Moving Jaws for Creatures!??

Hello everyone,

I am so very new to scripting and I have made a few avatars without the aid of moving jaws. BUT I would like to move on now and be able to make the jaw swivel in conjuction with a sound. So for instance, the jaw moves and then the sound plays. I have seen other Avatars with this ability with HUD where you press a button and the action and sound plays together. That is what I want to achieve but I have no idea where to start. I tried to look through Rotation guides but so far they are not very well worded and I get confused lol. I also tried to look at others scripts to see how they made the jaw move with the touch of the HUD button but most are non mod so I cant veiw the scripts to see how they do it. Lol not suprising really.

Can anyone help me with this? Or perhaps point me in the right direction?.

~Wynter Bracken

Creator of Phoenix Rising Designs.

Make the jaw a separate object which is attached to the chin for example.

then you can simply rotate it around its root prim.

Alternatively you can create more than one jaw, each with the wanted rotation, link them all together and then use some scripts to switch visibility of those prims.

Ah thanks Squirrel . Sounds simple enough.

there are even a few animatition you can trigger that will move the av jaw, and any attached prim parts.

There's a scripted gadget called FurryTalk, or something like that, which you can adapt to make a prim avatar head open and close the mouth while typing text chat. The head has to be modifyable, and I think you have to make open and closed versions of the mouth prims. Not sure if it moves the prims or just changes transparency of sets. Of course, all it does is flap the jaws open and closed.

Nothing in SL today that I am aware of will sync any avatar's mouth with the actual words being typed in text chat or spoken in voice chat. Could be interesting if an application like Mimic (for Poser or DAZ|Studio characters) could be adapted to work with SL avatars.

Do you happen to know which animations these are??

~Wynter

Creator of Phoenix Rising Designs

Yeah thats interesting ^^. But I don't really want it for typing anims, just for the jaws to move when a button is clicked on a HUD. And also for a sound to come out. I think what your thinking of is a type of TalkJaw. But thanks for the idea! .

The V3 generation furry avatars from Jakkal's Werehouse have jaws that can open, close, or have the tongue loll out of the mouth, as well as ears that can be in various positions, and they use a HUD to send commands to the head to actually move groups of prims. That may be the method you'd want.

I've also seen that kind of mouth control on the Wyrvern avatars from Daryth Kennedy on the Isle of Wyrms..

Just a thought...

- a simple rotation on a sculptie that's been pre "half-cut" in the model so it works like a standard door?

Yes, thats exactly what I mean. But its just the scripting part that is the problem hehe. I'm just wondering if there is a clear example of how to make it.

express_open_mouth
d63bc1f9-fc81-9625-a0c6-007176d82eb7

others can be found at https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Internal_Animations

Hmm I tried that as a Gesture, with the open mouth action and the Jaw attached to the chin. But it didn't work. I also tried to add the jaw to the mouth of the AV but that didn't work either. But thanks for the idea. Unless I'm doing something wrong? lol.

This script will make the jaw move up and down when the mouth opens and closes, and is an example of how to trigger the SL default animations.

Is the jaw an attachment point? If so anything attached to it should move up and down when this script makes the mouth open and close.

//touching worn object will open close mouth

string ANIMATION = "express_open_mouth";
integer TouchSW;

default
{
state_entry()
{
llSay(0, "Open Mouth Animation");
if (!(llGetPermissions() & PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION))
{
llRequestPermissions(llGetOwner(), PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION);
} 
}

changed(integer change)
{
if(change & 128) // You'd better put the this changed() event when you use llGetOwner
{ // by way of precaution.
llResetScript();
}
} 

touch_start(integer total_number)
{
if(TouchSW == FALSE)
{
//llOwnerSay("Tongue Out");
llSetTimerEvent(0.5);
}
else
{
//llOwnerSay("Tongue In");

llSetTimerEvent(0);
}
TouchSW = !TouchSW;
}
timer()
{
llStopAnimation(ANIMATION);
llStartAnimation(ANIMATION);
}
}

well after playing with several of the express animations I didn't get any results... apparently they all use morphs (guessing)... so my limited suggestion is to go with a seperate mouth or chin attachment and a cut root prim with something like a door script to rotate it (you can use an off channel that filters for the owner)... you can still gesturize it by making the gesture play a chat command to move instead of an animation... sorry for the misinformation, someone had told me that's how they'd managed it once but I can't seem to make it work with any of the ones I tried

The Jaw is attached to the chin, but could easily be attached to the mouth aswell. What script is this that could make it open and close?.

Thats fine, no worries. It seemed like a plausible explaination actually, that when the mouth opens the chin should make an attachment move aswell but apparently not as you have seen. I did have a go at a door script, placing it in the root prim lol, but considering Im new to scripts I wasn't sure how to make it open and close the jaw vertically and not horizontal and also it was touch based.

I know how to set up the gesture and it would obviously have to have a chat command like you said, but how would I go about it?. Do I just pick any Channel? like for instance /666?. Sorry lol, im not very good at all this...

I'll promote my super simple door script again....

just rotate the door prim, link you jaw to it and poof done

//-- works in ANY single prim door, linked or un-linked
//-- works in multi prim doors NOT linked to a larger structure
//-- REQUIREMENTS: a cut root prim, suggest cube, pathcut start=.125, end=.625
//-- CAVEAT: single prim doors are limited to 5m width

 //--// USERS MODIFY HERE v
integer gIntDoorSwing = 30;        //-- use -# to reverse the direction of swing, eg. -90;
integer gIntChannel = 42;           //-- chat channel to use
string   gStrCommand = "talk";   //-- Capitalization counts
 //--// USERS MODIFY HERE ^

key       gKeyOwner;
rotation gRotDoorSwing;

default{
  state_entry(){
    gRotDoorSwing = llEuler2Rot( <.0, .0, (float)vgIntDoorSwing * DEG_TO_RAD> );
    llListen( gIntChannel, "", (gKeyOwner = llGetOwner()), gStrCommand );
  }

  listen( integer vIntChannel, vStrName, vKeyOwner, vStrCommand){
    integer vIntCount = 4; //-- use even numbers
    do{
      gRotDoorSwing.s *= -1;
      llSetLocalRot( gRotDoorSwing * llGetLocalRot() );
      //-- add a small sleep if it's too fast
    }while (--vIntCount);
  }

  changed( integer vIntChanged ){
    if (CHANGED_OWNER & vIntChanged){
      gKeyOwner = llGetOwner();
    }
  }
}

the above example would use
/42 talk
to activate

original door script here

Ah great, thankyou very much. That should come as useful .

Opps, I edited my earlier post to add the script I referenced.

Hmm ok great but the only thing is that it gives me a syntax error on (23,29). Which is the vStrName part. I dont know what it means .

//-- works in ANY single prim door, linked or un-linked
//-- works in multi prim doors NOT linked to a larger structure
//-- REQUIREMENTS: a cut root prim, suggest cube, pathcut start=.125, end=.625
//-- CAVEAT: single prim doors are limited to 5m width

 //--// USERS MODIFY HERE v
integer gIntDoorSwing = 30;        //-- use -# to reverse the direction of swing, eg. -90;
integer gIntChannel = 42;           //-- chat channel to use
string   gStrCommand = "talk";   //-- Capitalization counts
 //--// USERS MODIFY HERE ^

key       gKeyOwner;
rotation gRotDoorSwing;

default{
  state_entry(){
    gRotDoorSwing = llEuler2Rot( <.0, .0, (float)vgIntDoorSwing * DEG_TO_RAD> );
    llListen( gIntChannel, "", (gKeyOwner = llGetOwner()), gStrCommand );
  }

  listen( integer vIntChannel, string vStrName, key vKeyOwner, string vStrCommand){
    integer vIntCount = 4; //-- use even numbers
    do{
      gRotDoorSwing.s *= -1;
      llSetLocalRot( gRotDoorSwing * llGetLocalRot() );
      //-- add a small sleep if it's too fast
    }while (--vIntCount);
  }

  changed( integer vIntChanged ){
    if (CHANGED_OWNER & vIntChanged){
      gKeyOwner = llGetOwner();
    }
  }
}

missing the type declarations in the listen event, fixed. (always found that an annoyance in lsl to have to redeclare the types used in inbuilt functions)

Ok, but now there is another Error, this time in line 16,60... * DEG_TO_RAD>. And it says
'Error - Name not defined in scope'. lol .....

I swear I'm gonna stop doing rewrites when I can't get on SL.... the variable name vgIntDoorSwing, should just be gIntDoorSwing....

but hey you're learning about debugging code right? =P

name not defined, means you either misspelled a function or variable name, or forgot to declare it using
type variable_name
or defined it in the wrong place (like a different event or state)

on the subject of compile errors
the cursor will be placed directly after the point that caused the error (in the script window) if it's a variable, it'll be right after the variable, if it's a function it'll be after the function call (or after the missing part) or the next line if it's missing a ; ... it gets more complicated if it's missing braces so if the immediate varibles etv looks good check braces

Ah Ha! Yes thankyou that worked. . Now I have a creature with moving jaws. I made a few gestures with sound and the jaw moves with it hehe, Thanks alot! . I am certiantly learning thats for sure. . By the way if I wanted the jaw to move more slowly on certain Gestures would I have to create a new script and then change that? And then put that into the jaw aswell?...