This FAQ was written and is maintained by a third-party entity, Scorpius (Aiorii Resident). This FAQ makes no claim of official accuracy, endorsement, nor condoning by Genesis Lab. Please direct all questions regarding this FAQ to Scorpius.
What is The Bento Project?
The Bento Project is an expansion made to the avatars in Second Life. To best explain what it is and how it works (and thus, why it matters to you), it makes sense to explain the workings behind the avatar system before it arrived, briefly, before talking about bento itself in comparison.
Avatars Before Bento
An Avatar in Second Life consists of a body object that is attached to a virtual skeleton. This virtual skeleton is made up of bones, which form the individual connection points to tie an object to the skeleton. If you think of an avatar like a puppet, then the bones are like the strings which can make the puppet move when the string moves, because they are tied together.
The process of connecting an object to the skeleton through each of the basic bones (and a few extra attachment points) is called rigging. This is the process that allows you to animate your avatar, because animations move the bones which then moves the objects that have been rigged to them. It's a straight forward concept, but the technicalities of implementing the concept are a bit less so, and are beyond the scope of this explanation.
Once you have a mesh object, like a body, for instance, rigged to the skeleton, then you can animate your body through bone animations. But what if you want to change how the body looks using the shape sliders that were used in the original avatar bodies? Then you need a bit more information about these bones in the form of a collision volume around each of the bones.
If you think of the bones as having a balloon around them, then the shape sliders can control how much air is in each ballon -- making the space around the bone bigger or smaller -- which then makes say, your body fat greater or lower on your avatar. If your mesh object (body) is also connected to the balloons, then you can use the shape sliders to "fit" your body, hence why these kinds of mesh objects were called "fitted mesh".
So we have a bone system to animate us and collision volumes (balloons) to change our body shape. Here is where we see the limitations, however, of using the fitted mesh system.
With our replacement body parts, they are dependent upon the bones and collision volumes for everything, so if there isn't a bone or collision volume available to attach to, then that part can't be animated or changed with sliders. So, how many bones or collision volumes did we have available for our heads and hands? One bone/collision volume for each.
That's right. One bone/collision volume for your head, one for your right hand and one for your left hand. This means that before bento, you could change three sliders for your head (one for each of the three dimensions of the collision object) -- the Head Size, the Head Stretch, and the Head Length, and you could change one slider for your hands (changes all three dimensions at once to keep your hands looking like hands) -- the Hand Size. That's it. That's all you could change about your attached mesh head or mesh hands. Without any more bones, you could not even do a simple thing like animate a blink using the simple animations that the old avatars could use!
The old non-attachment style "system" avatars could use all of the sliders and had animations for the fingers and blinking and even opening the mouth and sticking out your tongue. The mesh attachment bodies prior to bento could do none of those things because there simply weren't enough bones to give them that kind of animation flexibility, and this is all because the attachments are not the same as the system body, because well... they are attachments and weren't meant to be replacements for the body, originally.
The process of connecting an object to the skeleton through each of the basic bones (and a few extra attachment points) is called rigging. This is the process that allows you to animate your avatar, because animations move the bones which then moves the objects that have been rigged to them. It's a straight forward concept, but the technicalities of implementing the concept are a bit less so, and are beyond the scope of this explanation.
Once you have a mesh object, like a body, for instance, rigged to the skeleton, then you can animate your body through bone animations. But what if you want to change how the body looks using the shape sliders that were used in the original avatar bodies? Then you need a bit more information about these bones in the form of a collision volume around each of the bones.
If you think of the bones as having a balloon around them, then the shape sliders can control how much air is in each ballon -- making the space around the bone bigger or smaller -- which then makes say, your body fat greater or lower on your avatar. If your mesh object (body) is also connected to the balloons, then you can use the shape sliders to "fit" your body, hence why these kinds of mesh objects were called "fitted mesh".
So we have a bone system to animate us and collision volumes (balloons) to change our body shape. Here is where we see the limitations, however, of using the fitted mesh system.
With our replacement body parts, they are dependent upon the bones and collision volumes for everything, so if there isn't a bone or collision volume available to attach to, then that part can't be animated or changed with sliders. So, how many bones or collision volumes did we have available for our heads and hands? One bone/collision volume for each.
That's right. One bone/collision volume for your head, one for your right hand and one for your left hand. This means that before bento, you could change three sliders for your head (one for each of the three dimensions of the collision object) -- the Head Size, the Head Stretch, and the Head Length, and you could change one slider for your hands (changes all three dimensions at once to keep your hands looking like hands) -- the Hand Size. That's it. That's all you could change about your attached mesh head or mesh hands. Without any more bones, you could not even do a simple thing like animate a blink using the simple animations that the old avatars could use!
The old non-attachment style "system" avatars could use all of the sliders and had animations for the fingers and blinking and even opening the mouth and sticking out your tongue. The mesh attachment bodies prior to bento could do none of those things because there simply weren't enough bones to give them that kind of animation flexibility, and this is all because the attachments are not the same as the system body, because well... they are attachments and weren't meant to be replacements for the body, originally.
What Bento Changed
So what is bento? The Bento Project is an updated avatar skeleton that includes many new bones. So how many? Well, the original avatar skeleton had 21 bones/collision volumes that you could animate (with five more that you couldn't), and a total of 32 attachment points to use. The Bento Project has increased the number of bones to 206. Instead of a single head bone for controlling everything on your head, the skeleton now includes an additional 46 facial bones. There are now bones for your eyelashes, four different points on your eyebrows, etc.
So what do all these additional bones do? They give you the ability to control your attached mesh head through the shape sliders again. They also give you the ability to animate your head by moving the bones, just like you can do for your body, and just like you could do for the original avatar body. If you don't like how your face looks, you can go into the sliders and change aspects of it. Eyes too small? Change the Eye Size slider. Nose too big? Change the Nose Size slider, etc. Want to stick out your tongue to people? You can animate that now. Instead of only one bone for your hand, you now have 15 bones in your hand, which means your fingers can move!
This is why any mesh that has been rigged to this new skeleton, the bento skeleton, is so exciting! It takes more work to rig the mesh now, however, and to also set up and create animations, but the results are worth it -- you can change what your face looks like with the sliders in your shape! Any mesh item rigged to the bento skeleton will also respond to the changes you make in your shape, so your bento eyes and bento ears will move and resize when you make your head bigger or smaller, etc. No more trying to put everything in place!
There are many more topics we could dive into now about how the meshes are made and what exactly you can do, but this page was simply meant to explain the concept and give you a taste of bento -- not the whole meal. I hope this quick detour into the behind the scenes world of avatar creation has given you a good feeling about the bento project and what all these new items marked bento are on about.
So what do all these additional bones do? They give you the ability to control your attached mesh head through the shape sliders again. They also give you the ability to animate your head by moving the bones, just like you can do for your body, and just like you could do for the original avatar body. If you don't like how your face looks, you can go into the sliders and change aspects of it. Eyes too small? Change the Eye Size slider. Nose too big? Change the Nose Size slider, etc. Want to stick out your tongue to people? You can animate that now. Instead of only one bone for your hand, you now have 15 bones in your hand, which means your fingers can move!
This is why any mesh that has been rigged to this new skeleton, the bento skeleton, is so exciting! It takes more work to rig the mesh now, however, and to also set up and create animations, but the results are worth it -- you can change what your face looks like with the sliders in your shape! Any mesh item rigged to the bento skeleton will also respond to the changes you make in your shape, so your bento eyes and bento ears will move and resize when you make your head bigger or smaller, etc. No more trying to put everything in place!
There are many more topics we could dive into now about how the meshes are made and what exactly you can do, but this page was simply meant to explain the concept and give you a taste of bento -- not the whole meal. I hope this quick detour into the behind the scenes world of avatar creation has given you a good feeling about the bento project and what all these new items marked bento are on about.
If you'd like to go down the rabbit hole...
For more information (a whole lot more), it's worth looking through these four references to see exactly what new bones are now available to avatars, because each one can have mesh rigged to it and can be animated:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Project_Bento_Skeleton_Guide
https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/Introducing-Project-Bento-New-Bones-Added-to-Second-Life-Avatar/ba-p/2987206
https://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Enhanced-Skeleton-Project-Bento/ta-p/2975160
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Project_Bento_Testing
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Project_Bento_Skeleton_Guide
https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/Introducing-Project-Bento-New-Bones-Added-to-Second-Life-Avatar/ba-p/2987206
https://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Enhanced-Skeleton-Project-Bento/ta-p/2975160
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Project_Bento_Testing