artistic wobble

I am working on a sculpture for which I need a particular effect. I have a spring-like structure, in which each coil is a separate prim (they change sizes and have other properties that make a single prim difficult). I want to give the whole spring a little oscillation, without it moving around globally. I've tried various things, but of course the linkage of the pieces is causing me difficulties - i can get one coil to oscillate, but not in any kind of logical-looking relationship to the other coils. It's a very small oscillation I want - only just visible - but I want a relatively quick vibration, not something that looks like molasses . Any ideas?

Moving everything in the linkset together may look ok if the amount moved is small enough. Otherwise getting the different parts of the linkset synched up is going to be impossible. Even so, I can't see how to do moving fast enough to look like a vibration. Particularly if someone looking at it has a low frame rate, it's not going to be possible at all.

Would making it a vehicle and playing with the vertical attraction work?

Magellan, love the question. Could you make the height of the prim structure as a trig function of time? No idea what the function would be, but sure it wouldnt take long to work it out. It would require the script to be running the whole time the sculpture was oscillating, which could increase lag. Not convinced that you cant make the spring in 1 prim, but I might be missing something here...Good luck with it

How about something like expanding the coils and lowering the alpha when it's hit, or whatever, then shrinking them back to normal and raising the alpha again over time? When things vibrate small amounts quickly they look like a single translucent object to the eye.

I haven't had a chance to test out your suggestions yet, but I am thrilled by having some new ideas (rather than the ones my tired brain has been giving me

The idea of using vehicle functions is one that hadn't even crossed my mind, but it's a great suggestion, Meade. I'm not quite sure how to use vertical attraction, but buoyancy and hover may do just as well. I'll let you know how it goes.

The idea of a sine function is also really interesting, DeepestBlue. As for the number of prims, if I could get it down to one, I'd be thrilled, but it's like a coil that expands in size first and then contracts in size afterwards (spatially I mean, not temporally). Actually the coil follows an egg-like shape - it's part of a sculpture.

AJ, when you say lower the alpha, you mean make it more transparent? Am I understanding you right? It's also an interesting idea. I'm trying to suggest "sensitivity" in the coil structure to someone's proximity, and I've been thinking only in terms of movement, but perhaps I might just thicken the coils and make them more transparent and then bring it back to normal, in an oscillating pattern. I'm going to try it out, and see if the effect works.

Also, Seifert, I am concerned about how it will look to different people. I don't have a lot of experience yet - I have a high graphics machine and don't always realize that others don't see things the same way. So it's a good point, worth thinking about.

So thanks a million to you all for the suggestions... I'll get back here and let you know how it unfolds!

Yeah. Although, thinking about it, the most accurate looking way of doing it would be to shrink the coils and rez a temporary bigger coil over the top that's translucent then animate them both and decrease the transparency of the temp coil until they're at the size; something like this. It might look good to put an animated texture on the temp coil to flicker it between top and bottom very quickly too, but that'd need testing to see if it works with SL's framerate.

One thing that I think would be essential to creating the effect it's oscillating would be sound too. Having the sound of a spring being stuck played when the spring is hit (or whatever's causing it to oscillate happens) would, IMO, add enough that you could even get away without having it represented visually in some cases.

That's a pretty cool effect you've come up with, AJ.

I have implemented a transparency response within the coil ... it's not the movement I originally had in mind, but it does a job that is similar in terms of the logic of the sculpture. The effect is quite good. However, I like your idea too, so I may keep experimenting along those lines.

For this particular effect, sound isn't what I wanted to produce, although I understand your argument and I might find a way to make it work out.

You've been very helpful...

I tried turning the coils into a vehicle, but I don't understand enough about vehicle programming to really be able to exploit the idea, and I believe the complexities of handling many linked elements remain in that approach. I also tried the sine wave idea, with similar difficulties. The "optical illusion" proposed by AJ is the solution with the least "hair pulling" on my part...