beginner animation question

Let's say I make an animation of someone raising their right hand and another animation of someone playing their left hand. I now play the right hand animation, then I play the left hand animation. Do I end up with both hands up? Or, does the second animation reset my AV to some predetermined position?

I'd like to make this exact type of animation. A raise left hand and a raise right hand but I want them to not cancel each other out (you can raise either hand or raise both at once).

Thanks!

It all depends on both the priorities of the animations and which body parts you've set keyframes on. The way animations work in SL, an animation only affects body parts that you specifically set keyframes on. So, to raise the right arm without affecting the left, make sure the animation only has keyframes on the right arm and not the left. Vice versa for the other side of the body.

Meanwhile, the wrong way to do it would be to actually place the left arm down in your animation of raising the right arm. In that case, playing this animation will lower the left arm.

I see. Also, is there a way to tell when an animation has finished playing? Let's say I want to play the raise left hand, then play raise right hand (2 different animations) but don't want to start the second animation until the first is done.

No simple way to tell, no. You could use script to see if the animation is playing via llGetAnimationList and looking for that specific animation uuid (http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlGetAnimationList), but it is far less hassle to just make the script pause for the appropriate length of time before playing the second animation.

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Ok, then is there a way to tell how long an animation is (in seconds)? I'd rather not hard code the times in case I modify the animations.

no

Simply play them via a gesture? No scripting required...