Quadrupedial Avatars!

Please please pleeeeeeeeeeease?

That's a bit limited though, Cross.

How about calling for something a lot more general, so that it can be employed for avian avatars, starfish, tumbleweeds, arbitrary aliens, and anything else that we loonies dream up?

This can be done in a large number of very different ways, but one approach that I like for its symmetry is to use a skeletal multi-armed star with at least 15 radials, each radial having at least 6 segments, ie. 5 joints apiece. A dog or a horse would typically use 7 or 8 radials, a flying pegasus maybe 10 or 12. With 15, you could even give your ears and nostrils their own degrees of freedom.

That's actually pretty easy to do, and it would even be easy for users to configure into their desired wierd av shapes. The complementary task of defining an outer mesh attached to the radials is a bit more difficult because you have to specify not just shape but also attachment/deformational constraints. However, the hard effort would be done by the players, whereas the implementation of such a generic avatar model by LL would actually be relatively straightforward because of its symmetry, and therefore feasible.

There is one common macroscale living form that cannot easily be modelled by a multi-armed star though, and that's the snake. So, let's have a special model just for that. The design is pretty obvious in this case.

Bandwidth

I think the major obstical is bandwidth. The client sends about 2 dozen 8-bit integers and 5->7 keys for textures, attachment keys and animation keys. The overal av description currently should be pretty short. If custom skeletons were added it would add to overhead. What could be done is add skeletons that could then be configured in the normal ways. That wouldn't much things up to much (as the clients would already have the base skeleton files already).

So i'm all four Quadrupedial av skeletons.

But what about arthropods ?

Well in that case I want 4 arms and 2 legs.

Go ganesh!

I'd be happy if we could just stretch our avatars a bit more.

Wider shoulders and hips, and smaller joints.

Now I wanna make a trichordate avatar. I miss SimEarth.

Actually, just allowing joints on attachments to function would fix some of this. And thusly, just being able to script the back legs to animate when you walk... itself would be a vast improvement. ^_^

Clio Anansi's centaurs are the first step, IMHO. :>

Yes i support six legged av's too but how am i supposed to make a pun about them? the situation makes me six.

8 could be fun...


*wanders where he put that giant fly swatter*

So, people wanted 4, now they want 6 ....

Just be generic, otherwise there is no end to it. 15 is a very low limit anyway, and the actual number of radials used can itself be a parameter. It would be no slower for people wanting quadrupeds than a fixed quad-limb solution.

Quadroped? psssst animations *wink*

I _think_ this can be done currently, using the existing skeleton.


make arms and legs the same lengh, then (this is the hard part) get anim of walking with arms and legs.


This puts the knees and elbow's backwards to a real quadraped, but's it's close enough

Think it'd look more realistic for a small quadraped, than a long-legged one though

Actually, I'm pretty sure all quadrupedial animals' limbs bend in the same directions ours do. The bone lengths and such are different, which is kinda why it looks like a dog's knee bends backwards; it doesn't, that's their ankle that you're looking at.

Hey, that reminds me. If I attach prims to my av's footies, does she get taller?

Yes, true. The hock on a horse (or dog, etc.) would be our heel.

I'd love to see a veriaty of avatar skeletal types.

Cross, all objects become phantom when attached, so they won't make your av taller if you attach them to your feet. However, it is possible to make animations that raise the av off the ground by a certain amount.

Are you considering trying out digitigrade legs? I use invisiprims on my av's legs to achieve that effect quite nicely. If you're interested, I've got a free moddable invisiprim at my home in Tilitr, complete with instructions on usage.

I've actually thought about doing four-legged animations before, but I'm not about to spend big $$$ on Poser just so I can make SL anims. The free 3D package Blender has BVH import/export, and I found a Poser-2-model BVH to start with, so I might see what I can do with that. Don't hold your breath, though.