Scripting Questions from a Script Noob

2 questions:

#1- Is it possible to have a script activate at the end of an animation, causing a texture or particle system to activate?

#2- Been trying to make Statues that rotate in place, like watching you, as someone walks past. I am SO stuck on where to start!!

1) Yes, but not nicely. You'd have to time the anim, start it playing and then use a timer or sleep to fire the next thing off at that the right time.

2) Visit the wiki at http://secondlife.com/badgeo/wakka.php?wakka=HomePage. You're certainly looking for llSensor and sensor events, and at movement and dynamics. You can probably fake it with non-physical movement, in which case llSetRot() is the way to go.

#2 - use a sensor repeat (preferably only activated when someone's around, using e.g. volume detect), llDetectedPos() in sensor event to get the position of the avatar and then llRotBetween() to figure out the rotation between your statue and the avatar. Which you then use in llSetRot(). Alternatively you can try to use llLookAt() which avoids the rotations but uses the Z axis as "forward".

The wiki has good sample code for using llRotLookAt to point other axes in the direction of something else.

For statues, you will also need to make sure that they don't rotate vertically. If you're using *LookAt, you can do this quite easily by making the z position of what you're looking at equal to the z position of the statue.

Tod69, some code from another thread to get you started. Both snippets are written for sensor events.

If you want the whole statue to rotate on the spot, this will turn it so that its positive x-axis points toward the target, keeping y horizontal and z vertical.

        vector Offset = llDetectedPos(0) - llGetPos();
        float HalfAngle = llAtan2(Offset.y, Offset.x) / 2.0;
        llSetRot(<0.0, 0.0, llSin(HalfAngle), llCos(HalfAngle)>);

If you want the statue to remain still, but have the head move, this one will turn the head side-to-side, and let it look up-and-down, but without cocking it to one side or the other. You will need to add limits to stop it from exceeding a natural range of motion (i.e. to stop it breaking its neck )

        vector Offset = llDetectedPos(0) - llGetPos();

        float Yaw = llAtan2(Offset.y, Offset.x) / 2.0;
        float Pitch = -llAtan2(Offset.z, llSqrt(Offset.x*Offset.x + Offset.y*Offset.y)) / 2.0;
        
        float SinYaw = llSin(Yaw);
        float CosYaw = llCos(Yaw);
        float SinPitch = llSin(Pitch);
        float CosPitch = llCos(Pitch);
        
        llSetRot(<-SinPitch*SinYaw, SinPitch*CosYaw, CosPitch*SinYaw, CosPitch*CosYaw>);

Thanks guys & gals!! I'm now a happy camper (not in the chair sense).