Down with poseballs....

Damn Hiro, that's what I've been building. I've got it working now, just cleaning up the code and stress testing it. Oh well, another business venture gone. If you'd like to chat, just IM me in world. I'm not really the selling type anyway.

There are already many script out there. that are capable of rotating animations. Sensual Casanova version list prices for each animation. My version can handle almost limitless animations. I have a version that moves the pose ball.

It's a fun project, and it's a good stepping stone to further animation scripts.

If you have a good idea, then market it.

Mine happens to have an additional user-friendly feature which I'll announce later. In addition, I'm working with an animator to one-up the current look of animation-rotators.

There is one similar to what you are referring to in the script library... yes one ball doing multiple poses can be a good thing.. in SOME cases.. but not all...
I am not too thrilled with items that I have to type "!next", "!now", '!Stop" etc.. thats is why I dont use them.. they are more trouble then they are worth, IMO. I have both scripts, and the one I use is the one I prefer... it doesn't use any listeners and you toggle show/hide by touch.

Isnt one of the problems simply that The animation itselfe moves the avatar.
I have a "cloak" animation that actually moves the avatar underground, But the position of the avatar does not change.

In other words, the avatar is renderd as if its under ground, But if someone shoots the exact spot i was standing before i pressed play, the bullet will hit me.

Because the avatar is still there, the animation is simple changing where it looks like the avatar is.
So even an llGetBum would return the position of the avatar, not the position of the avatars animated position. as far as i know all animations are renderd client side.

One way i fix the sitballs problem is to simply use them and position and rotate it so that it looks good for the couch or whatever..
Then i apply a 100% transparent texture to the ball. you dont need to click the ball to sit, When you chose to sit on the object your avatar is put at the next available sit target.

Poseballs are not the worst thing in the world when you're dealing with furniture with multiple sit targets. They're easy for animators to work with, and everyone already knows how to use them.

As for the things that Hiro at Lit are talking about, I've done a few scripts that seem to do that already. You can see them in the Riverie 2k4 line which was launched a little while ago. I think it's a pretty intuitive system.

I don't have a landmark on me, but I know you can find them in Chartreuse and Umber. They're also in the finder

It's been a little over two years since this thread lived and breathed, but I agree strongly enough to justify some necromancy. And if that's not justification enough for you, then so what?;]

I feel you. Poseballs are such tacky and incongruent-looking objects that they make even the finest build and animation work look shoddy. Poseballs are an extremely ugly convention that ppl have taken so much for granted that they can't imagine being able to sit without a butttarget to tell them. Would anyone be so distracted by a lack of poseball in an apparent chair that it wouldn't occur to them they could actually SIT on it?

The major excuse for continued use of poseballs is that they're easy and convenient. But there are some who are less concerned with their work made easy than their work made RIGHT, and the difference in quality is appreciated by those who are instantly turned off by the sight of poseballs.

Is it not possible to build furniture in the same way that multi-pose systems (e.g the X-cite system) work, i.e. click on a single item (be it a bed or a chair/stool) and have a requester pop down offering you multiple choices of poses? I feel this would be a far superior system to having multiple poseball furniture which can still be bought in SL today.

It's possible, as long as the poses offered as choices can all work with the same, single sit target (since changes to the sit target don't take effect until someone sits on the prim again)

So essentially, you have to pick your poses to make sure that they all "sit" on the surface of the object, and that you would have to stand up between each pose, is that right or am I missing something?

One or the other; you don't need to stand up at all if the poses are made to work together insofar as they all look right when using the same sit target.

If the poses are from varied sources and *don't* look right without different sit targets, then you can script the sit target to change but that change wouldn't take effect until the avatar stands and sits again.

On the other end of the spectrum is a device like the MLP, which is not in the spirit of this thread since it uses balls but is an interesting solution anyway because it dynamically moves the balls around to suit different poses as they are selected. So there one can use any animation from any source and switch without standing and sitting again, because the balls move around and move the avatar with them.

If you move a linked child prim that an avatar is sitting on, the avatar itself won't move for the same reason the other linked children won't move; for the purpose of the linked set code, the avatar is another child of the root while sitting. Only when someone sits on the prim's new position will they take the correct position and offset.

It is possible to make multiple interactive animation sets centered on the same origin, so no matter which child prims you put them in, the avatars will be displaced to the correct position for each animation change. There's a bug in the rotational offset of child prims, though, so the child prim with your sittarget either has to have a zero rotation, or you'll have to set the sittarget offset by hand.