Wanted: Parent joint able to be a child joint

Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems like a pretty basic feature is missing in the object creation department. Technically, it should be simple to implement support for parent joints to be child joints. Perhaps this is the wrong terminology--indeed, perhaps this SIMPLE feature does exist and I missed it.

But say for instance, a Sun sphere has a large planet sphere revolving around it (rotation script in Sun, planet is linked or jointed to Sun), and then the planet sphere has a moon sphere that revolves around the planet (rotation script on planet, moon is linked to planet).

This proved not to work for me; either one of the rotation scripts stopped, or all of them stopped and I'd see an occasional jiggle.

Why is that so difficult?

I think I already have this, cause MY 'parent joint" looks like it belongs to a 4 year old. *Sigh*

The migration to Havok 2 may allow the Lindens to revisit the linking code and make updates to allow moving segments or the ability to define some parts of a linkset phantom and some solid. They're going to focus on getting it up and running again first.

It's not something we can currently do, though you can obviously make it work as seperate objects.

You shouldnt use joints for everyday building, they are buggy and unfinished, they have been known to come apart at random and even crash the server.
Joints are more for physics experiments in the sandbox like building a giant trebuchet and stuff

*Shudders at the thought of his joint 'coming apart'.*

Then my suggestion is get it finished already. Without joints, you have no custom animated objects. No wonder all the animated creations I've seen from users look more like static meshes.

Thing is, LL has no control over the physics engine, it isnt made by them. The new version of the Havok engine is currently being integrated with 1.4, so we may see some progress in the near future. We may even get nifty ragdoll physics, who knows.
Creating believably animated objects in SL has always been a pain because there is simply no API in place for that.
Some people have worked on a keyframe animation system, notably Mezzanine Peregrine and Neil Protagonist. I am not very well informed about their recent progress, but if you want to do some basic animation for linked objects, get someone to teach you child rots, or search in the scripting forums for it...

To be fair, you dont *need* physics to create joints. You only need physics to create joints that have, well, physics.

It would be extremely nice to be able to rotate bits of an object as Jon is suggesting. It'd allow the creation of, for example, orcs that throw punches or wield swords.

Errr, if I keep bumping Jon's suggestions, someone's going to acuse him of being me.

Azelda

Azelda, are you, by chance, an alt av of one "Jon Morgan"?