A question about head movements and the mouse

I see animations where the head or neck is free to follow the mouse, but the movements are not as great as when no animation is operating. I have some in my ao, for instance. With no animation, the head moves a long way, but with these anims, the head doesn't move as far.

I've experimented with leaving the head free to move (no change in frame 2), but the head moves as far as when there is no animation - as expected, I've done the same experiments with the neck, and had the same results. How can I make anims where the head doesn't move as far when it follows the mouse cursor? I have to say, I haven't yes experimented with the head and neck, and the priorites. I set it at 4 all the time, but I can't see that setting it lower will cause smaller head movements - but I could be wrong.

Maybe someone will have a more definitive answer on this.

In my experience, the head moves the most when the chest + neck + head can move freely with the default animations. Lock up the chest and there is less movement, lock up the neck and there is even less movement.

I don't know if what you see is an actual difference in the rotation limits of the head in its default state; I it just appears that the head moves more due to the additive effect of the free movement of other parts (such as neck.)

If your animation animates the head, and has priority 4, it isn't going to follow the mouse at all. You're right in the guess that the rotation limits of the head are not affected by differences in the priority; the priority override is all-or-nothing.

I've played with this lots actually, as I want the head free to move naturally and follow the mouse (it's one of the main features of my poses that people love, aside from the breathing and natural movements!)

Anyways, it's all or nothing, there is no way to have the head move "less" in response to the mouse or others talking I'm afraid. The priority has nothing to do with it (if you animated the head and neck, then that takes over depending on the pri, if you don't, then it's irrelevant!) Usually though, we don't want to ever use priority 4 as it breaks other animations and defeats the entire system...

Thank you for the replies. I experimented with only the neck and only the head left free to move, so there wasn't any cumulitive effect, Amity. I wonder how people achieve small head movements that follow the mouse then.

You raised another question for me, Crystal. To save me doing a lot of experiments, would you explain in more detail why we should never use priority 4 please, and why it defeats the entire system - briefly, but in more detail I'm not entirely new to making animations but, before 2 weeks ago, I made only a few, and I didn't really get used to it. I've been hard at it in the last couple of weeks, but I haven't really got fully used to it all yet.

The viewer's built-in head movements also want to move the torso and neck, you can try leaving these joints untouched in your custom animation to get something closer to "natural" movement. (the torso movement will make a big difference, since it gets the avatar pointing in the appropriate direction.)

On why priority 4 might be seen as "bad", I made a quick stab at documenting all the little things the viewer adds automatically at the bottom of http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Internal_Animations At some point, maybe on a cooler day, I'll make a second pass to get all the affected joints documented. (eta: added, too hot to do anything involving RL movement today )

It's not really that high animations priorities are "bad", it's more that an animation intended to replace a sit or walk can also clobber a lot more than that in the process. Sometimes that's a good thing.

I just noticeded something about this. The amount of head movement depends on the angle you're viewing the av at. I'd never realised that before. So when I see avs with a small head movement, it's because of the direction I'm looking at it from......sigh

Is this perhaps just a function of the focal point of the avatar's eyes? Sometimes the avatar's head is following the mouse, sometimes it locks in on an object, sometimes its looking at your invisible camera.

It seems to me that avatars all act as if they have ADD- their focus is easily distracted.

I've no idea. But I do know that just leaving the head free to move now does what I've seen in other animations. When I was experimenting, I must have been looking from the wrong angles.