Twitchy ears and wiggly tails

Hi, all. I'm a newbie to all this, so don't be gentle...anyways. My avatar's a bunny rabbit, got a short little tail and long ears...but they kinda sit there. I'm wondering if there's a way via scripting to make all of the above move? Nothing game-breaking, just it would be cool if my ears would twitch, move up and down, that sort of thing perhaps once every 30-45 seconds or so, and if I could make my tail wiggle at about that same kind of time-frame. I can look into making my own movements on command later, laying my ears flat or droop or what have you when I make certain gestures. The ears are the most expressive part of a bunny, I want to make that work for me.

I guess it's really two questions I have, first, is it possible to make these movements via a script or would I have to use Poser (which I have, though don't have much idea how to use it yet, another cool thing to learn)? Second, if scripting this is possible, can anybody give me a nudge in the right direction? Not asking anybody to do the work for me (I want to learn to make scripts in SL, best that I do the work myself in order to learn), but knowing what function(s) might be able to provide such motions would help greatly. Thanks!

At the moment there's no good way to do this. Attachments do funny things to motion scripts.

There are hacks around it, and at least of them could work: You attach a single object that is several copies of your tail in slightly different positions and play texture anims or similar so it cycles which is visible, giving the appearance of movement, same for the ears.

It could also be a pain in the backside though setting them up so the 'twitch' looks at all natural.

As far as I know, it is not possible to have a script move an object attached to an avatar. Sorry.

Also, Poser would not help you in this regard, because the Poser 2 human skeleton does not have animatable ear points.

However, it may be possible to do something almost like what you want using textures and animations, but it would be a trade-off, because the ears would lose much of their 3-D quality.

Hm. Maybe I'll play around with it, still...happily each of the ears are made in one piece (even though I've considered replacing them with multiple pieces to be able to get a 'lop-eared' effect). It seems like a single-piece object would be easier to move than a multiple-piece one like my tail, though I may be oversimplifiying matters. Particularly since I'm dealing with pieces attached to an object in the case of the ears, they're attached to an avie head, not my head. Even if I tend to think of my muzzle, cheek-ruffs and so forth as 'my' head.

Who knows, maybe I'll come up with something that my fellow furry types will love to have. Thanks!

I don't think I'd be dealing with the human skeleton in the case of Poser...whether it has the capability of bending part of an object in relation to another object (my AV head is another object, after all, which my ears are attached to), I really don't know. I really only put that out there 'cause I'm not sure of another way to do this if a script wouldn't do it.

Wanna keep the 3D quality if at all possible...I'll try multiple options, see what I can come up with. Perhaps if I can't come up with a random movements method, I can go ahead and make variations of the / gestures that involve ear movements, assuming I can do so with Poser. Strange to think that that might just be easier than random twitches. Who knows. Thanks for the input!

The only way I've run across for animated attachments (and I've searched the forums a lot) is the invisibility hack. /54/4e/33550/1.html is the first example I can find.

What you do is build one object that has all the 'frames' of your animation linked together, then set up some scripts that make the prims change their opacity between 0% and 100% on a timer.

I used this to make a wind-up key that turns while it's in my back. It took a good while to do and it's making the server do a lot of work to run it. But it's a windup key that turns while I'm wearing it.

It's an ugly hack.

Might be what I have to do, unfortunately, we'll see. If I did, might just be an 'earflick' motion I'd make...two 'frames' pretty much, one upright, the other laying down. Perhaps one or two other 'motions', I dunno. I'm still cogitating on it.

How are "drink" and "smoke" anims handled, like where you pick up a drink, and your avatar repeatedly "sips" from it?

Those are animations, but it has already been stated that the ears are not animatable joints. And the tail doesn't even exist.

To slightly expand a 'drink' anim exists as standard in SL. The glass, cig or similar plays that on a timer so every 10 seconds or so it plays the 'drink' anim. Good ones play another anim, whose name eludes me so you don't appear to spill your drink, rather you hold your forearm horizontally.

Well, the tail may be a lost cause...still looking at the ears. I'd rather not do a messy hide/show routine, but I will if I have to. Thanks to all of you for your replies. No this isn't a huge issue with me, a goodly part of it is just me trying to learn how to script stuff in-game Start with small piddly little bits, work my way up to ruling the world...

If you go to Tehama(180,180) in-world, Prio Serpentine makes animated tails, but they are cat/leopard type tails and not bunny-tails.

BUT, this is what Eloise and Mechanique are talking about, if you right click and edit the tail, it will highlight the different pieces of the tail - the script just turns each one "on and off". Honestly, I think that a "show/hide routine" is gonna be the easiest way to do this. Open the link Mechanique posts below to the other thread and look at the script Rysidian Rubio posts, and give it a try, don't think you even need to change the script much, just make a few different ear positions, put the smaller script in each position you've made in and change the WINGNUM integer in the scripts.

If you really want to nail it, one way would be to use llSetTextureAnim.

Basically, this is a client side effect that's a part of a prim - so you can just add the script and remove it simply enough. The script would then be fairly nice on the server (a good thing).

I once made a tail for an avatar in this manner. It works really well! The only problem is at certain angles the texture is prone to be a bit strange. This is due to a bug with textures that have alpha.

An alternate method, which I'm working to make more user-friendly, is to have avatars function like "vehicles" using my prim animator. Unfortunately, this method is far more time-consuming, and still has a few bugs and fixes to nail down first.

If this "feature" becomes a more common request, I'll put together a Scripting Library post on it. It's not that this is "impossible to do" or always laggy. It just takes some work.