I have spent the past 3 years answering the same questions on the forums or in world many times over. While you can usually find the answers with the right keywords by searching the forums, sometimes finding the correct phrase can be difficult.
In 2005 Pietro Maracas made a FAQ but it hasn't been updated and personally I'd rather have the answers on the same page as the questions. Much of what is written here is from that FAQ and added issues that keep getting asked about. I watch the forums semi regularly so I will add more if anything else comes up.
1. Animating hands and faces:
Right now , you can not animate hands and faces. The only thing you can do is add morphs during the upload. Even when these are not broken - which seem to break every other update - they only work at the beginning until reverting back. What this means is that even if you add a fist morph to your pose, after a few seconds the pose will start to rotate beteen fist, relaxed, spread that is attached to the default SL stands. Highly annoying, I know.
2. Working with the T pose:
The most common problem is that the first frame is not the default T pose. Sometimes SL will upload these files, but most times it will not. Even if it does allow you to upload the anim, it will not look right. That is because of the way SL reads an animation file. Basically, it reads the first frame as a reference so having each part be the default T pose in frame 1, it will correctly read the amount of difference between frame 1 and 2.
What you need to do is keep frame 1 the default -> go to frame 2 -> make a keyframe -> move each body part that you want to animate.
Not to worry though, in the animation that plays we will never see this frame.
3. Doesn't work well with all avatars:
And it never will. Because of the extreme range of adjustments we can make to our avatars and the way SL interprets animations by degrees of movement an anim that looks perfect on you can look terrible on others. For instance, I can make a simple pose with my arms at my side but an avie that is wider than mine can end up with the arms inside the hips.
But if you compensate and try to make it work for all, it'll usually look funny for all. My best advice is to choose a size that you want to work with either buy attempting to find an average size or finding a niche for yourself.
4. Avatar rotates in Poser but not in SL:
A common mistake is to animate the "body" instead of the hips. In reference to SL, the center of the body is in the hips and when uploading, whatever has been changed in the "body" will be tossed out.
Now this does allow for tricks especially when using two avatars and pose balls where you want to move them from the center of the scene in poser but want them centered on the pose ball.
5. SL optimization of BVH files:
If you make a detailed anim where the avie moves, pauses, and moves again chances are that SL will throw out the pause. Or you've made an anim where only the foot taps but in SL, there is no tap. This is because LL set up the uploads to optimize the process to "cut down lag." Back in 2004 when we first started to complain about this, LL said they will work on it but of course nothing has been changed.
What the optimization does is if things don't move for a certain amount of time or the body parts don't move enough degrees, then that motion is ignored. So the easiest trick is to drop the fps down - I typically animate at 15fps - while you are animating so the keyframes are actually closer together in the animation file.
Another trick would be is to make a series of animations and string together with a script. You can have the pauses inbetween two animation files that end and start at the same spot but have the first file uploaded with "out" being 100%.
6. Error Message: "Unable to read animation file can't get rotation values."
It could be any one of the following:
- If you have a copy of Poser 6, there was an issue with BVH exporting that they fixed in an update. You need to update your program.
- When exporting you did not choose "scale automatically." Go back, export again and choose this option.
- You might have used the incorrect poser figure. Please download the SL avatars for poser here.
- You did not leave the first frame as the default T pose or keyframe and move body parts in frame 2. You need to go back to your animation file, move all frames over by 1, keyframe frame 2, then edit -> restore figure in frame 1.
7. Want to animate only certain body parts:
For instance if you only want the lower body to move, then just do not animate the upper body. That includes not moving it 1 degree in frame 2.
8. Made a sit pose and you are floating:
Ok.. so your sit pose looks great in poser but you are floating a meter off the ground. As I've said before, SL works on degrees of movement based on frame 1. If your SL avie's legs are longer then your poser avie, you will float because it takes more to get the hips to the ground. Basically, the animation file is telling SL to move your hips a specific amount down.
There are two ways to combat this. You can either move your avie below the ground plane in Poser - the simple way. Or you can adjust your poser avie's leg length to make it match your SL avie (see tutorial 2) so you can get it right every time.
Granted like I said before, it'll match yours but it will not match everyone else.
9. Made an animation but between keyframes the avatar twits and/or turns in odd directions:
Poser's interpolation between keyframes is pretty terrible. This is actually quite a common occurance. Another anoying bit about it is that if you move say the arm forward, poser will move it back and then forward instead of just the forward movement.
You need to break the spline on frame 2. Go to window drop down menu -> animation palette (or the key icon on the bottom right hand side of the screen). Shift select all body parts of frame 2 and click on the button for breaking the spline. Its the last green button with the icon of a curve with a break in it.
That should fix the extreme wonkiness of it, but if later down the line you find body parts move in ways they shouldn't, breaking the spline will help. For instance, say you are animating a sit where the leg swings: keyframe 15 leg is down, keyframe 30 leg is up. Sometimes Poser will actually make the leg go back before it goes forward even to the point of looking like the leg is broken. If you break the spline on frame 15, it will be fixed.
I suggest only breaking the spline when necessary. If you break it too often, the animation will actually look robotic.
10. Retime animations?
Ok.. say you made an animation at 30fps, it looks great in Poser but SL's optimization threw out some movements. Best thing to try first is to change the fps (in the keyframe editor -> left hand corner box) to 15fps and then retime the entire animation. You go to the animation drop down menu and choose "retime animation." Say you anim is 300 frames long, so you put 2-300 for the source box and 2-150 for the destination. Remember frame 1 has to be the default T pose! You then can delete the frames by changing the end frame to 150. This is done by the box in the lower middle that says: Frame (number) of (number). Change the number after "of" to 150 and a box will pop up asking if you want to delete the frames.
Another instance... Say you made an animation but the entire thing plays too fast. You can add frames at the end (same way as deleting) and then retime the animation. Too slow? Retime to a smaller range of keyframes and delete the ones on the end.
Lets say you want the section at the end, say from frames 150 - 300 only to go faster. The source would be 150-300 and the destination would be say 150-250. The change the number of frames total to 250.
While this feature is good for some things, it's not so great for others. If you only want to retime a section that is not at the end, it'll overwrite the current keyframes. Say you want to retime just frames 30-60 into lasting 30-70. Whatever movements you had from frames 60-70 will be deleted. It just isn't smart enough to push everything at the end back. If that's what you want, read the next part.
11. Want to add frames inbetween keyframes:
Lets say you have an animtion that lasts for 150 frames, but you want the movements between frame 30 and 60 to be slower. As I said before, you can't just retime because it'll just overwrite the movements that happen later.
So say you want it to last 10 frames longer. So change the keyframe range (boxes at the bottom-middle of the screen that says "Frame: (number) of (number)) to 160. Next you'll have to go into the keyframe editor (key icon lower right hand side) and move all the keyframes over 10 frames by copying and pasting (you can select all body parts by clicking on the top box). Then delete the origional placement (minus sign icon in the middle row). Do that for all the keyframes until you get to the section you want to retime.
Go to animation drop down menu -> retime animation. Source 30-60 and destination 30-70.
12. Drifting limbs:
This is a common problem that has a couple of different sources.
1. First check to see that the limbs move at least 1 degree in all rotations in frame 2. It might be that you accidently didn't lock that limb down.
2. If your keyframes are far apart or the body doesn't move very many degrees between the keyframes, you might have been hit with the optimization issue. Retime the animation to 15fps and it should help. If not you can go down to 12fps, but I wouldn't go any further down.
3. If you are running at 15fps, try moving the limbs more.
4. If it's still drifting, there is currently a bug about this. You can view and vote on the JIRA entry here.
It's a bug that cropped up in Dec '05, fixed in Feb '06 then came back in a lesser form in Aug '06. The first time, I fought really hard to get it fixed. The second time I fought just as hard but by then LL had stopped listening to the residents. The last conversation I had with a Linden about it was that it's an issue with the spline interpolation that no one jumped up to fix. Such is the way with LL's style of working with employees deciding what they want to work on. I am still pushing to get it fixed, but with the way things are I can not be optimistic about LL's quality of bug fixes.
13. Animation upload priorities:
When you upload an animation you have the option to choose the priority you want it to play at. What this means is that it tells SL what level you want it to override other animations playing. If you are playing 1 animation and you start another one with a higher or same level of priority, you'll see the anim play. If the second one is a lower priority, you will not see it play.
For instance, the default stands are at priority 2 while the gestures are at 3. So if you are making an AO stand that you want to override the default stands and allow the gestures to show through, you can upload at priority 2. The default walk is at priority 4 so you'd need to make yours 4 to override it. Sits can get a bit tricky since the lower body is 4 and upper body is 2. If you want to make a sit that does override but shows the typing gestures, you'd need to make 2 anims with the lower body only animated at 4 and upper body only at 2.
14. Different types of loops:
Standard: When you upload, you can click on the loop box. This is pretty simple to understand because all it does is play the animation over and over again with of course leaving out the frame 1 T pose. To make a still pose, all you need is a 2 frame animation and click on the loop box when uploading. Easy huh?
Animation plays then holds the last frame: When you upload, you have boxes for in% and out %. If you want your animation to hold on a pose, you just put the in % 100.
Animation playes then loops the last x amount of time: Say you have an animation that is 300 frames but you want to loop just the last 30 frames. You change the in % to 90.
15. The animation I just purchased doesn't fit my avatar, can I edit it?
Not at this current time. Even if it is modify enabled, you can not take an animation out of SL. Sometimes you can ask the original animator to edit it, but don't be rude enough to expect it. Animations are one of the few things you can easily try before you buy and demanding custom fittings is rather rude. While it does only take a few mins for a skilled animator, if I did that for even 1/2 of the people that purchase my poses I wouldn't have time to make anything new.
Note how I said at this current time. Last year, LL announced something called expressive puppeteering which might change that. I don't know when or if it will be released and whether or not you'll be able to edit existing animations.
Another option would be to suggest to your favourite animator to make some poses that'll fit a shorter/taller/heavier figure.
16. The Poser Walk Designer doesn't work with the SL Avatar:
The Walk Designer just plainly sucks. Poser is really great for simple animations, but most of the tools seem to hurt more than they help. While the Walk Designer seems to work with Poser 4 and above figures, once added to the SL Poser 2 figure all hell breaks loose.
I would suggest first hand animating. It is a nightmare to do, but you have a lot more control. Another option would be to use the Walk Designer, save the project, start a new one and then copy and paste the important keyframes. Such as full stirde and legs together.
This makes it a lot easier to clean up because the Walk Designer spits out an animation that each frame is keyed. Fewer keyframes = less altering that needs to be done. At first keep it simple... fix the legs passing through eachother, bowlegs and way too long of a stride.
Once the basic movement is clean you can start adding more keys for detailed work. If you are unsure about the anatomy of the walk, you can always go back to the file with the Walk Designer used and see how it was done. For instance things like the arms don't swing on the same frame as the leg, it's usually a bit delayed.
Just remember to go slow, concentrate on one part at a time, upload often and have many different sized friends try it out :)
17. Frame 1 has changed from the default stance:
While I was making the Lindy Hop (all hand animated) for some unknown reason the first frame kept going all funky. I'd be working in the middle of it, try and play, and things just went odd. Luckily this is easy to fix: go to frame 1 -> edit drop down menu -> restore -> figure. Or just Shift + Ctrl + F.