Oh, the subtle things...

Video: Blade Runner Tribute

There are so many wonderful things that The Artiste can do for live performance, but I can't stress stronly enough what an incredible tool it is for machinima in Secondlife too.

I think I have mentioned before how valuable is is to have an action sequencer which is so precise that you can run it over and over again with true results while you cover different camera angles.

What I perhaps went unsaid is the little things that you would take for granted in making a real life video.  With human beings, you can just instruct them what to do.  Sit here, stand here, walk from A to B.  Most of the time they do exactly what you ask.

Our little replicants in SL are not so pliable.  Trying to get someone to walk in a particular way AND smoothly is a nightmare without any kind of set up.  So that one little clip where Rachel walks towards Deckard with her iconic wiggle is all down to the Artiste.  The frame rate wibbled a bit, but that actual mover walk she did was perfect everytime.  No sliding, no skipping.

And that owl?   An owl texture from Sanna Animated Textures, attached to a palette.

Standing "actors" where you want them to be, making them sit exactly as you want; all the subtle things that make your life easier.

Now go create something wonderful.

Artiste Animesh - 2 Groups - A & B

This next demo describes the use of using 2 groups, A & B.

We start out doing the same animation then we take turns doing different animations at the same time.

WE make use of DivisionPaletteChange twice.  Once to switch to non-synced dances and then again before we sync back at the end.

Makes a big difference.


Watch Video--> Artiste Animesh - 2 Groups - A & B

*sequences
Division,CUSTOM_AAAAAAAAA


*sequences1
TRACE,off
*Bodhisattva | 10
*Mysti | 10
Bolly-15 Dollarbie | 10
*Satyagraha | 10 
*Ya Sayyidi | 10
END

*sequences2
TRACE,off
*Bodhisattva | 10
*Mysti | 10
*Samia | 10
Bolly-15 Dollarbie | 10 
*Ya Sayyidi | 10
END

*events
TRACE,off
ELAPSED
1,"Change to AAAABBBB",15
2,"Change back to AAAAAAAA",35
END

*autofx
1,DPC=AAAABBBB$
2,DPC=AAAAAAAA$

END

Artiste Animesh Desert - One Group "A"

The following is a quick video proof-of-concept demo of the integration of Animesh and 
Artiste.


With one HUD you can control a mixture of up to 9 avatars and Animesh in any combination.

With 2 HUDS you can control up to 18 avatars and Animesh. 

Artiste Animesh Desert - One Group "A"

There are 3 posts at our website on the implementation of Animesh with Artiste to introduce you to our chosen method of implementation

Animesh 101
Animesh 102

Animesh 103

The appeal to me of Animesh is the ease with which to choreograph routines with a lot of dancers without imposing on our friends to help us out or be available while we are experimenting and learning.

One downside is that the Animesh are prim-heavy.  These particular Animesh characters were 58 prims each.

Also there are currently not a lot of Animesh types or choices of costumes and outfits for them so we are currently limited.

There was a challenge to syncing Animesh and avatars.  We use Division Palette Change (dynamic grouping change) over long running dance sequences to mitigate the problem.

Different Animesh can be doing different dance sequences at the same time.  In this demo they are all doing the same dance sequence at the same time.

Stripping with BOM

It occured to me when the BOM enabled Firestorm was released that the "strip" function of The Artiste might once again be viable.  I've been testing it out this weekend and you can see my results in the video HERE: https://vimeo.com/367829869

As I say, the stripping of attachments has never been an issue as it still works perfectly, but the change-over to mesh bodies was a disaster as far as stripping went.   Are we all still stripping out there with Applier HUDs or have you given up?   Whipping your mesh bra off might have worked, but managing to take off a mesh corset and then having to use your body hud to make sure you didn't look like an Ex-magicians assistant was tricky...even with auto-hide.

I'm no expert on BOM by any stretch.  I didnt even try it until this weekend.  I watched my husband having a go on his avatar last week and decided to give it a shot.  Hopefully, by the time everyone has the BOM enabled viewer we might have started to move forward.  Remember when Bento mesh hands came in?  Everyone wanted to use them but to people who didnt have the Bento viewer you looked like a replicator from Stargate Atlantis.   Possibly there will be a work around but we will have to see.

If you are interested in Bakes on Mesh, take a look at this blog from Skell,  who is a great photographer and quite good at explaining things!
http://www.virtualbloke.com/archives/3358

Its one of the better articles I have found.

Strutting the Catwalk

Yummy and I have had many conversations about uses for The Artiste outside of dance, and often talked about fashion shows.

Well I finally did it :p

Check out the video here

No Sliding...smooth locomotions and turns.  All done with one palette - once you have your measurements in place all you have to do is change the animations :)

The Artiste Mover System - Move-Range - GoTo2ndMove Part 2

We learned, in the last post, the concept of move-range.  We can tell our mover to move a portion of the total number of moves.  We don't have to do all the moves of our mover at one time.  We did the 1st move out of a total of 5 moves.

In this example we will do the 1st TWO moves out of a total of 4 moves.

A common scenario comes up where you start off placing your movers backstage so your group of dancers in your routine can easily see and pre-mount them and be ready to go onstage. 

But ultimately you want them to rise up from below the stage.  This means they have to somehow get to the a position below the stage.  

Early mover designs dictated that once you started your move sequence, you had to finish it.  

So...you COULD move from backstage to under the stage and then move up all uninterrupted... but most performers wanted their 1st official routine move to start UNDER the stage and rise up. 

So what was needed was a way to start and stop the move sequence then restart it again.

The Artiste MoveRange feature, in combination with a show-time access-button that performs the 1st move and then stops, now makes this possible without the need for using extra HUDS to accomplish the starting and stopping and restarting of a move sequence.

With just one HUD, you can simplify this ordeal. 

After all of the dancers are in our group we press a button on the lead-dancer's HUD to perform JUST the first move which places them UNDER the stage.

First, we make sure GoTo2ndMove is 'on' in the Palettes that we want to respond to our request in the *palette nc.  Also increase the EditMoveSpeed from 0.5 to something greater as this is what is used for the GoTo2ndMove and not the speed in the *moves nc because if the time is too short, the move may not be as accurate as expected.

EditMoveSpeed,2.5
GoHomeSpeed,2.0
GoTo2ndMove,on

GroupID,AB

Then we tell the HUD that when we press Play we perform moves 02 thru 04 instead of 01 thru 04 because we have already performed the 1st move.

TRACE,on
1,r=p%sitters%mmove02-04

END

The sitters keyword sends the mmove command to all palettes that are moveable and sittable.  Else we would need an autofx command for each avatar-palette-mover. See example below:

1,r=p%01_A%mmove02-04$r=p%01_B%mmove02-04

 So this saves some nc line space as well as tighter palette-trigger coordination because all palettes get the command at exactly the same time, practically speaking.

So along with the "all" command there is "sitters", "non-sitters", as well as the group designations for sending moves and mmoves to select Palettes depending on their type and grouping designation. 


Step 1: Press GoTo2ndMove

Step 2: Press Play

We added a 1 second pause after each move to make them more discernible.

We left out animations (i.e. 'none') to focus on just the move-range concept and how it enables the GoTo2ndMove.\ feature.  There is a 5-second delay until the the 1st event fires that tells all of the seated avatars to start their 3-move trek (02-04).

*events
TRACE,off
ELAPSED
1,"Event 1",5
2,"Event 2",10
3,"Event 3",15

END

*autofx looks like this

TRACE,on
1,r=p%sitters%mmove02-04

END


*moves
M01_A,5.000000,<0.00000, -13.46509, -3.20166>,<0.00000, 0.00000, 0.00000, 1.00000>,none,1
M01_A,3.000000,<0.00000, 0.00000, 3.27832>,<0.00000, 0.00000, 0.00000, 1.00000>,none,1
M01_A,3.000000,<2.00000, -2.53491, 0.00000>,<0.00000, 0.00000, 0.00000, 1.00000>,none,1

M01_A,3.000000,<0.00000, -3.00000, 0.00000>,<0.00000, 0.00000, 0.00000, 1.00000>,none,1

*palette
DefaultSitAnim,lowbow
.
.
.
FinalMovePose,standing


See the Video

The Artiste Mover System - Avatar Movers - Part 1 - Move Ranges

We now know the basics of  how to move an object.

We learned about pairing a palette/object-mover to an anchor.

We learned how to use the menu-approach to creating simple moves and turns.

We learned some Palette-menu commands.  We learned a few move-related *palette nc entries and a few *move nc entries.

***

In order to prepare a Palette as an Avatar-Mover, we need to turn on 2 additional Abilities besides Moveable in the *palette nc.

Moveable,on
Sittable,on
Animatable,on

Abilities help prevent needless permissions requests as well as avoid conflicts.  

***

Ok so let us try and create a little story.  We already have a flying saucer with moves and turns.  Let's make the saucer follow/stalk our chosen avatar. (Now let it be known that Artiste also has a Follow feature for Palettes to auto-follow objects but for our purposes we will create our own home-grown follow function using autofx commands to move Palettes in sync).

So our avatar will climb up right-side stairs, turn left, walk to midway point, turn left, stop and pose, dance, stop and pose, turn right, walk to left-side stairs, turn left again, and then climb down the left-side stairs.

1 - mover - move TO the stairs
2 - mover - move - climb up right-side stairs
3 - mover - turn - turn left
4 - mover - move- walk to midway point
5 - mover - turn - turn left
6 - mover or HUD - move or dance-pose - stop and pose

7 - HUD - dance
8 - mover or HUD - move or dance-pose - stop and pose
9 - mover - turn - turn right
10 - mover - move- walk to left-side stairs
11 - mover - turn - turn left again
12 - mover - move - climb down the left-side stairs

***

This example will demonstrate a few cool, mostly unique, features of the AMS, mainly:
1 - Embedded Moves
2 - Move Ranges
3 - Group Moves

***

FLYING SAUCER

First I redo the saucers moves so they move up at an angle to trace the stairs but off to the side and then move across the bridge and back down the stairs on the other side.  

So first we create a new InitialOffset value for the flying saucer. 

Then we create a bunch of moves and turns for the saucer to mimic stalking our avatar.  We just want to get a rough feel for the flow. We will tweak it later.  For this demo we will continue to use the menu system for creating moves, although it may be enough moves to warrant using the marker system if it appears too much to hold into ones head.

***

AVATAR MOVER

First, we rez a Palette, pair it with the Anchor. (AnchorName).  I rename the Palette to ArtistePalette_02_A.  (For sittable Palettes we must use the standard naming.  01_A thru 01_R are already in use on another project I am doing on this sim so to be safe and not conflict I chose "02_A".)

Second, we prepare it as an avatar-mover as discussed above by setting the appropriate abilities.
Moveable,on
Sittable,on
Animatable,on

Third, we reset it.

Fourth, we insure our active group matches the group of the Palette. Then we press ResetSit button on Palette menu and then SIT on the Palette and accept permissions when asked.

The initial pose when sitting on a Palette is determined by the DefaultSitAnim entry in the *palette nc.  This animation must be in the Palette.

DefaultSitAnim,standing

The final pose that happens at the end of a move sequence is determined by the FinalMovePose entry in the *palette nc. This animation must also be in the Palette.

FinalMovePose,bow



Fifth, we position Palette in front of the right stairs, and rotate it so we are facing the stairs. Then we create a new InitialOffset for the Palette by pressing DumpInitial and then pressing ReloadMoves as we have done before with the saucer.

 InitialOffset,<-3.29439, -0.15184, -0.00061>,<0.00000, 0.00000, 0.70711, 0.70711>

Sixth, we create the 1st 5 moves which is move, move, turn, move, turn.  We test it. All good.

Seventh, lets adjust the durations since the default, in this particular case, is 1 second for all moves and turns.  We learn a new button called QuickTest.  This tests 1 move/turn at a time vs TestAllMoves which runs thru all of the move/turns.

I will rename the move-names for easier identification. So, M02_A, the default, becomes M02_A_01 and M02_A_02, etc, though this is not required.

We add 2 animations to our move sequence. JD walk 1 and JD walk 2. Notice the second walking animation the avatar places her right hand on her right hip, different from the 1st walking animation.

1 second to walk to the stairs

M02_A_01,1.000000,<0.00000, -0.94051, 0.00000>,<0.00000, 0.00000, 0.00000, 1.00000>,JD walk 1,0

We do trial and error on just the 2nd move going up the stairs. I settled on 12 seconds.

M02_A_02,12.000000,<0.00000, -5.57140, 4.12061>,<0.00000, 0.00000, 0.00000, 1.00000>,JD walk 2,0,0,0

I will leave the turn, after the 1st move, at 1 second for now.

M02_A_03,1.000000,Turn,89.993520,none,0

I chose 5 seconds for the move from right-stairs to midway point

M02_A_04,5.000000,<2.94045, 0.00000, 0.00000>,<0.00000, 0.00000, 0.00000, 1.00000>,JD walk 2,0,0

I will leave this next turn that faces the audience also at 1 second for now.

M02_A_05,1.000000,Turn,90.000000,none,0


We will make the saucer ascend for 12 seconds instead of 5 to match the avatar's stair climb.

The command to move both the avatar and saucer from autofx is:

TRACE,on
1,r=p%Flying Saucer!%mmove01-02$r=p%ArtistePalette_26_RC_e%move0
END

We introduce abn arguably unique feature called the move-range.  We tell the flying-saucer to move just its 1st 2 moves, 01 and 02. The move0 is shorthand that  tells the avatar-mover to move ALL of its moves (01-05);

See the Video

We will stop for now so as not to clutter to much info at one time.