So exciting XNA 3.1 has been released!!

Some questions came up on my mind directly while I'm downloading:
1. Is it possible to render the avatar in Windows?
2. Is it possible to get information about the avatar? Like how big is the head, body, etc2..
If that's possible, we can design a cloth/armor or put some accessories in the avatar.

Thanks!

-tep

You can download it??? Where are you? I'm on EST and I still can't download it. I'm jealous!

tep360:

1. Is it possible to render the avatar in Windows?

AFAIK, no.

tep360:

2. Is it possible to get information about the avatar? Like how big is the head, body, etc2..

It might be in the AvatarDescription.

tep360:

If that's possible, we can design a cloth/armor or put some accessories in the avatar.

That may or may not be allowed under the rules, but they're going to be released later in July so no one knows yet...

No to windows for sure... the code runs - its just does nothing.

There's some size info but its general - enough for collisions... you don't get any access to the actual mesh vertices so I imagine wrapping them in anything but a bounding sphere isn't going to work. You get access to the bones so you should be able to add a sword to a hand or make sure the feet collide with platforms but anything else is likely going to be guesswork and not very robust since people can change their avatars. You can serialise and therefor save a particular avatar so you could probably hard code something for a specific avatar...

UberGeekGames:

You can download it???

Download it from here : http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/32945.aspx

UberGeekGames:

You can download it??? Where are you? I'm on EST and I still can't download it. I'm jealous!

I'm on PST, just finish downloading! I guess the link given above will work.

Antoine:

UberGeekGames:

You can download it???

Download it from here : http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/32945.aspx

There were some problems for some people. I got it now, but I'll wait since there's now problems with the Xbox launcher.

I guess everything will get sorted out eventually.

tep360:

1. Is it possible to render the avatar in Windows?
2. Is it possible to get information about the avatar? Like how big is the head, body, etc2..
If that's possible, we can design a cloth/armor or put some accessories in the avatar.

Dean's blog has lots of good info about avatars.

Shawn,

Any information on the standard skeletal structure of Avatars?

Barkers Crest:

Any information on the standard skeletal structure of Avatars?

We're going to release a Maya skeleton rig at some point.

I don't know if we have any plans beyond that.

Seeing as how there's such tight integration between XNA and the Softimage ModTool, I'd expect an XSI Skeleton as well. And even if Microsoft or Softimage doesn't provide one, someone will make one.

Cheers!
Jeromy

You're going to get the bone information out of the avatar description, so worst case, I suppose you could write that data out with Trace() and create your own skeleton based on that data...

Shawn Hargreaves:

We're going to release a Maya skeleton rig at some point.

Some point = days, weeks, months?

I'm not trying to be rude or impatient at all. It's just the missing piece of the puzzle to all the great functionality we've been given.

The ZMan:

No to windows for sure... the code runs - its just does nothing.

so that means we can't test avatars without a 360?

sadface :(

You can use some bounding volumes around the skeleton. Or download a placeholder model and rig it. There is an SDK thread on Polycount's forums full of models to play around with for those purposes (just don't use them in your released games!)

UberGeekGames:

You can download it??? Where are you? I'm on EST and I still can't download it. I'm jealous!

tep360:

1. Is it possible to render the avatar in Windows?

AFAIK, no.

tep360:

2. Is it possible to get information about the avatar? Like how big is the head, body, etc2..

It might be in the AvatarDescription.

tep360:

If that's possible, we can design a cloth/armor or put some accessories in the avatar.

That may or may not be allowed under the rules, but they're going to be released later in July so no one knows yet...

you can get the height and the gender.

I would like to know (if possible) what render states are being changed (or potentially changed) when an avatar is drawn. Obviously things like shaders and vertex streams will be changing.
It'd help me a lot to know the render states changed and the maximum number of samplers that get modified, etc. (Unless internally it's all wrapped up in a state block... - I hate black box code!)

I guess I'm disappointed there is no Windows support. It makes sense, but I don't remember it officially being stated that it was xbox only.
It makes me wonder why other xbox specific features are not exposed (eg FP10).

Also, am I correct there are no movement animations, walking, etc?

To determine the render states which are changed just set a breakpoint before and after a call to AvatarRenderer.Draw and evaluate the GraphicsDevice render states.

The lack of Windows support shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Avatar support is part of GamerServices and LIVE, neither of which are included in the x86 redistributable of the XNA FX.

For the list of canned animations available look at AvatarAnimationPreset. You'll notice there's no animation other than general emotes such as clapping, yawning, laughing, etc... and then a few different idle poses. Anything game specific is going to require serializing the bones or obtaining a skeleton via Maya or ModTool when they're released and then creating your own skeletal animations.

Cheers!
Jeromy

Jeromy Walsh:

The lack of Windows support shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Avatar support is part of GamerServices and LIVE, neither of which are included in the x86 redistributable of the XNA FX.

More importantly avatars are only supported in the NXE. Even retail LIVE games on Windows don't have avatar support. That data lives on the Xbox 360.

Your render states should be preserved.

There are no built in movement animations. It would need to be done with a custom animation. We will have more information about custom animations in the future.

Daaark:

You can use some bounding volumes around the skeleton. Or download a placeholder model and rig it. There is an SDK thread on Polycount's forums full of models to play around with for those purposes (just don't use them in your released games!)

can you please show me the link to there? thank you very much

StatusUnknown:

I guess I'm disappointed there is no Windows support. It makes sense, but I don't remember it officially being stated that it was xbox only.

agree, it quite surprise me that it does not support on windows, because recently the game on windows that using Live seem are growing.
i think should at least provide sets of simple actual model or emulate for developers.



is it possible to get all local gamers' AvatarDescription instead of only the signed-in gamer ?

codetale:

StatusUnknown:

I guess I'm disappointed there is no Windows support. It makes sense, but I don't remember it officially being stated that it was xbox only.

agree, it quite surprise me that it does not support on windows, because recently the game on windows that using Live seem are growing.
i think should at least provide sets of simple actual model or emulate for developers.

Actually the more confusing aspect of Games for Windows - Live not supporting Avatars is this comment

XDK March 2009 Avatar SDK Readme:

Note that the joint and control names differ from those in the files included in the November 2008 XDK (a change required for cross-platform compatibility).

This would suggest that they know support is going to be added, but not yet... so why not? Just doesn't make sense.
Something else that doesn't make sense is the lack of Party Chat support on Windows.

Believe me I'm not blaming the XNA team for any of this at all, you don't control what Games for Windows - Live supports; but could you guys *** at the dept working on it?
Seriously it feels like as far as the community go they don't seem too bothered about what we have to say. It seems clear they don't really take GFWL seriously given that "application" they released to access the marketplace.

I mean seriously Windows Vista supports DirectX at the Kernel-level... they could've quite easily added support to have the GFWL support Marketplace in the actual marketplace and have it as an always over-lapping DirectX application so basically making it something that was always active whenever someone logged in. As for those on Windows XP, well given Windows 7 is what a year or so away... get with the dang times is what Microsoft should be saying rather than supporting them allowing them to cling feverously to an out-moded OS.

Oh which does bring up another thing, I'm guessing most of you guys at XNA aren't exactly artists. If you need help making the Avatar SDK more user-friendly or convert it over to Softimage ModTool, then send me a message. I mean I've got Maya 8.x and 2009 plus Softimage ModTool 7.5 plus the Avatar SDK (actually I have the entire AvatarAssetsPack too) so yeah if you need any help I'd be happy to lend a hand.

I know that have no Avatar support on Windows Live, but why not?

Leyvin:

I've got Maya 8.x and 2009 plus Softimage ModTool 7.5 plus the Avatar SDK (actually I have the entire AvatarAssetsPack too) so yeah if you need any help I'd be happy to lend a hand.

where to get the AvatarAssetsPack ?
is the AvatarAssetsPack contain the model that use in NXE?
can we use that in windows as testing purpose?
so that we can much more easy to test the avatar while developing, specially creating custom animation/movement for the avatar,
also we can know how it look in our game without testing it on xbox360 each tiny tune.

thank you

codetale:

where to get the AvatarAssetsPack ?
is the AvatarAssetsPack contain the model that use in NXE?

Its part of the XDK which only licensed developers get and shouldn't be being discussed in here

Leyvin:

I've got Maya 8.x and 2009 plus Softimage ModTool 7.5 plus the Avatar SDK (actually I have the entire AvatarAssetsPack too) so yeah if you need any help I'd be happy to lend a hand.

You might want to read the T&C of your XDK agreement... many things are not supposed to be talked about in public and it might not be a good thing for you or your employer to do so.

While I completely understand the lack of complete Avatar support in XNA for Windows, I would have thought it prudent to include some sort of debug renderer (draws bounding boxes, or wireframe simple "default" avatar) so writing Xbox code and testing on Windows 1st was easier. I think making the API available but simply doing nothing doesnt really help anyone :(

Why don't you write a wrapper for the Avatar classes, that wraps everything in #if PC blocks. If it's in PC then it would draw wireframe bones of where the Avatar's bones matrix would be, and if it's on the Xbox then it would continue as normal. That probably wouldn't be too difficult to do and would solve a lot of problems without having to bug the XNA Team.