Smiles

Since I'm widely known as a derailer of threads, I'll bite. What the heck is your definition of an "artificial" word? Aren't they all invented by people? Spoken by people? Heard by people? Or have you been talking to that DoD AI again?

OK...time for a short lecture.

Second Life avatars have a limited repertoire of facial expressions. You can see some (but not all) of them in use in the stock Gestures. Animators can make lovely sequences to move our bodies around...dance, pose, sit, make love...but they too are limited to using the stock set of facial expressions. Unfortunately, many of them are not very subtle.

There are gadgets that make use of the facial expressions. The simplest is the smile attachment. As Czari notes, it often has you smile at inappropriate times. Some kiss attachments will activate the puckered lips "kiss" expression while also animating an embrace. Some AOs (for example, SEMotion's products) have a facial expression feature included. One of the best attachments (IMO) is the AutoEmote. You get a HUD with which you can manually activate any of the fifteen or so facial expressions. I almost never use it though...because in Auto mode, the device listens to your chat and activates facial expressions depending on trigger words. Chat a smiley face or say "/me grins", and *poof* there is the ToothSmile on your av's face. Say "LOL" and you get the open-mouthed laugh expression. And so on.

AutoEmote still produces some amusing results from time to time, but you can edit its keyword list to make it a better match for your own vocabulary. It's one of the things I always wear, like my MystiTool.

EDIT: Geez, you guys post fast. By the time I sent this, the thread already covered the above. Late again!

YadNi Monde made and distrubuted a "YadNi s EmoterHUD" that has 19 different emotes or facial expressions which can be triggered by a button touch on a HUD that you wear. It is free. You can probably find it at YadNi's Junkyard, I just sent you a copy.

Anyone else who wants a copy can get it from my box of Free Useful Stuff which is at my store in Shona.

Is the AutoEmote made by SEMotion? Is that an avatar or a business? How can one find it?

No, it's from Outy Banjo. Not to plug his/her product exclusively...there are a couple of others out there that do the same thing, though I haven't tried them personally.

Find it at: http://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=112998

Instead of using something that smiles randomly or smiles permanently, why not simply make your gesture smile when you say or whatever you use for "smiles" in chat? That way you always smile at just the right time!

Similarly if I say, "/me pokes you" my AV reaches out and does the obvious...

Do you have that poke gesture, or a link to it? My sweetie is constantly poking me in the tummy when I get distracted. She'd love one!