Nalates Urriah has some updates and thoughts on Project Bento, which promises to greatly extend the mobility and flexibility of Second Life avatars. The Lindens are holding in-world meetings with SL developers who are already showing off their Bento-made avatars -- including, apparently, this seriously cool avatar from Kennylex Luckless: Thing from The Addams Family! But the real question is just how, well, animated, an SL Thing could really be -- walking around in Second Life on fully articulated fingers? Because that would be awesome. (I've asked Urriah and Luckless that very thing, but so far no reply.) Though it looks like custom skeletons won't be possible in Bento:
There is also the idea of custom skeletons. That is VERY unlikely to happen. Vir explained why that is. As the system is designed now, the skeleton structure is stored in an XML file that is part of the viewer. So, if you were to make a custom skeleton, you would have to make a custom XML file and talk everyone into downloading and installing it. Then if I make a custom skeleton and have people download my XML file it would replace yours. What happens if your custom avatar and my custom avatar in the same place?
That doesn't necessarily preclude a Thing-like avatar, but it might prevent it Thing-like walking, or for that matter, Thing-like talking:
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Sorry to be slow answering...
The Thing is well animated and the fingers work like legs. Watching it hop and run was fascinating. It is awesome.
The new Bento does have fingers and the wings were intended to be moved around and used as extra legs or arms. Someone suggested using the wings for arms and using the arms and hands for wings so the fingers could control wing action. Another thought about using the fingers for legs and making a centipede...
Now that the Lab is thinking they MAY allow bone translation (relocation may be more descriptive) it would be possible to take the hand apart and use those bones for all sorts of stuff.
Expect more interesting things at the next meeting as Oz was thrilled at what he saw and asked more people to come for show and tell.
Posted by: Nalates | Friday, January 08, 2016 at 02:54 PM