Loki' Adventures in HyFy - Making an Avatar + other things

[Loki]

While the whole Voxel universe thing is awesome i really wonna get into the Avatar creation side with the Faceshift stuff as i find that utterly amazing.

I’m also aware that the initial Highfidelity avatars were created using Maya to create FBX formats. I however will have to try to get the same result but on the amateur path which may crop up some hurdles.

So far I’ve designed and modelled my HyFy Avatar Shape, that was the easy bit.

Since I’m using Blender i’m unable to import any of the FBX files from HighFidelity Files and since I’m on a mac i can’t get this unofficial FBX plugin to work. So I’m looking next into rigging and naming from this post about skeletal joints. Will add more as i continue with success.

[Hydrogen]

Looks great, Loki. I see that you are a great creator in SL, I myself is a rookie avatar creator in SL too so I gonna find some free-time to participate into avatar stuff in HF.

Can’t wait to see your project coming.

[Loki]

OK so built, textured, and rigged, although I’m a bit concerned about the naming of the bones. Blender does not name the joints, rather the bones so i may have screwed up, i guess ill find out later. In the mean time I’m now about to start on creating shapekeys or ‘Blendshapes’ for the face. I’ve tried to keep this as simple as possible because so much can go wrong.

[Judas]

very cool, nice work

[Loki]

So with blend shapes added, i managed to get it imported to Faceshift and map my blink eyes and mouth using my old xbox kinect. Finding it difficult to export fbx with textures, I’m sure thats just blender being unintuitive. So now i have an fst file in a folder with two textures and two .fbx files, one the head and one the body. Im Assuming i just need to impload unsung ‘interface’ menu bar options.

[Loki]

Right, so I’ve created two folder directories, one for my avatars head, the other for its body, edited the fst files to point to textures and fbx files. Uploaded to high-fidelity but i don’t think it worked as i don’t see it as an option on the avatar list to choose. Does Interface say or do anything if successfully uploaded, or unsuccessfully uploaded?

[ryan]

This is fantastic work, Loki! Let me take a look to see if it made it to the db and if not let’s figure out why.

[Loki]

Yeh well thanx to Judas for supplying me with an armature that was taken from a High Fidelity avatar. I tried rigging to that but the head screwed up when importing to face shift. I’ll get there in the end

lokieliot on Sketchfab

[ryan]

Did you get any kinda of feedback from a popup? Did you see a loading bar? It’s possible you are using an old version of the client. When was the last time you updated your client?

[c]

Wow, @Loki that looks amazing!
Just checked the data server and the models didn’t get approved.
Probably as @ryan said because of an outdated client.
If you do are up to date or if it still didn’t work after you updated, could you zip both models and send them to me at clement@highfidelity.io
I’ll check them and get back to you on what went wrong.

[Loki]

OK so i went back into my emails to find the download link for the interface viewer since i could not find a ‘check for updates’. Uploaded my body and head and got verifying pop ups. I was also able to select my Avatars body and head from the lists. But the avatar came out very small, so i must have exported them too small perhaps, whats the appropriate size? Anyways my armatures also do not get recognised, perhaps this is to do with me creating FBX files from Blender?.

While I’m not able to get my old Xbox Kinect to work with HyFy (i Assume HyFy uses the newer cams) hopefully the eyes and mouth are face shifty for those who do have the newer cams :).

[Judas]

Try exporting from blender as a dae into Autodesks free fbx converter http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=10775847 then into HF
I would be interested in seeing how you solved the Faceshift stuff in Blender. I was using the Avastar add on for Blender for my second life work, that has shapekeys to change the facial expressions, is that the same kinda thing as Faceshift?
I have the kinnect working on a mac with the “openni sensor plugin” not the 2.0 one so it should work for you,
Loving your work btw snooped through your sketchfab site

[Loki]

Who’s idea was it to use the proprietary FBX format anyways :-p I’m going to have to give up on this for a bit as I’ve hit a wall. i’ll return for another go once I’ve clear my plate of other projects.

[ryan]

Hey Loki it looks like you have no joint mappings in your fst file. Here is an example of the defaultAvatar body fst

filename=defaultAvatar/body.fbx
texdir=defaultAvatar
scale=130
joint = jointRoot = jointRoot
joint = jointLean = jointSpine
joint = jointNeck = jointNeck
joint = jointHead = jointHeadtop
joint = joint_L_shoulder = joint_L_shoulder
freeJoint = joint_L_arm
freeJoint = joint_L_elbow
joint = jointLeftHand = joint_L_hand
joint = joint_R_shoulder = joint_R_shoulder
freeJoint = joint_R_arm
freeJoint = joint_R_elbow
joint = jointRightHand = joint_R_hand

The names on the left are ones that we recognize in our code and the ones on the right are the names that came from my maya file. So I am just mapping them here.

[Loki]

oh right i see, so does the ‘Scale’ bit determine the scale of the avatar in world?

I don’t think i understood quite how important the .fst file is. Since it’s generated by Faceshift, i assumed at first it simply stored all the expressions from that software.

So in fact the .fst files store the main core of information from textures, 3D models, Scale, joint mapping and expressions for the High Fidelity Avatars.

[ryan]

Yes, so depending on the scale you created with, you can tweak with that value. We need to come up with some standard so you know what size to shoot for in Blender/Maya - we will come up with something.

[Loki]

Whats the difference between a Joint and Freejoint?

[Loki]

I’m still failing to grasp how to upload a custom Avatar. Although i think my last attempts were obscured by HyFy not displaying correctly. I was stuck in space unable to see the Voxel Strip. Even chafing to the original Default avatar showed my head stuck up my butt. So any attempts today would not work even if i was doing it correctly. I’ll try again over the weekend. Also my Faceshift demo expired so i won’t be able to try that anymore.

[Loki]

Got a step closer today in uploading my own custom avatar, the LokiBot. I’ve noticed that there are more options in uploading the avatar with mapping joints to bones and ‘Freejoints’ what ever they do. This is turning into an obsession for me, one where I’m like a dog jumping at a window unable to get at my favourite toy.

My head texture did not load. And i don’t think my body successfully rigged. I might as well just upload a mesh attachment and pretend thats my avatar.

[Loki]

im closing this thread down. I really want to get to grips with every aspect of creating a HYFy compatible avatar. This could be the basis for the most advanced Avatars on the planet. So i’m gonna start again in a new thread breaking everything everything down into small steps and see if i can slowly build up knowledge on what exactly HyFy needs in terms of joints and scripts to make the avatar i simply can not create in SL. XD