hands movement to create expression

hi a general question really and please excuse my ignorance, but I asume its related to the avis shape/mesh not skin - my chaps fingers are constantly splayed out, like rigormortis has set in. Is it possible to have him flexing his fingers in different movements, like curling, unfurling fingers, creating a fist etc, or am I doomed to have hands like flippers set in an unnatural position? Is this movement tied to any predetermined pattern or can it perhaps be adapted. Thanks in anticipation.

When .bvh files are uploaded to make animations in-world, there are several settings that are chosen, including hand position. The thing is, the built-in stand animations use several of these positions, so those should change as the stands cycle through. The same might or might not apply to stand anims in an AO: you may have gotten unlucky and picked stands that all have the "spread" hand position, I suppose. This seems unlikely, however, because most animators choose "relaxed" unless there's some particular reason to make the hands point or spread or ball into a fist.

I guess the first step would be to take off all attachments (to make sure there's no AO contaminating things) and make sure your viewer is cycling through the normal stand animations. There's a setting that shows what anims are playing, Control-Shift-D to toggle the Advanced menu, then Advanced/Character/Animation Info. That should show different stands playing. If not, we have bigger problems to tackle.

thanks qie.....mmmmmm I'll try to have a look at that, but seems a tad complicated for my little brain to diseminate. I always think my avis hand positions are rather contrived and static, especially when hand movements in sl could be made so much more expressive, especially for males. I've got a standard AO, in which I installed 5 or 6 standing animations that just cycle through. The 'spread hands' image doesn't change and to my knowledge the view has never been any different, if you get my meaning.