Head and hands move in still pose

What am I doing wrong? I have been making still poses with the priority set to 4, and the AO off. The head and hands on my avatar still move (i.e. follow the mouse or hands flinch while typing). Is it something I need to fix in poser or do I need some type of script to stop this?

Ok I left a few things out. I’m using Poser5, and make the 1st frame key frame and leave as default pose. Then I break spline at frame 2. Start moving my figure the way I want in poser and make frame 2 key frames. Then in frame 3 I move one part of the body only 1 deg and make that a key frame. Upon upload I set it to loop at 100% to keep the figure in a constant pose.

Your animation only controls the parts that you actually move in Poser. So if you never rotate the wrist (say) then that is still doing the default SL animation even while your animation plays. And note that it doesn't matter if the hand is moving around, because you can be rotating the other parts of the arm and not the wrist.

Thanks for the tip Johan, it did seem to help a little but my avatars head still follows my mouse and the hands still move when i type in main chat. Im trying to make some modeling poses and looking at other peoples poses i notice that my avatars body parts are perfectly still.

I am 90% certain that your problem is what I desicribed. If the head is moving around in SL, then make sure to move the head slightly in Poser.

Honestly though, maybe you should leave it as is. I find that unless the head needs to be in some specific posture for the pose to work, it adds a lot to leave the head moving so that the pose doesn't look frozen.

It's not enough to just move each joint, you need to move each joint *in frame 2*. Any joint that does not change between frames 1 and 2 will not pick up your animation, and will move around.

Oh right, forgot to say that. Yeah, I keep forgetting there even is a frame one to move around, since I never move it.

I've noticed since the last update that even with moving the joints in frame 2, you will still sometimes end up with unexplainable joint drift. I'm getting it on 4 out of 5 new animations when I set them to loop. And 2 of them worked and uploaded fine before this last update. I've checked them and rechecked them several times and the joints are all locked and shouldn't be drifting at all. I think Linden Labs hosed something in their uploads of .bvh files with their last update as I don't seem to be the only experiencing this. Several people have told me their having similar problems.

Changing all the body parts did the trick, what I was doing wrong was some of my parts weren’t changed between frames 1 and 2 (i.e. chest and head) even though they weren’t at zero I over looked them.

Thanks for all your help

Anyone have a list (or know where I find one) of which body parts move by default when in each of the 'default' positions (ie. sitting, standing, etc)?

I now it's not a lot of real $, but it just annoys me to think that I need to upload an anim for each body part (12?) to understand what moves by default in sl if you don't move it between frames 1 and 2. Geez..it already cost me about $100L and bunches of hair before I stumbled on this thread!

The lslWiki is nice in that it lists the priorities for all of the system poses, but I don't see any mention of which parts animate by default.

I haven't actually checked this, but I assume you can check yourself with the system bvh's. All the default animations are available for download from the developer resources.

The only one that won't help with is the head, since the head is moved by SL not by the animations. Just note that much of the head movement actually comes from the neck.

use the preview grid to upload and test, costs you nothing.

You have to move EVERY body part if you are making a still pose for modeling. If you do not move the collar bone, then the arm will rotate wonky when the default poses change to the hands on the hips one. Same goes with shoulder, forarm, and wrist. Torso + Chest moves for breathing and turning with the camera. Hips move with the different stances as shifting weight. Each part of the legs move when the default stand goes to legs apart.

I've posted this a load of times: Open a new file, drop the frames to 2, leave frame 1 alone, move every single body part by 1 degree for each rotation axis on frame 2, save file as. Then begin every single pose from that file. I call mine 'default starting anim.'

You can even go further to upload this and see if the arms are the same length (usually they are longer in SL). Compare where the elbow end up based in relation to the hips in a basic hands at side pose. If in SL the elbow is closer, then change the length of the poser avie to match. Then match the forarm length based on how close the hands are to the knees. This will save you time and L$ for uploads if the two match. It wont always be perfect, but it helps.

No matter what you do, the hands will always follow the default poses. Like one hand in a fist, then both, then back to relaxed.

Chavo:
Do you now find a drift on the animations that you uploaded before the last patch? For months we've had a hip bug that seems to make things drift at random based on the spline that is a 'long term fix' with no one at LL working on it. Curious if its happening on ones it didn't destroy before the last update.

Why didn't I think of that before! Thanks!

I just did a bunch of extensive testing with this, because the hand 'stances' described above were driving me to Crazyland. I'm using QAvimator, and I'm working on my first animation: A simple 'cuffed' sort of pose, with arms drawn back, wrists facing, hands balled into fists, so that I can build something along the lines of an armbinder that covers the entirety of the elbows to the fingers.

After lots of experimentation and following the above suggestions regarding 'locking' each body part in place, I've managed to get the pose to stay, and the limbs don't wander anymore. However, The hands still change whenever the default poses decide to run. This isn't going to work for me; the hands need to stay in a fist position so I can fit the 'binder around them as snugly as possible.

As Luth mentioned, no matter what you do, the hands follow the default poses... or rather, they ONLY follow the default poses on MY screen. I had a friend standing right next to me for a couple hours, watching my hands carefully, and especially whenever my hips shifted into 'default hands on hips stance', and at no time did she ever observe my hands changing position, no matter when the default stance kicked in. For her, they never moved from the "fists" position, which is what I uploaded them as, and the visual effect I'm trying to get.

Which is great! Except that as I mentioned, the 'binder Im making needs to cover the hands, and be as snug as possible; it's going to be extremely aggravating to only be able to adjust things in between "default stance kick-ins", let alone model my finished item.

So... my question at this point is.... is there a way to temporarily turn off the default animations? And if not, what's the best way to get this noticed by Linden?

[EDIT: As a last act of desperation, I put out a posing stand, stood on it, and then used my animation.... and my hands no longer move on my screen. So.... there's ONE way to lock the hands for crafting.]

You can override this with a timer event in the poseball script that stops and restarts the same animation over and over. You won't notice when the animation is stopped, but on restarting the hands revert back to the hand position assigned to the pose/animation file.

You can even animate the hands that way, by uploading the same pose twice with different hand poses assigned and switching between the two poses. Great for bondage furniture and -machinery... hands desperately clenching and relaxing... sorry, I'm zoning out

Nice coincidence just described 1 possible solution above. Poseball script could look like this:

key avataronsittarget; //don't change me
float timer_interval = 1; //seconds; change to 0.5 if not fast enough
string animation_name = "keepthosefrignhandscloseddammit"; //change me

default
{
    state_entry()
    {
        llSitTarget(<0,0,0.5>,<0,0,0,1>); //change me if needed
        llSetSitText("I'm tired"); //change me
    }
    changed(integer change)
    {
        if(change & CHANGED_LINK) 
        {
            avataronsittarget = llAvatarOnSitTarget();
            if( avataronsittarget != NULL_KEY )
            {
                llRequestPermissions(avataronsittarget, PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION);      
            }
            else
            {
                llStopAnimation("stand");
                avataronsittarget = NULL_KEY;
                llSetTimerEvent(0);
            }
        }
    }
    run_time_permissions(integer perm)
    {
        if(perm)
        {
            llStopAnimation("sit");
            llStartAnimation(animation_name);
            llSetTimerEvent(timer_interval);
        }
    }
    timer()
    {
        llStopAnimation(animation_name);
        llStartAnimation(animation_name); 
    }
}

Usually a timer inside a poseball script is used to keep a certain facial expression without changing the pose though. For example, the run_time_permissions event starts "my animation", the timer stops and starts the expression "express_smile" to keep 'em grinning (uses llStop / StartAnimation too, see http://www.lslwiki.com/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=animation for a list). Anyway, in this case the timer is used to restart your animation over and over, to revert the hand pose again.

GAH! Make the bad numbers stop!!!

Just kidding. I haven't started learning scripting yet... I've just started getting the hang of working with prims and smacking around my animations

Thank you for putting forth a possible solution... when I *do* get there, it will be nice to have something to rip of.... uh, I mean "study in great detail, to better enhance my learning" *grin*

Out of curiousity, would anyone know why my friend observed my hands in the proper 'fist' position the whole time, and yet my screen was showing me the "relaxed, one fist, relaxed, two fists, relaxed, etc"?

That can't be a sync issue.

I believe that's a bug with SL. Don't quote me on that, but I'm guessing so since they recently "fixed" setting hand position on upload and yet I see the hands changing position automatically as Luth describes.

I was also plagued by the random "wiggling" of the head and upper body of the avatar in poses where I wanted it to remain perfectly still. Provided that the pose will be embeded in a pose ball, you can use a 1-frame animation. You rotate the pose ball and change the 3 sit-postion parameters to get the avatar into the right orientation. (I uses a generic pose ball script.) When the avatar sits on the pose ball, it's in the right postion, and doesn't move at all (except for the eyes of course).

Tiberius