The only differences between "regular" RenderWare objects and avatars are that avatars (avs) have transform and tag commands for articulation/joint rotation/limb movement, and they can have extensive hierarchial clumping. I don't have much experience with making extensively hierarchial, articulated avatars, so I'll just provide information I've collected about it. In addition to what is below, refer to Grover's Avatar Walk-Through , and the Hierarchical Modeling section of the Criterion RenderWare API documentation.

Some viewers allow joint rotation.

Avatar Collision Detection

Most of this information isn't organized well, so email the appropriate authors if you have any questions about it. If I ever get more experienced with some of these things, I'll try and reformat this information so it's easier to understand and follow. If anyone would like to do this instead, let me know and I'll add it here. At any rate, I've done some minor editing, with major additions in brackets ([]):

Eye Level

Roland: "'Eye level' for an avatar is 10% of the total height of the avatar down from its top. It's been this way for years. The origin of the avatar does not affect the location of eye level, only its height. While this logic has not changed in [AW3], the algorithm to calculate the height of an avatar model has (this code had to be completely re-written with the change to RenderWare 3). It turns out there was a bug in the [AW 2.2] object-height-calculation code that was producing incorrect heights for some objects and avatars (I forget exactly why now)...so the fact that [AW3] should get the true height correct in all cases now means the eye-level position might shift slightly from [AW 2.2] to [AW3] for some avatars."

Conversion

From Shamus Young, regarding trueSpace:

"I have been converting some new avatars made in trueSpace and have found a few new things out:

For the 'new' avatars currently in use in [AWGate world], we made an avatar, converted each part seperately, dropped the parts into an existing avatar, and then fiddled with the translate commands to get the joints in the right place. This was even more time consuming than it sounds.

Converting directly never worked because the joints would go haywire, the heierarchy would be a mess, and some joints didn't work at all. After messing around with the process for a while I found out some interesting facts:

• Part of the problem is COBTORWX - it seems that it will ignore the last joint in a chain - so if you had hip, knee, ankle - after conversion your ankle joint would be gone. Annoying.
• trueSpace seems to have the bizzare habit of giving the axis of the lowest clump to the object above it in the hierarchy. You have to glue things "bottom-up", so to make a leg you would glue in this order: Foot + LowerLeg + UpperLeg. When you were done the leg would have the axis at the ankle. Move down one level and you will see the knee's axis is in the ankle now as well. Very annoying.
• trueSpace also gets confused when you glue stuff as sibling - glue two legs together and all of one leg will be siblings with the top of the other. Even more annoying.
• For some reason the topmost clump in an avatar seems to not be attached to the rest of the av. The topmost clump will not bob with the avatar as it walks and will look unnatuaral. (Although this may be good for creating some sort of special effect.)
From Grover, regarding the above bullet: "I can't speak for the other problems, but this is an idiosyncracy with the way AW handles avatar movements. You need to leave the upper-most clump open so that AW can rotate the avatar with respect to the camera angle. I've had avatars locked onto the [north-south]-axis because of this- makes for a great effect, but it's very odd to look at. ;-) I can't be sure without looking at the animation code, but it appears to overwrite any tags in the first clump with this transform before passing it along to the rendering engine. I suspect that if you'd bracket the base clump with a clumpbegin/clumpend that this would be fixed... It happens with notepad [avatars] too. Oh, and I'm told Dataman mastered the art of direct conversion from [trueSpace] -> rwx without the need for any post-conversion tweaking at all... Maybe you could squeeze a hint or two from him ;-)"

My goal is to be able to build an avatar completely in truespace and then simply convert it and add the tag numbers and have it work in AW. Here is one method:

In order to get around the way COBTORWX drops joints you need to add a "dummy" joint at the end of each chain. So, if you were making a leg you would create some bogus extra object (say a cube) and stick it on the bottom. You would then glue them in this order: DummyCube + Foot + LowerLeg + UpperLeg

You would do the same for the arms and the other leg - start with a dummycube and glue your way up.

Do the same with the head: DummyCube, Head, Neck

Now you want want to take these seperate limbs and stick them on the body - but they must be siblings. You can't have any of the limbs UNDER any of the others, or crazy things will happen. Again, you will need a dummy cube. I think it works if you glue like this (glue as SIBLING this time!):

Dummycube + RLeg + LLeg + RArm + LArm + Head

Now take this new group of limbs and glue it (as a child) to the body.

Once you have it all together you need to go down though the ENTIRE object and fix all those axis that Truespace messed up. All the joints in your left leg will be in the left ankle, all the joints in the right arm will be in the right wrist. Move all the axis into place and make sure you have named each body part something usefull so you know what's what after conversion.

Now glue the whole thing to one last dummycube (so the dummy cube will the the topmost clump) and then you're (hopefully) ready to convert.

After you convert it you will need to go through and add the avatar tags, and remove the dummy cubes - if all went well, the av should work.

This still does not allow for a waist, and I havn't gotten that to work properly yet. I am just putting this info out there in case anyone else is messing around with this process, or if anyone else has gotten this to work. Would be SO much better if we could get a simple, well-documented way to convert directly from [trueSpace] to [Active Worlds]."

Actions/Animations/Gestures/Sequences (SEQs)

In Active Worlds, avatar actions/animations/gestures/sequences (SEQs) are what avatars do when they walk, wait/idle, and when one of the buttons in the toolbar (, etc) is pressed. (Hopefully this will change to a pull-down menu some day, since having too many SEQs causes the buttons to overlap the right edge of the screen and get cut off.) More specifically, according to Grover, SEQs record what transforms are affecting which tag/clump at any time.

SEQ is the file extension of the actions/animations/gestures/sequences and are found in the Active Worlds SEQ cache directories (C:\Program Files\Active Worlds\cache\art\<world object path>\seq, or wherever Active Worlds is installed).

There are now a few ways to create a SEQ-format file. Life Forms, by Credo Interactive Incorporated, used to be the only known program that can do SEQ files, but XelaG's SEQ viewer/editor, Accutrans, and HamFon's COB Dump can also edit them. If you know of any other programs that can, email me. While the full version of Life Forms cost hundreds of dollars, the demo version (at least version 2.1 anyway) can/could export up to 5 frames, but it needs(ed) the SEQ import/export DLLs (47K/ZIP) to do it. Just put them in the Life Forms plug-in directory (C:\Program Files\Credo\Life Forms Demo\Plug-ins, or wherever Life Forms is installed) and SEQ format import/export ability should appear in the File | Open... and File | Export menus as "seqout .seq". Supposedly Life Forms 3 (which I haven't tried yet) has this functionality built-in so the import/export DLLs shouldn't be necessary with it.

Credo used to have some avatars and SEQs for AW called Active Avatars . Email them and maybe they'll make them available again.

From Grover:

I've been talking with Richard Campbell and Sang Mah [from Credo Interactive] on getting animations to work with Active Worlds... So far I've had pretty good luck, but I'm still having problems with some of the more complicated functions—like full body rotations and translations. Sometimes what I thought was a rotation ends up being animated as a translation in Active Worlds, other times the avatar just dissappears when I run the SEQ file. I agree with Athena on her point tho—if Life Forms could import a RWX avatar as a model, and export a SEQ with the proper names, all would be happy!! <g> It's tough to do actions with non-humanoid characters, or even humanoid characters since the default Life Forms model differs slightly but significantly from most Active Worlds models. And it would ease conversion by letting us save directly into SEQ rather than the roundabout method we've been using... You might even be able to sell copies of Life Forms for people just wanting to convert to/from RWX and Biovision or 3DS, hehe. I'd be happy to help you translate the Active Worlds-oriented RWX file if you'd like. :) Pam Forth and Derek Upham [the people who originally created the SEQs for Active Worlds back when Worlds, Incorporated owned it] might remember a bunch of RenderWare pointers too, but i'm sure you've talked to them too. ;-)

Anyhow, heres a quick rehash of a .lfa -> .seq [Life Forms format file to SEQ format file] method I emailed a few people about 2 months ago when we first figured it out. Good luck. :)

To create a Life Forms file, press "new human figure" or load an old animation. You'll need to be able to see 3 windows: Stage, Timeline and Figure Editor. Be sure you can see all 3 easily, it may mean resizing...

When you can see the figure, click on a limb, it will be highlighted. You can then drag it with the mouse, or use the four arrow key buttons/two globes if you need finer control. You can click on any of the views in the smaller windows and that will bring up that view in the main window to use.

The timeline is what ultimately controls the animation. Life Forms will connect the red figure positions cleanly and internally, whether they are adjacent or not: example, you leave frame 1 as the default standing straight up. You drag the mouse over it and copy, and paste it again in frame 11.  Then, in frame 11 you move the right arm up. Press the play button, and Life Forms fills in the 10 blank spaces with incremental movements when it exports to SEQ. If you had placed the right arm up in frame 2, when you export to SEQ, it will flash between down and up in Active Worlds... But in the demo we are limited to 5 frames, so this is unavoidable. :(

To export to an Active Worlds-compatible SEQ file, you need to load an existing SEQ. Be careful what SEQ you select, because some have been run through a program called LIMBCVT.EXE [Limb Convert?] to get rid of extraneous limbs, and may be missing the leg tags, arm tags, etc. and that info will be lost. Others have the other extreme, and include extraneous tags that coincide with the default Life Form ones. So if you choose wrong, when you go to cut+paste, either no box will pop up, or it will pop up missing a few limbs... I randomly discovered that DREDD3.SEQ includes all the proper limbs (and a few extra harmless ones), but you'll probably want to adjust the frame rate. To prepare the SEQ file, delete all the red boxes. When these are deleted, Life Forms will allow you to decrease the # of frames. We need < 5. When the # of frames are decreased, go into "frame rate" and change to whatever you want for your example.

Use the mouse to select and copy the timeline of your original animation. Bring up the SEQ timeline and paste the frames into it. A dialog box should come up prompting you to associate the Active Worlds limb names with Life Forms limbs. NOTE: not all limbs in Life Forms can translate. For instance—you'll notice a red torso and a blue torso piece. Which one you use is up to you depending the geometry of the avatar you're using, but its important you keep this in mind when you make the animation because if you move both the red+blue in your animation, one of those limb movements will be lost in the translation... Same with the shoulders in Life Forms—built into Active Worlds arms, and of course fingers and toes... And also remember that the Life Forms guy is facing you—i.e. his left is your right. ;-) Could cause problems, hehe."

Table 2: Limb Naming & Tag Declaration

Tag	SEQ	LifeForms	Alternate		Note: "?" limb names provided by Netropolis and XelaG; their use depends on SEQ (not all SEQs use all tags). Grover (continued): "There are sometimes other odd names in SEQ files; you'll see "Left Hip" and "chest" frequently, but only the above [SEQ] names will actually translate. But if you so mess up and accidentally associate "chest" with upper back, don't worry—it won't hurt anything. :) Life Forms should save these associations so if you're lucky you'll only hafta do it once! From there, you can just ["Save As..."], and bring that right into Active Worlds as a brand spanking new SEQ animation!! The dialog box which lets you associate the SEQ names with LFA limbs only pops up if there are unknown limbs, but requires all the existing limb names. But there's a problem: some of the GRAY*.SEQs have all the limb names, and never pop up this box, while others have been optimized for just a limb or two (i.e. the wave) so your animation would only affect the right arm, for instance. In the model I used, DREDD3.SEQ, there were also a couple extraneous parts... But for your information, these should be the correct limb names when you convert: [see Table 2] With all left stuff beginning with "lf"—if its spelled out as 'left' or 'right' in the animation, it probably won't be work too well... But also remember this when you make animations! Life Forms gives about 4 bends to the trunk of the body while Active Worlds has only two—you can associate any of the individual 'torso' pieces with 'torso' in Active Worlds, but make sure that's the one you moved to begin with. ;-) And don't bother with the fingers or toes, but I think that goes without saying..." From Andon/Susan Coleman: Make your animation. Import a pre-made SEQ. Copy your original animation onto the SEQ. (Hint, the SEQ should always be a box. Otherwise it won't work right.) When it comes up with a screen with a list of body parts in the middle, match it up with the parts on the Original Actor. E.G. (Sternum = Upper Back, Clavicle = Neck, Thorax = Lower Back, and so on...) Go to File | Export, and save it as a SEQ, and your done. Grover: "I think I've finally made a sort of breakthrough in SEQ generation! So far, all the files I've made have been plagued by erratic translations and rotations. This may be due to concessions made during the original coding to make walking SEQs easier to integrate, but I'm not sure. What I did discover was that the little "x" that annoyingly comes up in the blank timeline bar locks the SEQ in place when its converted! So, if we leave that x in, and lock it to 0.00/0.00, our avatar now stays put as it flails out the poorly constructed newbie animations. :) I'm still trying to figure out what the buttons do—setting the first "x" value to 1.00, the avatar moved slightly to the left. Setting the arrow to 1.00, the avatar moved up and to the left? (It's hard to see which direction it's moving from 3rd person). Changing the circle to 45.00 had no apparent affect on the imported SEQ. But this is OK, since we have full rotational control over the pelvis, which accomplishes the same thing. All the SEQ files I've been talking about are up in Guild [world] right now on the "grover" avatar, if you want to check 'em out..." Regarding animal avatar tags: "The actual SEQ file is very generic; it only records what transforms are affecting which tag/clump at any time. AW doesn't care where you place the tag, it will move the tag/clump as recorded in the SEQ file. You needn't put tag 4 on the head, for example. If your avatar was a headless man with a pumpkin in his hand, you could instead use that tag for the pumpkin clump. Any sequences that you saved for tag 4 (ie, head) would be played on that clump. For example, on one avatar I did, I placed a man in a hovercraft which freed up 6 leg tags. I placed the torso tag onto the entire hovercraft, and used one of the foot tags on a turret to make the turret animated. It worked out pretty good :) So yes, if you can visualize these transforms when you're making the SEQ file, it shouldn't be too difficult to use the human arm tags for an animal's front limbs." XelaG's SEQ file format specs
1	pelvis	Pelvis	pelvis/hips
2	back	U/L Back?	back/chest/torso
3	neck	Neck	neck
4	head	Head	head
5	rtsternum	?	right sternum
6	rtshoulder	R U Arm	right shoulder/ upper arm
7	rtelbow	R Forearm	right elbow/ forearm/ lower arm
8	rtwrist	R Hand	right hand/ wrist
9	rtfingers	?	right fingers
10	lfsternum	?	left sternum
11	lfshoulder	L U Arm	left shoulder/ upper arm
12	lfelbow	L Forearm	left elbow/ forearm/ lower arm
13	lfwrist	L Hand	left hand/ wrist
14	lffingers	?	left fingers
15	rthip	R Thigh	right hip/ thigh/ upper leg
16	rtknee	R Knee	right knee/ shin/ lower leg
17	rtankle	R Foot	right ankle/ foot
18	rttoes	?	right toes
19	lfhip	L Thigh	left hip/ thigh/ upper leg
20	lfknee	L Knee	left knee/ shin/ lower leg
21	lfankle	L Foot	left ankle/ foot
22	lftoes	?	left toes
23	neck2	?	neck
24	tail	?	tail
25	tail2	?	tail
26	tail3	?	tail
27	tail4	?	tail
28	obj	?	?
29	obj2	?	?
30	obj3	?	?
31	hair	?	hair
32	hair2	?	hair
33	hair3	?	hair
34	hair4	?	hair
35	rtbreast	?	right breast
36	lfbreast	?	left breast
37	rteye	?	right eye
38	lfeye	?	left eye
39	lips	?	lips
40	nose	?	nose
41	rtear	?	right ear
42	lfear	?	left ear

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