AOs, Gestures and Poses: some questions

Ok, I'm confused.

Is it true that an AO, a Gesture, and a Pose all use the same basic language-of-movement?

Could a lot of things that go into poses be "decompiled" into gestures?

There are facial expressions but these always seem to come as HUDs; has anyone done facials as gestures, and if so where can I get them?

Can gestures be rendered inline with other spoken chat, so that you get things like

"oh /scratchear I dunno that seems /rubchin difficult /frown"

Or is everything after a slash taken to be a command syntax and therefore out-of-band?

Pose: is the animation (or still pose) by itself.

Gesture: plays the animation along with optional sounds and text.

AO: takes a collection of animations and over-rides the default ones - walking/running/flying/sitting/etc.

= = =
You can play multiple animations in a gesture by using the "start animation" and "stop animation" options in the gesture edit window. Try editing some gestures to get an idea -- you can get "packs" of them at the various freebie places.

There's much more to it that just slash-commanding.

Yes, but in fact I'd rather get some gesures that can be used as slash commands. Everyone seems to over-egg the pudding at the moment.

Interesting question, to which I do not know the answer, anyone else? I haven't used gestures much yet for fear of looking like some kind of crazed person having a fit.

Nope, slash commands cannot be used within a chat phrase, except at the very start.

So, for example:

"/emb I am sooo embarrassed." would be a valid construction, while

"I'm sooo embarrassed /emb" would not.

ps -- I don't use gestures much either. Not to avoid looking like I'm having a fit, but because likely nobody's watching. They're reading the Chat. So I use the "/me" command a lot. This describes your action in Chat, rather than triggering a gesture from your avatar.

"/me smirks in satisfaction" is rendered as:

Lindal Kidd smirks in satisfaction.

You can combine this with spoken text, too, as long as the /me command comes first.

"/me leans close and whispers, "Your fly is open, sweetie"." is rendered as:

Lindal Kidd leans close and whispers, "Your fly is open, sweetie".

Ick, scrambled egg pudding. Been there, done that. (Just a comment, not a derail.)

Gummi...

A Gesture has steps...These can be chat text, sounds, or anims...and wait steps for timing the steps...So you can do a great deal of things with a gesture.

and any Gesture can be invoked with a slash command or even a Hotkey just by editing the Trigger or activating a hotkey...or even just a word without a slash


If you need anymore Questions about Gestures feel free to IM me inworld I am on most evenings 3-7 pm SL time...

Kurt Ludd
"The Gesture Maker" over 2800 at the main Store...

Thank you - that explains it perfectly
I have to admit my ignorance - I didn't know you could do that /me thing. Have seen it in chat, but didn't know it was as easy as that.
/me goes to try it out....

mmm well yes, ish. You can set things so the chat is by the av, not down at the bottom of the screen; and in the great scheme of things, it would be more interesting and more accurate to the way humans actually work, to develop gestures rather than (say) poofers. Besides which, quite a few AOs play gesture-sequences which should qualify as conversational side-bands - there's a girly AO I've sen now and again where the av occasionally stretches and yawns - most offputting when you think you are working up to a hot date with someone, and yet it's just part of the AO.

I'd FAR rather have a range of gestures which are not cerebral palsy outbreaks, or as appropriate to the conversatinal flow as the dubbing in "The Water Margin", than some daft poofer, for instance.

Thanks Kurt. Do you have gestures which manipulate the face? Are the F-key bindings separate from the flow of typed text into the chat line, or are they subject to the same restrictions? 3pm SL time is about 4am my time...!

With the greatest respect: I went to take a look at your store. After waiting ten minutes for all your girlfriend's jewellery to rez, I had a chance to look at your gestures - to find that the overwhelming majority are not gestures in any way: they are sound samples. These are the diametric opposite of what I am looking for and I have to say, I don't think it's good business for you to describe them as something they are not.

Please let me know when you decide whether you are running either a jewellery store, or a sound sample warehouse - and when you finally decide to do some actual gestures.

Gummi,

Glad you took a look...But Gestures in SL are a little Misnamed...
They are not Usually Facial Expressions and actual Movement Gestures...


My "Gestures" Play a sound File and Emote a Chat Text...
Some also add an animation...Some are over 30 Sec long...

However...

My Vendors Play a 10 sec sound Clip from the Gesture and
Show a sample From the Text above the Vendor...That is what
you thought were sound samples...

But, It is possible to do what you asked originally with a Gesture...
including the facial expressions if the anims are available...
I have made a few that included a wink, a smile, etc...You can
experiment on your own...Just open a Gesture in your inventory and
start playing around with it...

As to what Business I am in...

Considering 1000's of people have purchased My "Gestures" and I
have sold in the 100,000's of "Gestures" over the last 2 Years...and
My Main Store has been located at the same location in Malra, for 2 Years,
starting with a 512 and growing to 22000 SqM with over 100 Sound
Vendors...Yes it might take a few Minutes to Rez in, But 100's of People
a day shop there...So Lag is just something we live with in SL...

So, Yes, I think that I am in the "Gesture" Business and
My RL and SL wife Makes Jewelry which we sell also at our Store...

I hope you find what you are looking for and have a great day...

Kurt Ludd
"The Gesture Maker"

Not to take anything away from Kurt...

SL has a catalog of facial expressions that your avatar can use. A lot of the stock gestures make use of these..."smile" for example. There are products which can access these expressions either manually (through a HUD button, for example, or a hotkey), or automatically.

The automatic types come in two flavors: The inexpensive random smiler attachment, which makes your avatar smile and/or wink at random intervals, and the emoter. The latter listens to your chat. When it sees a word, or a smiley, or a phrase that it recognizes, it automatically plays what (you hope) is the appropriate facial expression. All products of this sort use the same basic catalog of expressions, so don't expect one product to give you "a better smile" than the next.

The one I use is called "AutoEmote", and offers both automatic and manual selection of expressions. It also allows you to edit its dictionary so it responds better to your style of chat.

Kurt, do you offer a product like this? If so, Gummi, you should run and check it out.

Thanks Lindal...

Yes I use some of the library anims in my Gestures

I dont Have an Emoter (Yet) and they do work very well also...

I usually just make what I need from a Gesture...easier for me

I did make a sample of what I thought Gummi was looking for and sent it as a Gesture...


Kurt Ludd

Gestures can be fired from inline words. For instance, people have gestures so whenever they type : p (without the space), their avatar sticks out their tongue, even if that comes in the middle or end of a line of chat.

Also all of the available facial animations are available for use in gestures. See link below for a list of animations you can use. These are built right into the client. You don't specifically need a copy of them to use them.

http://lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=animation

Here are a list of the available 'emote' animations. Some of them are simply facial expressions, some are full animations:

express_afraid
express_afraid_emote
express_anger
express_anger_emote
express_bored
express_bored_emote
express_cry
express_cry_emote
express_disdain
express_embarrassed_emote
express_frown
express_kiss
express_laugh
express_laugh_emote
express_open_mouth
express_repulsed
express_repulsed_emote
express_sad
express_sad_emote
express_shrug
express_shrug_emote
express_smile
express_surprise
express_surprise_emote
express_tongue_out
express_toothsmile
express_wink
express_wink_emote
express_worry
express_worry_emote

So, for instance, you could make a gesture that fires whenever you type the word "smiles", your avatar will smile (use express_smile or express_toothsmile).

I would strongly suggest you play around with the gesture editor. I think it will begin to make sense, the more you play with it.

Oh and Kurt certainly sells gestures. Most of the gestures that people use have sounds. For many it's the most important part, and it makes sense that his vendors would play the sound, so people know what they are buying.

It certainly sounds like there's a pretty deep Jargon failure somewhere here! So the class of object "Gesture" includes instances which are a) movements b) gurns (facial expressions for you Americans) c) noises and are sometimes e) HUDS or f) F-keys or g) in-line choices, but can also be h) smileys or j) out of your control, basically.

So that's clear then.

*sighs* Let's try this again...

An "animation" is a file type, a .bvh file. This file can make your avatar change into a different position. If that's all it does, it may also be referred to as a "pose". If the motion occurs over time, then it's referred to as an animation. Animations can change your facial expression, too, using one of the limited range of expressions available to SL avatars.

A "sound" is a file type, a .wav file. It plays a sound. (duh!)

A "gesture" is a special composite file type. It may contain animation(s), sound(s), and/or text chat. You can string these together to produce some quite long and complex "behaviors". (I've seen one rather macabre gesture in which the avatar grabs his own head, breaks his neck with a crunch, and falls down dead on the ground).

Any of these file types (animation, sound, gesture) can be played simply by double clicking on them to open them, and then clicking either "play in world" (everyone sees it) or "play locally" (only you see it.)

However, it's much more useful if we have other ways of playing these files, attaching the playing of them to other avatar actions, for example, or being able to call up a particular file from a menu, rather than having a stack of little windows open on your screen.

Gestures, in particular, have a couple of other ways to trigger them. You can assign them to a hotkey. Or you can assign a chat command, such as "/smile" to trigger a gesture.

A HUD, or Heads Up Display, is a type of object that's normally attached to a point on your screen, rather than to an attachment point on your avatar. It generally appears as a little icon, and may or may not have control buttons and/or a drop down menu of choices. There are HUDs to do many things in SL. I have one that changes my shoe color, and another that changes my hair color. Another is a set of useful tools. Another is a texture picker. And several handle animations. (I don't have all of these HUDs active all the time. If I did, I'd never see my avatar!)

Further up in the thread, I was describing a product called "AutoEmote", which features a HUD. This HUD has buttons on it that I can use to trigger gestures...specifically, the gestures that are associated with facial expressions. The product also has an automated mode, in which it listens to my chat and triggers appropriate facial expression gestures when it hears a triggering word.

Does that sort things out a bit?

This is a great summary. One thing I would correct, just because it comes up from time to time with my HUDs. HUDs cannot trigger gestures, nor can any scripted device. The emote huds are playing the animation that corresponds to those facial expressions, not the gesture. Gestures can only be triggered or played via keyboard buttons (F5) or chat commands (/kiss), as you describe.

Quite correct. You see how easy it is to confuse animations with gestures???

The best way to figure it out is start up Second Life, find the gestures editor in the menus and make a few for yourself. You will figure out pretty quickly what a gesture can and cannot do.

With regards gestures, a forward slash trigger works anywhere on the chat line.

"/hey you!"
"you /hey!"

..will both work. When creating gestures you can also state what the /slash trigger text should be replaced with in the chat window.




But many people use gestures to compliment their chat. I do. So do many of my friends. If you want to type in shorthand, but have your text expanded in the chat window, you can create trigger only gestures, filling in the 'replace with' field with the expanded text.

Ie. Trigger: idk
Replace With: I don't know.

Save gesture, activate it and every time you type idk ...

...you get the picture.

I also use gestures to assign shortcut keys to scripted objects like vehicles (to increase and decrease throttle) and control my AO. F5 switches it on. Shift F5 turns it off. Control F5 cycles through my stand poses.

Gestures are about so much more than animations, and I would lose a heck of a lot of convenient keyboard shortcuts if we didn't have them.

Thanks, Walker...I learned something.

Your other points are also great.

This is the most informative thread I'd read in a long time. Thanks guys!

I want to add my thanks, too. I only recently got into the whole AO scene. Then, last week a friend joined SL and as I was showing him around the interface he brought up the gestures and said "How do these work?" and I had to admit, I didn't really know. I hadn't looked at them since probably last January I'm curious now to give some a whirl. (Is there a whirling gesture?)

If you want examples of (1) text substitution and (2) script control, cut & paste this link into your browser:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w112/walkermoore/secondlife/gesture-tips_001.jpg

Page might take a while to load due to the demand created by my half-naked avatar in the same shot.

In a nutshell:

(1) Anime Wink uses the 'Replace With' field. Once activated, everytime user types a regular wink, it will be replaced with one in the anime format.

(2) Most AOs can be enabled/disabled by typing '/1 ao on' and '/1 ao off' into chat. By creating a gesture with a shortcut key (note the F5 selection at the top), and the scripted command in the 'Chat to Say' field, you'll only have to hit a single key for that script command to be executed in future.