This issue is specifically about Avatar Body Skeleton Animations. Not Bento, not Animesh, not Custom Avatars.

 

Second Life's avatar body skeleton is not simple. It is a layered beast that carries a lot of information. From creating your own shape, animation, attachment system, to rigging clothes, it is the core of your avatar exsistance in many ways.

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The Bento system introduced many additions to the skeleton. And while the rigging layer of the body skeleton went through some changes, the animation layer of the skeleton has never changed.

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You see, LL has to be very careful when introducing changes, and so far, they have done that part of the job very well. At the moment of implementing Bento to the grid, new bones in the Avatar Body Animation Skeleton would have broken already existing animations. So they kept the existing body animation skeleton and only added to it.

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However, on other layers, new bones exist, for example for rigging purposes. They can be animated and exported and imported to the grid as animations. But they are not supported as Avatar Body Animation Skeleton animation bones, so they will break and deform the avatar.

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Default/Inbuilt animations

 

I don't think we were aware of the importance of default animations until Bento was introduced. At that moment, when we were starting to see stuck faces, it became clear that the system of default animations has a more important purpose than just animating our avatar. Running quietly in the background, they are holding the skeleton in a tight place, resetting the bones and preventing any of them from hanging out in the void once you switch animations.

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So if some random bones have been used for Avatar Body Skeleton animation, there is absolutely nothing that will put them back in place.

 

Unfortunately, additional Bento bones never got such a support system. We went through a period of stuck bones in their last position and creating workarounds for controlling them. So, if you remember those problems, the effect of animating unsupported body bones will make sense.

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Body bones hanging in the void

 

The main problem with unsupported Avatar Body  Bones is that they do not show in animation while running. Those bones are animated. They are working. At first glance, nothing is wrong.

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But as soon as you switch to an animation using proper bones, you will notice something is out of place. Those unsupported bones will just hang in the void, stuck in their last position, with nothing to control them, and they will deform your avatar.

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The deformation appears only after switching to any other properly made animation. As a result, the animation causing the problem is often not the one that gets blamed.

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The only way out of those deformations is either to manually reset the skeleton (a local reset visible only to you) or to relog (a full reset visible to everybody).

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Naturally, you will think something is wrong with the current animation and contact the creator, who will not have answers for you. This is the moment when badly made animations end up ruining the reputation of people who are following the rules.

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Second Life is not an environment where all participants in the same space can agree on new rules. Like street traffic in real life, the system depends on consistent rules to keep everything functioning. Without them, the system becomes unpredictable and confusing. And once that happens, it is very difficult to determine where the real problem actually starts.

 

Therefor:

 

Appeal to animators

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Dear colleagues,

As tempting as it is to have four spine bones instead of two, please do not use unsupported Avatar Body Bones in your work. It is damaging to the world of animations, your colleagues, and your customers.

 

Appeal to customers

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Dear customers,

Before contacting the animation creator, make sure you first identified the source of the animation problem..