Animating the Child Size Avatar...?

Good morning, everyone!

I recently was asked by someone if I could create some custom animations for their business which caters to avatars that are pretty small; the avatars are not tinies exactly - they're more like child-size avatars that are in the "0" range of leg/arm/body sizes - but to this point, I have only animated full size avatars, so this is a whole new ballgame for me. I thought it might be a good idea to do some investigating before I go sticking my foot in my mouth and blurt out "sure, I can do that!".

So, if there is anyone out there who does animations currently for tinies and child avatars that might have some advice or pointers they'd be willing to share, I would be most grateful for any little tip you can offer that might give me some chance of success. For example, will I use similiar frame rates (currently, I use between 10-15, with 12 being my usual frame rate), or do I need a lower frame rate to accommodate those smaller movements? Will I use the same spacing in keyframes that I currently use on full size avatars (typically, I do a keyframe every 10 frames or so, depending on the movement)?

Also, is there a mesh for different size avatar that can be imported into Quavimator or Poser to better align these not-so-average size avatars to props, etc.? Any links would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your help and/or advice!

~Moonshy Littlething
PrimShy Designs

If you have Poser, just change the figure size to a smaller one - use the SL avatar. There are set defaults for toddler, child and adolescent. If it is for a specific child avatar, then ask them for their SL appearance slider height and arm and leg length and scale your Poser figure to match that. Then use those sizes for testing to make sure.

Tinies are a completely different job.

Awesome, Deira - thank you for the info. Poser definitely sounds like it makes it easier to work with different size avatars.

But is there a mesh somewhere that can be downloaded and imported into Quavimator for these avatar sizes? I haven't bought Poser yet (I'm planning to in the very near future), and I'd like to start working on these animations in Quavimator while I continue to save for Poser.

Thanks a bunch!

~Moon

I'm pretty sure the QAvimator mesh cannot be changed. You have male and female choices and that is it.

The one thing that I have that makes making these sorts of things easier is U-Poser. It is an in-world device. The newest version allows you to customize it to fit any avatar shape. I have used it to make a couple of kids animations and have recently added a BBW shape.

It takes about an hour to precisely size a shape. But once you get it sized, you save it and you have it for future use.

Everything is pretty much the same. You may have to change the hip height for certain animations because the child avatars have shorter legs and not changing the hip height results in them floating.

There are a couple other in-world programs which cater towards different avatar shapes and sizes. both can be found on the exchange ( Anypose or U-Poser ).

My pleasure I believe you can download a trial version of Poser from the e-Frontier web site now. You can't export anything from it, but you can at least learn to use it and "try before you buy". I have also seen older versions availble second hand on e-bay. You do not need the latest version for SL - any version from Version 2 upwards is ok, so it is worth looking out for offers.

(I just thought I'd mention this because it does take a lot of time to learn Poser, and I think many people give up - it has much more functionality than you need just for animating in SL, so it is complicated and quite an expensive product to buy new.)

EDIT:
It's not e-FRontier anymore - it's Smith Micro or something like that. Just shows how behind the times I am! Oh, just Google Poser, you'll find it.