Poseballs or Menu Sit system?

I'd like to hear your opinion. I've always worked with poseballs on my furniture. I usually texture and colour them so they fit into my furniture designs and don't float high above them for instance. Of course they can be hidden if wanted.

The advantage of poseballs (I think) is that people can see how many sit options a furniture item has and where they are. Disadvantage are the extra prims (although in some cases I integrate them in a pillow or so).

The disadvantage of a menu sit system is that you can never see where you will end up sitting. And can you even see how many poses an item has?

What does the customer want?

Furniture-Foo™

I'm not a big fan of poseballs. I'm not real nuts about the menu either.
In my furniture I use a change pose script and put all poses and the script in each of the cushions. All you need to do is click the cushion to change poses.

Voted Pose Balls but I haven't a clue what a Furniture Foo is and what MoxZ says sounds very cool but i have not seen that either-

/me mimics what Amara said

Two words - Pillow Talk products

Since discovering this store, we haven't purchased ANY furniture with pose balls as we can find lovely pillows (mod for color, texture, etc.) in any possible pose a pose ball would have.

I LOVE those things!!

I'm happy to see Pillow Talk products out in public places now. And they don't just have pillows - they have lounge chairs with various poses, beach towels, rafts, you name it.

Just no ugly pose balls

Okay, let me clarify. I'm not talking about ugly pink or blue or whatever colour poseballs floating above the furniture. Those days are gone, should be long gone. I mean poseballs that are incorporated well into the design of the chair or couch.

In other words: 'well designed' poseballs or a menu?

Another option, what MoxZ says, is to put poses in a cushion. Let's forget about a change pose script for the moment. Is it clear enough for users where they can sit? Is it clear enough what and where they should 'click'?

Yup I love Pillow Talk and easy to adjust- same deal as pillows on furniture.

horses for courses ...

In public places, poseballs are quite good. They are useful as everybody understands them. Pillows with single poses would be better, perhaps with hovertext saying "sit" so people know what to click on (although I don't really like hovertext either).

In my own home I wouldn't ever use poseballs - I stick menus in all sorts of things, to get the maximum mileage out of the fewest prims.

So, um ... I don't know which to vote for, sorry.

The pillow talk thing sounds good - I'll check them out.

I suppose you could use some sort of hovertext but that would be as ugly as poseballs are to me..(clarified pink and blue balls). Generally you would just sit on a cushion. Anywhere you would sit on a couch. A sign might be helpful or a notecard of course. The pillowtalk products are based on the same concepts only the scripts are imbedded in the pillows. I love them too. The poses and animations themselves rock socks! As for filling a cushion with poses you would need a sit target helper script to get the positions right. It can be just as mentally taxing as setting up a menu but more natural.

This is just my preference. By clear as to where they can sit, I think you mean the animation and/or pose. An avatar would just sit on a cushion and then keep clicking until they find the pose you're satisfied with. It could be anywhere on the furniture that the pose permits. i.e. how you've sit targeted it.

/me post again to bypass teh evil post count number!

I'm trying to understand MoxZ (not native English speaking). Okay, let's say there's a couch with three cushions. Everything is linked. Do you mean that an avatar can click anywhere on the couch and then every cushion has the same 'click-through' sit poses that he can choose from, click through?

Does this mean that you have to adjust (with sit target) every single pose to the place where the cushion is?

well the plant i gave out not long ago was part of furniture foo.
it is menu rather than poseball sitting.

none of our furnis have those pink poseballs or hovertext, and ppl do seem to know to right-click the cushion and sit.

/me hates menus.

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I really need to take the time to learn how to embed poses as it's all that stops me making furniture commercially. I dunno why I have a mental block about it, but I do for some reason

Cherry, It's a PITA I tell ya! My inventory is full of furniture that I've built that is just sitting there waiting for me to put poses and animations in. I log in, get distracted, and my stuff sits and waits.

Paulo - yes, even if you have linked your furniture, you can still click the cushion and sit. I can't begin to understand the script or how it works, but it does. I bought the script full perms from it's creator.

I know it may sound like a shameless plug, but you're welcome to follow my slurl below and check out one of the sofa's that I have put some animations in with this method. There is a black and white ultra modern sofa and chair in my store right across from the door. Right click and sit on either the chair or the sofa. Once you're seated, click the cushion to change poses. You'll then see what I'm saying. These items are not loaded full of animations yet because RL and SL distractions are keeping me from finishing things lately, but you'll get the idea. If you sit on the sofa, be sure to click the left cushion. I don' t have the right cushion loaded yet.

/me runs to the store to make sure that SL is behaving and doesn't debunk what I'm trying to say.

Neither. And Both. It depends on what I want the item to do.

I like empty pieces that I can add the poses myself.

I like the pillow talk things as well. So I guess you could go with poseballs. On a couch, where ever there is a cushion or a pillow I have come to expect there to be a place to sit.

Menu sit systems have wonderful potential, but tend to be MUCH harder to adjust the seating position for differeing heights and sizes of avatars. A pose ball is dead simple to move, if the avatar is floating too high or is embedded in the seat.

A truly well-done menu system that can do adjustments in sit position, and that can save positions for different avatars, would be sweet. But I have yet to see one that really works. I'll have to check out some of the menu systems mentioned in this thread, I guess.

It really depends on what it's for.

-For a 1 person seat, I think poses should be incorporated within the seat, no menu necessary. Even multiple poses within the same seat could be added, have them either selected randomly, or browsable using some hotkeys or whatever (if poses are changable, the chair should be able to IM the person sitting on it to give info how to change poses though)

-For multiple person seats, different options are available. I personally like the system where you sit on the pillows or the seat is devided into seperate sections, without requiring poseballs. For public seats, poseballs are still very useful. Just make sure to color them in such a way that they fit with the seat, a slightly lighter or darker tint of the color of the seat is usually enough.

-For the uhmmmmm more interactive animated furniture, I'd still suggest a menu system. It's just the most convenient method for selecting the most applicable way to combine a predefined number of human bodies when there's a lot of options available.

If the menu sit allows the individual to adjust their own position, then I prefer that...otherwise poseballs.

I didn't vote, since my answer is basically, "It depends."

And what if the person looking at the furniture is much smaller or much larger than the av used to set the sit position? There's a wide variety of avatar sizes in SL.

When you have 15 animations + 1 pose in a single couch cushion, clicking the cushion to shuffle through them is rather tedious, impractical, and a menu becomes wonderful.

Not to mention a modifiable pillow with 27 animations and 10 poses. Try clicking through that to get from one end to another.

Over all I like pose balls better (not the pink & blue of the old days, the ones that blend in with the furnies or disappear)

Menus are a cool idea nd convenient, but they are also a pain in the a$$. I almost always have to go thru and fix every pose in a menu system because my avatar has a body part embedded in the furniture. It's just annoying to have to do that and not every menu system makes adjusting easy.
At least with a pose ball you can adjust the single prim.....move it.....or add more to your furniture. I don't think the additional prims are really that big a deal using pose balls. But, I also am not one who has 15 million items with poses in my house. I don't get carried away with all that stuff and more often then not....I wind up creating my own pose balls to add to furniture or maybe a stone wall...or the rocks by the water.
I got a freebie pose ball ages ago at one one of the pose shops......it's copiable and ya can add any pose to it and put em anywhere ya want. That has been one of the most handy little gadgets I ever got. It disappears when ya click 'sit' and it's mod....so I can make it blend in with anything.
To me....it doesn't need to be any more sophisticated or complicated then that.