Animator Manual

AnyPose Animator v1.8

AnyPose Animator works in conjunction with AnyPose BVH to create multi-frame animations.

If you have not read the AnyPose BVH Help page, please start there. This document assumes you understand how the main HUD works.

Before creating an animation, you should determine if the Hip Height will need to be set. Once an animation is started, Hip Height can not be changed. If your animation will involve doing a ground sit, doing handstands, or anything that "interacts" with the ground, setting the Hip Height before starting is important. These types of animations may only look right for avatars that are the same size or similar to yours. For example, a ground sit animation made for a tall avatar might cause a shorter avatar to sink into the ground. To set the hip height, load the default pose on the pose stand by clicking Reset Pose, use the up/down movement controls to move your avatar's feet until they just touch the ground, and then touch the "Set Hip Height" button on the HUD.

While creating an animation, I recommend that you use the same person for the entire animation. If you change people or avatar shapes, you may cause yourself confusion, as hands and feet will not be in the same positions as frames recorded previously with a different avatar shape.

Creating animations is a time consuming task, especially complex animations. One suggestion I can offer to make your animations look more realistic and less robotic is to move more joints than you think you need to. For example: If you are making an animation to draw a sword, animate more than just the arm. Move the abdomen a little... move the other arm a little... the more you move, the more realistic it looks. Practice doing the animation yourself in real-life and you will realize that an action as simple as drawing a sword involves your whole body. If you animate just your arm, the illusion may be lost.

Another suggestion is to watch a video on Youtube of the action you are trying to recreate. Pause the video, and then use the . key to advance through the video. Instead of trying to recreate every frame, try tapping the . key 5 times between each pose you try to recreate. Tapping 5 times works out to a setting of 6 FPS in AnyPose Animator for a 30FPS Youtube clip.

To help further reduce the robotic look of animations, remember that, like a pendulum, movements slow down before they reverse direction. For a walking animation, that equates to having a couple animations close together before the legs reverse their direction. Load the library walk animation and step through it to see an example of this.

Setup

Wear both the AnyPose BVH HUD, and the AnyPose Animator HUD. If you don't already have a pose stand rezzed, rez one from the AnyPose BVH HUD. Make sure both HUDs and the pose stand are set to the same stand number (1-9.)

How it works

AnyPose Animator records frames from the AnyPose BVH Pose stand. It requires the BVH pose stand, and will not work with an AnyPose Basic or AnyPose Demo pose stand. Once you have completed your animation, the Save BVH button on the animation HUD presents you with a link to the web site where you can download your animation.

The controls

• Filename display area

Touch to set the name of the animation. This area is also used to display informational and warning messages.

• FPS (Frames Per Second)

This specifies how quickly the frames are played in the final BVH file. It can be set from 1 to 30 FPS. The higher you set it, the more frames (poses) you have to create to achieve the same length animation. Even at very low frame rates, the Second Life viewer will fill in between your recorded frames to create a smooth animation. Experiment, you may find that you can accomplish a satisfactory animation with very few frames.

• Loop

Enable the loop feature if your animation is intended to play in a loop. Disable if your animation is intended to play once and stop on its own.

• 1-9

Select which stand you want to record frames from. An avatar must be on the stand with the matching number before you can record frames.

• Sync

An advanced feature to support multiple AnyPose Animator HUDs. If you wish to create multi-person animations, you can make copies of the Animation HUD in your inventory, and wear multiple Animation HUDs on different attachment points. You can set each to record from a different pose stand, and by having the Sync button selected on the Animation HUDs, commands like Step, First/Last and moving the insertion point will affect all HUDs simultaneously. This makes it possible to easily see interactions between two or more avatars as you build the animations for both.

• Playhead

This is the horizontal bar that shows the position within your animation with a diamond. If you have 2 or more frames recorded, you can grab the diamond and drag it to change where you are in the animation.

• Record

The current avatar pose is recorded from the pose stand to the insertion point. You can change hand poses as you create the animation, and the hand will be animated as well. Facial expressions or eye positions are not recored. The current limit is 320 frames or 60 seconds, whichever comes first.

• Replace

The current pose that the avatar is in replaces the current frame at the insertion point. Only works if there is at least one frame recorded. Watch the text area of the HUD (where the file name is normally displayed) to see confirmation of the replacement.

• Step Forward/Step Back

Moves the playhead forward or back one frame and plays the recorded frame back to the pose stand.

• First/Last

Move the playhead to the First/Last frame of the animation.

• Delete Frame

Delete the current frame at the playhead position.

• Delete ALL

Delete ALL frames in the HUD. Make sure you have a backup of your animation if you intend to come back to it.

• Suggest Tween

If you have at least 2 frames recorded, you can ask the Animation HUD to suggest a pose that is half way between the current frame and the next. This can be handy to fill in an animation, or slow it down where needed. It will use the current frame and next frame for the tween.

• Set Name

Touch to set the name of the animation. The name is used when saving the animation.

• Cloud Save

Save the animation to Cloud Memory. If they name already exists, a warning is presented asking if you want to overwrite the existing save.

• Save BVH

Your animation is sent to an outworld website and assembled into a BVH file that you can download. You will be prompted with a link to download your creation. When you visit the link, your BVH file is presented for download along with suggestions for Ease In, and Loop parameters. Notice: The website does not keep your animations. They are deleted within hours of pressing the "Save BVH" button, so make sure to download them before clearing out your Animation HUD. I have no way to recover lost animations.

• List Frames (No longer a button, but is available when clicking "Total Frames"

All frames currently stored in the HUD are listed in sequence. The format they are listed in is intended for the old AnyPose Player, but may still be of use for other purposes.