Project Bento: Tasty Extended Skeleton for SL Avatars, Massive Leap for Avatar Expression and Enhancement

Bento! It's a delicious Japanese lunch box, and now, the code name for a delicious set of new Second Life avatar skeleton extensions (as seen above, as described below):

This extended skeleton, which is fully backward compatible with existing avatars, rigging and animation, gives creators the power to create more sophisticated avatars than ever before. The skeleton extensions include:

• 11 extra limb bones for wings, which could also be used for additional arms, or extra legs.

• 6 tail bones

• 30 bones in the hands

• 30 bones for facial expressions

• 2 other new bones in the head for animating ears or antennae

• 13 new attachment points associated with the new bones

Adeon Writer, who made sure I made sure to blog this, is duly freaking out:

I'm really floored. It's like... this is my wishlist from 2008... this update just gave Second Life at least 10 more years in the content making department. (Assuming nothing else makes the grid go down.)

Looks good to me. Offhand, seems like it'll be somewhat easier to make more expressive avatar performances for machinima. But the applications are endless. Especially because one of the adjustable bones is, well, THE bone. (See what I did there?) I'm just surprised Project Bento doesn't enable bent toe. (No really, you do see what I did there, right?)

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Comments

[lord]

I have seen some people comment that this proves that LL is committed to keeping SL going.

For me, I have seen this kind of rush to get things out before budget-end before with some other companies that wanted to dump what they had been working on for awhile just before the companies themselves went under or they closed/sold off the project (this is in reference to Oz's team pushing the various project viewers through at a seemingly break-neck speed compared to previous years ,combined with this gem of a feature that they must have been holding onto for awhile, while they get all their ducks in a row to make it workable...after making it a big deal just to get the couple of bones they added earlier...and all with a continuously dwindling R&D budget...it should be kind of alarming rather than reaffirming, if your a pessimist of SL's future.)

Yeah, yeah, I know...LL can't win, regardless, with some people...lol.

[irihapeti]

+1 like

+

could be that this new skeleton bones set is compatible with both SL and Sansar. If so then that would be pretty good

if so then +2 like

[P. Gibbs]

An actual feature people have been requesting since mesh day 1, pretty good I'd say (still waiting for a way to make rigged NPCs though...)

[zz bottom]

I see the poor use of materials due to lack of users using advanced light system, i see poor use of 60sec animations, as all still believe the max is 30sec ones.
And none of those improvements break any previous content.
let's really see how many will in fact work on it.

[Adeon Writer]

If you can please zz bottom, you know you're doing something right.

[Amanda Dallin]

LL seems to be accomplishing more with a smaller R&D team. Could it be that with fewer people having to approve every change they can get more done faster? Smaller more efficient teams often work better than large ones. I wouldn't doubt a lot of the work their doing is based on work that had been shelved in the past.

[pussycat catnap]

I am hoping this becomes a way to get fitmesh heads in, as well as animated tails...

And maybe a head that has no ears or has cat ears, so I can finally have an easier time of it as a neko...

I am instead expecting animated male genitalia because well... I've been hearing people bemoan the lack of ability to do that since I got to SL, and now they can...

[zz bottom]

I don't think they made a specific bone for that, nor for the foot.
https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Building-and-Texturing-Forum/Project-Bento-Feedback-Thread/td-p/2987290

[Iggy]

Them bones them bones. What IS the tail bone connected to?

[Rearview]

This is promising but I wonder if they are doing this for some sort of interoperability between SL and Sansar? Seems like a major overhaul.

[Clara Seller]

This is welcome news to lots of applause and excitement. I hope it sparks some really interesting development.

SL residents do welcome change when it's good.

[zz bottom]

Indeed we do and lets hope this will be fully implemented around 1st quarter of 2016