Pose balls for builds you intend to sell?

Hi there,

Wondering where everyone gets their pose balls for furniture they intend to sell (modify,copy, transfer). I've gone to the usual freebie/newbie places and picked up a couple free poses, but most of what you see are the same 5-10 sits, lays, etc.

I've been to a couple of places to actually buy them (Bits and Bobs) and they really expensive ($1k per). Can anyone recommend places to buy some low cost poses (sit, lay) for a new SL furniture designer?

Many thanks,

Tifosa

In short, I make mine.

This is Really boiled down...
rez a ball (or cube or whatever), and name it. Naming is important BEFORE you add those no mod animations and/or scripts.

set texture to blank or whatever you want (such as blue/pink for couples poses).

set phantom to on, so the balls don't get in anyone's way (they can be moved through).

add your animation to the ball.

add a touch script or some other activation script so the animation will start when sat on (or whatever). I'll assume you have already gotten the script set with the correct placement of the AV who sits on the ball.

Now you can take it into your inventory.
When you rez it, you will still probably need to adjust height & rotation on the ball.

Now as for sources for the animations, first check your own inventory "library" directory, Animations subdirectory. Then check your regular \inventory\Animations\ directory. If you cant find what you want there (double click them to test in world), look at the various freebie boxes at Yadni, etc. Look for the animations boxes & the poses boxes. Edit them and look at the icons inside. If it's a bunch of boxes, you are looking at poseballs, most likely. If it's a running man icon, it's an animation. Running a search in "Find" (keyword = Animation) will also be helpful.

Pre-made poseballs that you can resell... you will want Copy & Transfer permissions. Good luck. Most will be No Copy. You will need to contact the sellers personally and convince them to sell you a copy/mod/transfer (full perm) version. It will not be cheap. You need Copy & transfer to make a copy & transfer them to your customer; You need Modify to be able to link it to your furniture build.

You basicly have two choices. Buying full-perms pose balls at a higher price per pose than single-use ones from someplace like Bits and Bobs, or making your own poses in some external application like Poser or DAZ Studio, and importing those as .BVH files into SL.

Personally, I buy mine, when I need full-perms poses for something I want to sell. Sell more than half a dozen copies of the chair or couch or whatever, and you pay off the cost of the full-perms pose balls pretty fast. If you are making something you only expect to sell one or a small number of, use the one-shot pose balls, and sell the original. All the B&B one-shot pose balls are transferrable.

Post a question on the Animations forum here for more info on making and importing your own poses. But search that forum first, as it's likely been discussed in-depth already. I just got Poser myself, so maybe I will start making my own some day, when I have time to learn how.

Whatever you do, if you start scripting your own poseballs for the love of whatever please figure out how to make the ball invisible when it's being sat on There's nothing much sillier than sitting with a ball poking ou- that doesn't sound right. Um... a visible poseball stuck to you! But you see it all the time...

*laughs* Most free poseball scripts do have that feature. You can tear apart a free pose ball to see how they coded it.

One silly thing I am trying to work out is how to have multiple pose balls in an item, and have it so when you choose one to use, the others vanish as well, and then they all show up again when you get off the pose ball you were using. I can likely do that with a link-message, but haven't quite worked it out yet.

link messages, yes.

key     attached_agent = NULL_KEY;

default {
    
    changed( integer Change ) {
        
        if( Change & CHANGED_LINK ) {
            
            key new_agent = llAvatarOnSitTarget();
            
            if( (attached_agent == NULL_KEY) && (new_agent != NULL_KEY) ) {
                // there's new user on the stand
                llMessageLinked( LINK_SET, 0, "poseball_used", "" );
                // request permissions etc
            }
            else if( (attached_agent != NULL_KEY) && (new_agent == NULL_KEY) ) {
                // current user left
                llMessageLinked( LINK_SET, 0, "poseball_free", "" );
                // release permissions etc
            }
            
            attached_agent = new_agent;
        }
    }

    link_message( integer Sender, integer InputInt, string InputString, key InputKey ) {
        
             if( InputString == "poseball_used" ) { llSetAlpha( 0.0, ALL_SIDES ); }
        else if( InputString == "poseball_free" ) { llSetAlpha( 1.0, ALL_SIDES ); }
    }
}

note this isn't entirely fool-proof. If you have avatars on more than one poseball and one of them stands up, all poseballs will show. It can be fixed with secondary check when link message is received, though.

One thing that is important is to distinguish between poses and animations. Poses are static and animations are (suprise!) animated. There are a ton of free poses that you can create your own poseballs with. I will drop you a package of them and a basic script.

Animations are another story entirely and I tend to use the ones at Bits & Bobs for all my projects. Yes, it is a hefty upfront expenditure, but they do pay for themselves quickly if you make something that sells well.

You can also pick up good copyable static poses for furniture at Nyterave island, you do need to become a verified furniture maker to purchase, though.

Although I know they're expencive, I highly reccomend Craigs animations at bits and bobs. I use them in my furniture and they're great to work with.

Zap

Thank you Joannah!

I'll give that a try soon. In this case, the item has three pose balls, and the intent is that there would be, at most, only one person using the item at a time. There is no room for more than one user at a time. The three balls allow individualized positioning of the three poses, and I want the unused balls to hide when one is chosen, then all three pose balls must reappear when the person gets up.

I'm also looking at coding a menu-driven choice, where it rezzes a pose ball for a chosen position. But that, while more elegant, is also far harder to adjust the ball positions on, to fit the individual. I'd need a configuration notecard for that, and setting values would be tricky. Much easier just to allow the user to move a linked pose ball a bit.