Creating Animations in QAvimator

QAvimator is a powerful and easy to use program, developed by Zi Ree and based on Vince Invincible's Avimator. QAvimator is a BVH editor which you can use to create animations for Second Life. You can download QAvimator for FREE from the QAvimator web site.

To get started using QAvimator, let's take a look at the interface. (These screenshots are taken from Windows. QAvimator is also available for MacOSX and Linux.)



Across the very top of the QAvimator window we have the program and current file names. Then the menus. File and Edit are fairly generic and self-explanatory, and the Help menu commands aren't fully functional yet, but the Options menu contains some choices of particular interest to us as 3D animators.



  1. Selecting Skeleton will turn on the green dots (representing our model's joints) and the lines (representing our model's skeleton). This can be a useful visual reminder of the model's kinematic chains.

  2. Selecting Joint Limits will constrain the maximum rotation of each of the model's joints on each axis to within what are taken to be reasonable anthropomorphic norms. If you turn off Joint Limits, you can contort the model into some pretty nasty shapes such as the one shown in the inset top right. Inverse Kinematics requires the use of Joint Limits (but the IK feature in QAvimator is currently broken). So long as you are working with Forward Kinematics, you can work with Joint Limits off if you choose - and use your own common sense to determine maximum rotations for each joint. (I personally find the joint limits built into the program to be a little too restrictive -- but I practice yoga regularly and have the flexibility of someone 30 years my junior.)

  3. Selecting Loop will cause your animation to loop during playback in QAvimator. This is a local setting only and does NOT affect how your animation will play back in Second Life.

  4. Selecting Protect First Frame will lock the first frame of your animation into the standard T-Pose. This is probably a good idea as the first frame of your animation is used by SL as a reference point. It is not displayed in your animation in-world.

  5. Selecting Show Timeline will display the timeline for your animation (as shown in the inset bottom right) below the staging area. This is a useful feature for allowing you to quickly see an overview of your animation and identify which body parts have key frames set in which frames. Key frames designated by arrows indicated that movement is occurring for that body part from that frame in one direction only -- the direction to which the arrow points. Key frames designated by boxes indicate that movement is occurring for that body part on either side of the key frame. Key frames designated by circles indicate that a key frame has been set for that body part but that it is in the same position in this frame as it is in the key frames on either side. You can turn this off if you need to see a larger stage.


Below the menus, QAvimator has a row of icons. Most of these duplicate options from the File and Edit menus, with the exception of the final icon on the right, the shaded blue figure, which resets the camera view of the stage to the default view. Let's take a look at the stage now and how we can move around in it.

Camera Controls


This is where our model is going to perform all of the contortions we put her through.

Click anywhere on the stage floor (but NOT on the model) and drag your mouse while holding down the appropriate modifier key to adjust your view of the stage. QAvimator has kept the same modifier keys as we use in Second Life to make camera adjustments -- although QAvimator is simpler than SL in that it only ever requires us to use one key at a time.

Alt + mouse to Zoom
Ctrl + mouse to Orbit
Shift + mouse to Pan

If you click on the floor and drag your mouse without any modifier key, it has the same effect as Ctrl + mouse (orbiting).

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