Setting constraints on sculpties animation to the avatar?

Hello all,

I am just learning how to make sculptie clothing in SL. And have been experimenting a lot with various ways of setting up their animation.

Could anyone tell me if there is maybe a scripted solution or tool however that will let me set constraints on animated sculpties based on the animations of the avatar from the points of the mesh when the viewer renders it?

To explain further, one piece I am working on now is a straight jacket. So far it is really a lot of fun but I have come across a real challenge with the sleeves that extend over the hands. No matter how I design the sleeve sculptie, and set it's animation, I get a very annoying clipping with the hands. Even with the hands set to minimal sizes. I figure if I could just add a script that says when position of tip of hand is at X,Y,Z, point 1 on sculptie equals X+A, Y+B, Z+C, point 2 on sculptie equals X+A2, Y+B2, Z+C2, etc, etc. Is there anything like this out there?

I'm guessing it is possible to just make the hands non-visible by some method. But for visual asthetic, I'd rather find a method to animate the sculptie around the avatar in a case like this.

Attachments in SL are connected to the avatar at a single point on the body, and do not move relative to that point as the avatar twists and bends. It is possible to write a script that modifies physical parameters of the attachment. For example, you can easily change color, size, and other parameters on articles like shoes and hair by building in a touch-activated or chat-activated script. Those scripts, however, create serious lag. Although many consumers like the convenience of being able to change the appearance of a clothing item on the fly, an increasing number of people are finally realizing the cost in server/client efficiency.

The scripts I have just described don't typically change the attachment dynamically. That is, the user may click on them occasionally to alter her hair color, but most of the time the scripts sit quietly in the background, purring away and contributing to the sim's background lag. If they were dynamic, they would create significantly more lag.

Now, while it's possible (though unadvisable) to write a dynamic parameter-changing script for an attachment (say, by changing parameters with a timer), it's not possible to do it in such a way that it responds to the way the avatar body twists and flexes. You can't figure out, for example, that your avatar's arm is raised and then make the attachment on her arm change shape in some way. We don't have access to that kind of information. So.... the short version of the long answer is no, can't be done.

BTW, if you want to implement your alternative suggestion, hiding the avatar's hand, you can do that with an invisiprim. That, too, is a non-dynamic solution. An invisiprim is simply a prim that is textured with a peculiar texture that hides an avatar but not any object that is textured with a 24-bit texture. So, you can make a prim glove, texture it as an invisiprim, and thus hide the hand, but you can't turn it off and on as the hand moves.

Yeah.. It really would be too much work (scripting) for little return. Just keep it simple.
Allow a bit more lee-way in the clothing.
Maybe one day it'll be more possible to be more realistic.

You could hide the hands with an invisiprim and provide alternate fixed-position sculpty hands.