Problem using some animations

For some reason (some) of the animations I have got both freebie and paid for won't work. I bought a nice pack of dancing ones today but whenever I choose to play locally or in world, my avatar seems to be frozen in the first frame of play. The same thing happens with a swimming action ball I have. Does anyone know what causes this and how to make them work properly. Much appreciated

Not sure if this is the reason, but are you wearing an AO? Sometimes my AO interferes with dance animations, so I have to turn it off in order to dance.

AFAIK, an animation fully loads before any of it plays on the avatar, so I don't think downloading the anim is the problem.

Still, I'd wonder if others see it the same way (when played in world), just in case your viewer has a weird debug setting for animations (I know there's something like slow-motion that's an option somewhere in the Advanced menu).

There are, of course, static poses; often a couple animation will include a representative static pose or looped single frame animation that the poseball script plays on the first seated avatar, until the partner joins on the other linked poseball. Maybe somehow those are the animations you're seeing?

As Maureen mentioned, a likely possibility is an interaction with other, higher-priority animations (perhaps from an AO) that lock the joints that should be moving in the animations you're trying to play. May be worth a try to remove all attachments (maybe even go to a different sim, to defeat any non-attached scripts with animation permission on your avatar), stop all animations (from the World menu, as I recall), and then retry the animations.

May also get some hints from one of the advanced debug settings that show hovertext over your avatar listing all animations currently playing. (Sorry, I can't get in-world right now and track down where that option is set.)

Make sure the land has scripts enabled.

I noticed something like this last night when my dances wouldn't play from my chim. I wasn't frozen in an animation frame, but sort of stuck in the ease-in to it somewhere, halfway morphed between my stand pose and the starting position of the first frame. I could turn my head and look around so I know the animation hadn't actually played (it's higher priority than that default behavior), but my pose at that time wasn't quite stand OR dance. After waiting and waiting and jacking on the AO on/off button several times I wound up with kind of twisted arms, so then I really knew something was fubar. All I did is relog and it worked fine after that, so I have no advice really except to try that, and maybe in a different sim. This was definately something new that I hadn't seen before. The only other odd thing I noticed at the time was my bandwidth wasn't as high as it normally is when I load a dance, and I was seeing a couple % packet loss a little more often. I remember wondering at the time if the asset server was taking a dump, or if it had something to do with me recently switching over to the Emerald viewer.

Thanks all but nothing tried so far has worked - removed AO and watch which has a dance animation, stopped animating. World, release keys is also greyed out.

While stuck in the dance 'pose' I can still turn and walk around but when I stop walking I go back into the dance 'pose' again until clicking stop. By the way, the dances won't play even when on my own land, let alone another sim Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Using the standard viewer - 1.23.4 (12390 and have unhidden the advanced menu but nothing showed up in the debug window when trying the dances. Maybe have to send ticket to LL.

FWIW, I meant to try Advanced / Character / Animation Info to see if there are any unexpected anims playing. (It will show all kinds of built-in motions by name, but you should only see the long UUID for the one anim you're trying to play.)

Thanks Qie - correct, just tried that and the only long UUID showing is for the dance animation (which I am frozen in of course)

Okay, I contacted the seller today and it turns out that these are STATIC POSES, not animations! I would love to post the link to the product here on Xstreetsl but that is not allowed. Anyone interested please send me an IM and I will send you the link. I always thought an animation was something that moved which is why I bought them

Took a screen dump of the add just in case it changes!

An animation is just a series of poses...a pose is just a one frame animation. They both have the same inventory symbol, the little running person.

To add to the confusion, some "poses" are "animated poses"...you stay mainly in one position, but the pose is more lifelike because your hands or your legs or your head gradually change position. You have to read the item description, and try it out on the store's pose stand first!

That is confusing Lindal as I was not looking for single frame animations. In this case the item description was very short and wasn't much help as it emphasized it being an animation. Not everyone selling has a store in-world to try those things out so the only other thing I could have done was sent the seller an IM asking for more information had I been aware of this. To make things worse they came with no notecards or other documentation which would have instantly saved me wasting a lot of time trying to figure out why they did not do what I thought. Oh well

There are some things that should never be bought without trying them out first. Animations are in that class, as are skins and hair (get a demo for those).

I suppose this relates to the xstreet vs in-world thread.

I would just add that animations are among the asset types that would most benefit from some metadata exposed to users and scripts. Notably, all the settings that are decided at upload time--most especially the priority--should be knowable without having to play the animation and look at debug info. I'd also very much like to know the duration of the animation in seconds, and whether or not it is looped. Indeed, there are values inside the .bvh that should be exposed, notably including the offset of the avatar midpoint from the agent origin.