics capabilities to watch shows in Advanced Lighting, but most people have enough difficulty with lag as it is.  I concentrated on ways that we could make something look interesting with only normal lighting enabled.  It is simple enough to attach invisible lighting prims to sets which will give the desired effects and are not much different to stage lights with colored gels.

For this particular routine I wanted to try something different.  There is a function of the palette which can turn lights off/on and dictate colors.

I used this in two palettes which were then made invisible and kept as "movers".  One was "red" and placed at one side of the stage and the other was "blue" and positioned at the other side.  I made one palette slightly higher than the other so that the colors would stay more distinct.  The palettes were then programmed to move back and forth across the stage at the same time a number of times.  My avatar was also lit by a "white" panel at the front of the stage.  If you watch the skin of the avatar you will see the lights playing across the skin.   I have also included a reference diagram and then filmed part of the routine with transparency enabled so that you can see the moving palettes.

You can watch the video here

Enjoy!

I Can't Make You Love Me

Watch the Video ==> I Can't Make You Love Me

I decided a couple of months back that a music video might help promote my singing.  Apart from anything it would be a challenge and something different from dance videos and I know Sterling loves a challenge.

I really loved the song from the moment I heard it and there were a lot of cues in the song but even so all I really had was the one image of the couple in bed and one of them slowly fading out.  Sterling said it was do-able so we started with that.

He also wanted cut-away shots of me singing so we divided the set space up into two areas.  The darker colors of the main set with a more claustrophobic feel and the secondary set with open sky, light colors and a subtle lighting effect of traveling stars.  

Sterling filmed it all at very high graphic quality and used Depth of Field to get some great shots moving from one character to another.   His persistence really paid off.  There were multiple shoots from different angles and we chose a quite brooding windlight for the main shots that brought out a lot of detail but added to the oppressive feeling.

The shot that made it for me was the final one with the walk down the hall.   Again, a series of multiple shots from different angles so it had to be done over and over.  I used an Artiste Palette with a single move to achieve the walk and triggered it from the palette menu with the'TestAllMoves' button.   It meant we could film it repeatedly with no deviation and get what you see in the video...that almost seamless change of angle from front side and back.   One simple function of The Artiste that added so much to the completion!   I know it has given Sterling a lot of other ideas about how Artiste Palettes amongst other things Artiste can function within filming.

He certainly put in more time than ever editing on this one, matching moves, cutting scenes to fit...a lot more than he usually does filming dance routines which are usually a fait accompli.   He also deserves a special mention for the wonderful sound mix he did on the song; awesome job, Sterling!