How to put poses into objects w/out using poseballs?

Ok, finishing off my first line of furniture in my collection. I'm looking for ways to build poses into them w/out needing to use poseballs, which, of course, use a prim.

I'm trying to get clean looks with minimal prim usage and I've encountered furniture that has poses, but no pose balls before...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

most interesting question!

yes, I've come across things that if I sit on, I do a nicely scripted sit rather than the boring default one. For you own home etc I can see your point for neatness, but from a visitors point of view, an item of furniture without a poseball largely suggests a non-scripted object ...

... just how many chances have I missed of doing something different to the usual sit?

stick the poseball script and the animation in the object - e.g. the seat of a chair. The seat then is effectively the poseball.

Yes, that's simply how you do it. But there is a big downside to it. With almost every poseball script you can change the position with x, y and z co-ordinates, but it is (almost) impossible to change degrees through the script. Therefore your animation MUST be spot on in order to look good, because it usually is not desirable to rotate cushions etcetera. As a designer I still prefer poseballs on furniture because it's far more easy to position. There are lots of scripts around that make poseballs disappear on /1 hide or left-click.

hmm, thanks for the quick replies.

So far a mix, keep poseballs, or get REALLY finicky with placement.

If you have your own custom animations, it would look really slick to put them in the furniture itself without using poseballs. Lost Dog does a great lapdance couch that doesn't use poseballs and has multiple animations.

If you're using someone else's animations, you're most likely stuck with pose balls. At least with a pose ball, you can easily tweak the position of the animation.

If you put the pose in early you can sort of sculpt the prim in question and the object around it.

I'll add: When you place an animation inside a prim, the center of the animation is the center of the prim. That's the thing that makes it tough to tweak an animation on a piece of furniture- you can't just center the animation on the corner of the cushion, for example.

Edit: The poster above has a good suggestion to work around that, though.

Or, of course, you could use Miffy Fluffy's wonderful MLP system (see the scripting forum), so you could have as many poses for 1 or 2 people as you like.

Love Suzi

Thanks Suzi, I'll check that out.

I've been meaning to look for a multi-pose menu driven system for my larger pieces

There is more than one multi-pose system available for furniture. I was actually doing some animation research yesterday and found three or four. (I can't think of them all off the top of my head; I just searched for animation places in both "Places" and "Classifieds" searches and went hopping around.)

They are expensive. But the ones I've tried are very slick. It is defintely something to check out. The poseballs aren't so akward to use when you can control them with one of those systems.

I still use poseballs in my furniture, simply because it is easier for the customer to adjust them to their avatars body size.

I just wanted to interject that, while I like the uncluttered look of scripted furniture, my quite tall av has a tendency to sink into it. This happens with pose balls as well, but they can usually be independently adjusted to correct the problem. So, if you go the scripted route, your furniture may not work well for every size of av.

Edit: Daniel posted while I was still typing.

MLP is free, although if you are using it commercially, Miffy suggests you might like to make an appropriate contribution.

Also, Daniel and Ann, it is extremely easy to adjust the position of the animations with MLP, even for the customer. This is particularly useful for matching animations such as cuddles (and we all know how important cuddles are).

llSitTarget(vector offset, rotation rot);

Set your offsets how you want them, then use llEuler2Rot(vector vec) to have a nice, easy x,y,z rotation.

llSitTarget(<0,0,0.5>,llEuler2Rot(<0,90,0>) for an elevation of 0.5 meters above the center of the cushion and a rotation of 90 degrees in the y axis.

Well now, that's helpful to know.

Lex Neva has written a pair of (free) scripts that make it easier to create the sit targets you need.

/54/6a/153963/1.html

Right, two thumbs up for Lex Neva's Easy Sit Target Positioner.

Soon I plan to post (for free) an improved & bundled version of these scripts, with detailed instructions.

The helper script is already installed in an object that I find handy for setting sit targets (it's a disk with the helper script, plus a tall pole because I usually lose the disk under the floor and have to go camera-fishing to find it after setting the target).

The positioner script is written to stay installed in the furniture prim. It comes up in "set target" mode. Once you set the target it changes automatically to "furniture" mode. You can 'long-touch' to get it back into set mode, or if you reset the script, you can long-touch to make it go straight to furniture mode without changing the sit target.

Both scripts use any animation found in the same prim.

Anyone wanting to fiddle with this kit can buy my low prim furniture set on SLX for $250; it comes included. (I also plan to bundle in all the free copy/xfer sit poses I find.) However, when I get around to it I'll make this kit available for free. (Buy my furniture and I'll also help you if you have trouble. )

If you're a good enough builder to make furniture, you should be able to learn to use the improved easy-sit target positioner without much difficulty. The hardest part is finding good sit poses!

Cheers
Jeff

See for my latest on this. Free.