Bumping into things above quad avatar

I have several of the Jakkal's Werehouse "Critters" avatars, such as a non-anthro Collie dog, which walks in quad form all the time. The avatar is animated by an override that comes with the avatar, which allows this quad movement. Beautiful avatar, by the way...

I am making a 'dog crate' to go with my quad animal avatars. A wire mesh cage about 1 meter high, one meter wide, and 2 meters long, with a door on one square end. The scripted door works fine. But what happened when I tried to walk the doggy into her crate was she stopped cold as soon as her hind legs reached the threshold. I had to unlink the crate's top surface and make the top phantom for her to be able to walk into her crate.

I checked with the Avatar maker, Jakkal, and she says there is no reason she knows of why it would do that. The AO bends the Avatar 90 degrees at the waist. So nothing is sticking up above the avatar's hips there.

I checked with highlight-transparent on, and there are no invisiprims or hidden parts above the dog's rump. Just the tail, which hasn't gotten to the threshold yet.

What it looks like is that SL is calculating collision as if the avatar was still standing upright at the waist. It is ignoring the AO effects and stopping the the avatar when the normal waist position runs into the top of the crate.

Any ideas why? Or how to get around that, other than making the crate's top phantom? I would imagine this will also adversely affect actions like trying to walk under a table or similar low obstruction.

I think the problem is that they have a set "Space" for object collision as it is probably way less intensive than making the actual Avatar object-collisionable. Yep.. that's the technical word for it... even though I just made it up. *grin*
I'm thinking that the Phantoming (Another highly technical term!) is the best way to go, other than raising the top of the box incrementally until you stop banging into it.

Yeah... This afternoon I guess I will try some incremental heights of objects and walking under them. Maybe I can resolve it without making the crate too much taller.

I'll also likely make an alternate version that is a 'dog run'. Similar in style and function, but tall enough for a Human avatar to walk into it while standing up.

I wonder if their collision system is perhaps based upon the object's 'center of gravity' (another technical term). Try raising the top of the crate to normal 'neck' level and see if it lets you in? The center-of-gravity is probably used for physics calculations on avatars, and bending the avatar 90 degrees may not change the height of the CoG?

This may help them find out what's wrong here, so I thought I'd post my ideas on it..

Duke

What I plan to do is to start with a flat prim that the Avatar can just barely walk under with the AO turned OFF, then try moving that down in .1M increments until I find the point where I can't walk under it with the AO turned ON.

My suspicion, without having tested it, is that once I find the lowest object that my Critters avatar can walk under with the AO off, I'll find that I can't go any lower than that, even when the AO has me walking on all fours.

My initial hypothesis is that SL assumes the Avatar is standing up when walking. I don't think SL has any way to detect what an AO does to the body, when it comes to calculating height for collision purposes.

As far as Second Life is concerned, avatars are a simple box. The width and depth is always the same (around .5m I believe), and the height is set in the Appearance menu with the shape. This is also why attachments pass through other objects/avatars, since the collision box of the avatar doesn't change. Animations are entirely client side. There are animations where the avatar goes underground, or 15m in the air(for mechs and such), but the collision box is still walking around at ground level.

The bounding box of the avatar, what the collision detection uses, is always the same, no matter what animation the avatar is running. AFAIK, the only thing that alters this bounding box is the height of the avatar, which is calculated from the appearance sliders only. Tinies are the same height as short standard avatars as far as the bounding box is concerned, and hence the collision detection.

Thanks for the replies, folks. I was afraid of that. I guess my doggies are not going to be running under tables or other low obstacles any time soon.

Based on that, my 'dog crate' will have to keep the phantom top surface, and I was correct to eliminate the upper and lower sills on the end panel. (originally I used a flat panel with a square hollow in it. I replaced that with two narrow vertical strips, and extended the door to reach the full cage height.)

However, my proposed 'dog run' ought to work fine, as it will be taller than the avatar is when the AO is off.

With all that said - how about adjusting overall avatar height in script when the AO is ON? Or would this cause the animation to look wrong due to the decrease in the frame the avatar is on?

Scripts cannot edit the current avatar shape or apply a different one.

You can trust Kayla's answers on this, as she helped me create the quadruped "Critter" avatars. It is a shame though that you can't make things like that work without making them go phantom.

FYI: My dog crates are just about ready for market... with a phantomed top.

They will have three pose options for Pet/sub Avatars - Patiently kneeling near the crate door; A happy "on hands and knees doggy style" pose; Sitting forlornly in the back of the crate.

I'm working on scripting now so the pose balls for the two unused poses also hide whenever you sit on one of them, and so all three pose balls can respond to a show/hide option.

If you hide the avatar pose balls, Jakkal's "Critters" avvies, with their AO-driven poses, look adorable in them.

Every Pet needs a safe and cozy crate.

(O_O); Wow....... That's alot of information(^W^)... i wonder if my Quadruped white tiger AV will fit in one of those crates :/hmmm......... Ow! beautiful work by the way, Jakkal. looking forward to seeing more of your work(^W^)