User Interface

The Avatar (3D View)

Adding an avatar to the current scene is easy. Just select “Avastar” from the Add menu. The avatar will be placed at the current cursor location on the current layer. The object can then be moved to where you want it. The avatar object is made up of eight meshes and three groups of bones. The meshes are the standard SL meshes such as UpperBodyMesh and all have UV maps for textures and have the correct bone weigths.

The bones are divided into three groups: “SL” (green), “IK” (yellow), and “Root” (blue). Not all bones are visible by default and the ones that are have been given custom shapes so they appear as loops and controls around the avatar. Some parts of the UI will only appear if certain bones are selected – we’ve tried to keep things out of the way so you can concentrate on animating and working with your avatars.

• SL Bones: these are the usual SL bones with a small tweak: the Pelvis bone has been flipped around and made a child of the COG bone so that it’s easier to animate hip movement. Otherwise the sizes and parenting hierachy is the same as in SL. To see the bones in a more traditional form tick “X-Ray” and untick “Shapes” in the armature tab of the property editor. Note that there is a few more bones than you might expect (some are hidden on a particular Armature layer – see the Armature tab of the Property Editor).
• Root Bones: Two more bones have been added to the rig, a centre-of-gravity (COG) bone and an Origin bone. The COG is how you rotate or move the character as a whole. The Pelvis and Torso are children of this bone and everything else is a child of those. Normally this bone is a small blue circle near the small of the back. The Origin bone is at the feet and is shaped like a four pointed arrow. All the animations are relative to this bone so moving it around won’t change the animation, it just gives you another handle to position the avatar and it represents the floor for the avatar. If you were creating a multiple-avatar animation, think of puting the Origin bones where you would place the pose-balls.
• IK Bones:The final group of bones is the IK (Inverse Kinematics) system. By default only the controls are visible, and the influerce of these bones is set to zero. To enable IK control select a bone on a limb and use the sliders in the “Rig Properties” section of the Properties Panel. When switched on the whole limb will try and align with the position of the IK control. Note that there are a bunch of bones that are normally hidden that are also part of the IK system. These bones are there to provide stability to the rig or a target to copy rotations from.The latter bones can be made visible with the “IK Rig” visibility switch below.

Rig Properties (3D View Properties Panel) IK Switches These control wether the arm and leg bones stick to the corresponding bones in the IK chasis. Set to zero to control the limb via FK and 1 for IK. There is three sliders per limb each controls a FK/IK switch for a bone. These sliders con be keyframed into the animation so you can mix IK and FK controls. Inherit Rotation The Head can be decoupled from neck rotations and the Chest from Torso rotations. When you move you naturally tend to keep your head vertical. Decoupling the head in the animation, especially when posing with IK, helps achieve the same effect. In the same way, keeping the orientation of the chest regardless of the lower body can be useful in some motions. These buttons can be keyframed into the animation. Breathing Two buttons that move the Chest and Torso bones slightly to simulate a breath. Apply several times to get a deeper breath and don’t forget to keyframe the result.

Rig Display (3D View Properties Panel) IK Show/Hide the IK bones for the arms and legs. The IK rig is normally hidden and is an extra set of bones that the arms and leg bones stick to when the IK controls are switched on. Sometimes it’s helpful to see these bones. The bones are on different bone layers – these switches just make the layers visible. FK Show/Hide the normal FK bones. The bones are on different bone layers – these switches just make the layers visible.

Avatar Shape (3D View Properties Panel) Load Shape UI When you first load a blend file this panel will just display a button. Activating the button loads the shape setting controls. Write Values The slider values for the current shape are written to a textblock (Switch to the text editor panel to see it). These correspond to the shape settings in the SL viewer. Unfortunately there isn’t a way to import a shape to SL so you will have to spend a minute copying slider values by hand. Refresh Shape Reset the avatars shape with the current slider values. Normally this slider won’t have an effect, it’s just here in case the avatars shape doesn’t update properly for some reason. Load Shape Load a shape from an xml file. In most SL viewers there is a shape export option hidden in the advanced menu (“Advanced” -> “Character” -> “Charater Tests” -> “Appearance to XML”). This will silently create a file called [viewer directory]/character/new archetype.xml. This file contains your current shape and can be loaded into Avastar. Set to Default Reset the shape to default values. Height This is the approximate height including shoes as reported in SL Section Sets the shape sliders below to the corresponding section like in SL Shape sliders Dynamically adjust the avatars shape using the same controls as in SL

Anim Export (Render Tab of Properties)   Mode The animation export mode. Choices are Manual and Auto. In Manual mode only keyframes on SL bones will be exported. In Auto mode, a keyframe will be exported for each bone in the action every time there is a keyframe on at least one bone. Hands The hand posture to use in the animation. This will affect the current avatar in the 3D view. FPS The effective frames-per-second rate for the animation. This quantify is independent of Blenders rendering FPS and is stored with the action. Start and End frames The first and last frame to export inclusive. Ease In / Out The period of time to blend this animation with any others the avatar may be running at the begining and end of the animation. Over this period of time the imfluence of the animation is ramped up and down. Priority The priority at which to run the animation. This quantity is fixed once the animation is uploaded so choose wisely. Loop / Loop In / Loop Out A toggle whether to use looping and the first and last frames of the loop. When an animation plays it will run to the last frame of the loop then start repeating the looped section until the animation is stopped. Once stopped the animation continues to play till the end. Selecting a single frame (same frame for In and Out) is ok – the animation will just hold that pose until stopped. Use Translations (Manual mode only) This is an advanced feature. Export non-Pelvis bone locations to the animation where they are keyframed. Note that if you move the bones (not just rotate them) then it’s easy to break your avatar in such a way that it will require logging out and back in to fix. Export Animation Bring up a file dialog to prompt for a filename and location for the animation then export it. The animation must have the extension “.anim”. To upload you will need a suitably patched viewer such as PhoenixViewer and you need to use the “Bulk” upload facility. The animation will appear in your Animations folder.