Animation Precedence question

I cant think of the right word but animations have "precedence" in that one can overide another (or part of another) by being higher in the list sort of speak. If anyone understands what I mean by that here is my question...

Like most of us I have hundreds of static poses in my inventory (mostly poser defaults), and for the most part I find these useless becasause the frozen zombie look is just out of style today.

A very few of these however are resuced by the fact that they have what I am going to call "low precedence" so the default Linden animations like breathing and moving the head when the focus changes can still occur. i.e. - if you are posing on the couch and someone comes into the room, your head will turn and it's all much more realistic.

Assuming that is correct, is it possible to load up all those useles poses and change the precedence so that they too become more realistic and allow for some of the default animatoins to take over from time to time?

It seems like a lot of work to me and I am wondering if it's worth trying to do it or if it's possible at all.

Dianne, what you call "precedence" sounds like the "priority" setting for animations. Priority is set when an animimation file is uploaded into SL. The highest priority setting, which is 4, will override the lower settings, but there's a catch. If a high priority animation doesn't use/move a joint/part, that joint/part can still move according to another lower priority animation. This can be used to creatively run several animations at once for interesting effects.

So, what you are suggesting is possible, but you would need to have the orginal bvh animation files to upload since you can only set the priority on upload. You can't change that setting in an existing SL animation.

Priority! yes that's it, couldn't think of the word.

I see that most of these animations I'm talking about are poser defaults and I have a copy of Poser (even though I hate it).

Does anyone know how to export these from Poser as BVH files or what settings to use on upload to make them the way I suggest so that the head moves etc.? I am not quite getting my head around this. If a setting of 4 (the highest) will still allow this behaviour (of the LL default animations overriding head movement etc.), how is it that *any* animations are frozen in the way they are?

Assuming I can find the BVH files for these poser default animations in my copy of poser or on the web, shouldn't I upload them at the *lowest* priority setting instead?

Try uploading the .bvh at a priority 2 setting. Once you get it into Second Life, use the animation and see what you're able to do or not do. Try it with the same animation, uploading it at all the priority levels so you can get a feel of what moves and what doesn't.

As for Poser, it's simple. File, export, bvh. Make sure you select the scale automatically. Then in SL... File, upload animation, which will pull up a box to let you tweak your settings. Play around with all the functions so you can see how they effect your animation.

Hope that helps some

Also Dianne, there's an FAQ for New Animators at

http://forums.secondlife.com/showth...7272#post517272

It includes a link to Ulrika's excellent tutorial on creating your first animation, and several of the FAQ answers provide explanations of priority within the problem context, which might help you understand priority better.

This link appears to be changed. Do you know the new one? I get an error when clicking on it. .

This must be it? :

/52/7b/47701/1.html#post517272

Thanks for all the help on this topic. I guess I will just have to play aorund with it and see the results, as advised.

Well, both are broken for me now. Try:

/52/7b/47701/1.html

The FAQ is several messages down in the thread.