Animations / Gestures / Permissons - (grrr)

Hello all,

in a short Adrenalin Rush (my GF asked me how we could spice up our
Avis with more Emotion) we googled/thought about buying some animations
and activate them via Gestures --

The Wiki http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Gestures_FAQ
as always says : No problem Sir, easy !

So we went out and bought ourselfs a couple of good and expensive
(Abr)animations ( NO TRANS ). Back at our home we started to add
new gestures just to find out that all bought animations dont show
up in the Gesture Editor --

Why that - was it because of the SERVICE INTERUPTION refrain from
anything - database issues currently going on on Tuesday ?
Panic crawls up our Avatars splines ...

While waiting on the (never received message from Linden that all is clear)
and further googling we found out that Animations used with gestures must be fully permissive (modify, copy, and transfer) to show up in the lists.

http://secondlife.com/app/help/avatar/gestures.php

Arrr .. ty sooo much f***g Wiki .. Another 1.500 Lindens down the drain*
I do not understand this. I mean i have bought those Animations so why
cant i use them in my own gestures.

What can we do now with those animations .. Building emotional furniture ?
delete them , archive them or filing another (hopeless) Jira on that .. ?

regards
Wordfromthe (this time again, not so) Wise

PS: Tips for places with full permission (and not hyper expensive) animations
are greatly appreciated --

I've always thought it silly that you cannot use an animation you have bought in a gesture for your own use. I suspect it is because of the permissions - since you create the gesture, you could re-sell it and, currently, there is no way to prevent this.

Your only solution is to buy full perm animations or ask the creator if they would make the gesture for you. I would always do that for a customer, if asked.

If the animations are no-copy ones, you could ask the creator for a refund. If you explain politely what happened, I would expect to get a refund. Unfortunately, if they were copiable ones, then a refund would not be in order.

The technical blockage behind this crappy problem is the refusal of llGetInventoryKey() to return the ID key of any item that does not have FULL permissions. Without that ID, the Gesture menu doesn't know where to locate the animation on the asset server.

You'd think that having Copy and Modify permissions ought to be enough authorization to obtain an ID for an anim you bought, but that item is just a name tag that allows you to play the anim without knowing the ID. In fact, llStartAnimation() will ONLY work with name tags, it refuses to accept ID keys.

Since ID's don't work with llStartAnimation(), LL could make a special exception for anims, and allow llGetInventoryKey() to return the ID of anims (but not of textures or sounds). That would allow you to use your No-Transfer anims in Gestures, without giving you a loophole to transfer access to the anim to other users.

There's really no legitimate security excuse for blocking script access to an anim's ID. The ID of any animation you play on your avie is readily available via llGetAnimationList(). This whole dilemma is the unhappy result of a haphazardly designed permissions system.

Funny, there's no actual permissions limitation preventing you from using them in a gesture. Just a limitation of the viewer.

I have a nifty little bracelet I wear for animations outside my standard AO - works kind of like an AO, I guess? Would something like this work for you? Give me a shout in world (Moonshy Littlething) and I'll drop you this bracelet... maybe with a little manipulation of the script/default menu, it could work? Everything appears to be open source on it.

You're right.
Check this: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2222
Consider to vote for it.

Although Mr. Wolfe is a very responsive and understanding merchant, I don't see any reason to get rid of your cool new anims.

You don't need to put anims in a gesture to use them. Just double-click on one, and on the tiny dialog for it that pops up, click "play in world". If priorities work out correctly, your new anim will play immediately, even if you are already using an AO. If it is looped (like most dances), it will play repeatedly, until you hit the "stop" button that shows up once you play it. If it is not looped (like most gestures), it will play once.

Do you know how to edit an AO? If so, I believe there are AO scripts now that allow you to drop in animations that just play once when you press a button, and you could just add your anims to one of those. Animazoo sells anims that are meant to be used on top of regular stands, and also makes free AOs available, so perhaps they have one that is nicely set up for this. If not, I believe that at Material Squirrel, there is a landmark on the wall (next to the ZHAO-II dispenser) for an enhanced version of ZHAO-II that does thiis.

Have fun!
.

...and with gestures you can do much more:

Play multiple animations, at the same time or one after the other
Nice if you want to smile or use your hands

Play them together with sounds
More theoretical.. since they do not play on-time most of the times because of lag.

Start animations with special keystrokes or assign them to single keys

Add chat-text when the animation plays

I think a lot of animators should include a copy/mod gesture with their copy/mod animations. It's not perfect, but it does let the purchaser make their own gesture that contains the animation they've bought.

That's A solution.

Adding them to another object like the braclet Moonshy mentioned or a HUD device like Huddlez seems like an easier alternative to me.

I once had a collar I heavily modified and ran a lot of the functions and additional animations through gestures. The gestures where mostly for single key access to fire off multiple things like an emotive chat line, sound and sending the collar a command to turn AO off and another to play an animation. This approach is some what more work to set up but you can still use the gestures you want, but instead of playing the animation, you send a chat command to your hud object to play the animation for you.

Is it possible to do all the things you can do with a Gesture this way?

Play sounds, specify waits, run a series of animations in sequence and make a shortcut trigger etc. ?

You know, that would be a good project. Gesture HUD. Everything a gesture can do plus multi-synced animations and available with a click.

Thanks for the idea.