Animated texture over several prims?

I'm trying to build a small pond, but, unfortunately, larger than one prim. (I wish I could get that box to grow larger!)

So I've got four prims stuck together. I can put my water texture on all 4 prims, but when I apply a script to anim it, it just anims the parent prim. I need all 4 textures to slide together, like water (!). Like a single surface.

Is the technique of Linden water available to us lowly residents?

Thanks for any help. Much appreciated.

Sudane

put the script in each prim you want to animate?

Tried that, but each tex moves like a totally separate object. Water moves as one thing.

You should ask this in the Scripting Forums too. The scripting gurus might know of a script that will make it possible.

also you can put a lil bit extra in the parent to trigger all the animation in the object with a single click if you need. i dunno if you would need to though because i have big pieces of water that animate like one solid piece even though they're four prims and they don't have anything special going on.

All four prims will "always" move seperately. Texture animation is a client-side effect, as far as I know, and as such will always appear differently to different people, based on what loads for them when. If all four objects load simultaneously, they'll see the animation simultaneously. If the four prims load seperately, they'll move seperately.

Link them together, then quit and log back in to see a good example of what it'll look in "reality" to the average user.

can you cheat by animating all 4 prims and positioning (offset) how each texture sits on each prim so that the seams run together? Would need to have a constant speed on all 4, and probably do a reset-on-rez line so when you are done building, you can pick it up then put it back down and have all the prims start running at the same time.

haven't tried this... just thinking aloud...

Didn't actually try this, but one helper suggested that the problem with 4 texs loading "simulataneously" was that, well, they don't; that because of propagation delays, nothing really happens "simultaneously".

Wish I knew how yours is different! Can you give me the coord's so I can look?

Thanks much for everyone's suggestions! Research continues.

Sudane

I haven't tried this either, but I'll bet to make it work you'd need four separate textures, with the offset built into the texture.

thinking about it gives me a headache

No, they won't load simultaneously... the first time. But once the area is in your cache, it's close enough to simultaneously that it doesn't matter. You just have to reload the area after it's cached.

Suffice it to say though, the average passer-by will NEVER -EVER- see joined animations unless LL provides a LSL call to do such a thing.

Khamon Fate is good at this. Check out his pond with animated surface in southern Zoe. He mentioned there seem to be some texturing bugs that mess up some of the animation, which you can see on the waterfall.

I did something similar to this recently. My particular animation is only 2 discrete frames, not smooth, though, so results may vary.

I put a script in each child prim. Have each one react to a certain link_message by making a new llSetTextureAnim() call.
Then have one script in the root prim periodically (every 10 seconds?) pulse out a link message to the whole set.

This keeps 4 different flickering textures on my object perfectly sync'd.

This is what Zuzi suggested above, kind of. I haven't taken this step yet, but it may get to that. Vicious Volos offered to come over, so she did and really gave me some great suggestions. 2 steps she suggested that made a lot of sense were, (1) line up cloned prims perfectly with no overlap (i'm using "Snap-to-Grid". This is so that when the texs are applied, the geometry of each on the face is identical, and the "seamless" edges match up. And (2) use "Flip" on the texs so that the edges are even less visible. I'm kicking myself for not thinking of that one.

The pond is looking much better, but still there's little things i'm trying to fix. Thanks Vicious! And big thanks to everyone for all the suggestions!

Sudane

Just one minor problem with the link_message suggestion. In my experiences, triggering the same llSetTextureAnim call over and over will not cause it to refresh. This is intentional, since that means fewer update calls.

If, however, you end up wanting to force an update (though, as Moleculor pointed out, you really should not have to), trigger a dummy texture animation (say, not moving whatsoever) before every refresh call. Just be wary that it might cause a little lag.

I find if I select them all, appy the texture, then add the animation to each (even add before) it makes it more seamless..

So edit and hold shift to highlight all the peices together, then apply the texture...