More than 1 animation in a sofa - but zero pose balls

Hello people,

After quite a bit of struggle (it takes me surprisingly long to learn things here), and with help from Ceera and Nectere, I'm able to put sit animations in my furniture, without using pose balls. And now...a second problem crops up. People want to buy my sofas (I'm not open yet, still solving some problems and problemettes), but they don't want just one person to be able to sit on them.

So there we are...do you good people know how to put 2 (possibly even 3) sit animations in 1 sofa, without however using pose balls?

Thanks in advance,

Xylo

never built furniture but im guessing you would need to to add another prim, so taking your example, you have made a sofa, there will need to be 2 prims making up the seat area to allow you to add 2 sit targets and animations etc. This seems logical to me but am sure someone wll correct me if im wrong.

That is correct, you need a separate prim for each pose position. Essentially, think of the seat cushions as poseballs. As long as each seat cushion is a separate prim, you can have a separate sit pose for each seat.

Pose Cushions

Not tested this, but it might be possible to simply stop the standard sit anim and replace it with your own for anyone who sits anywhere on the object using changed() event and CHANGED_LINK.
You can have multiple people sitting on a single prim if you don't use sit positions.

Alright, thank you guys. I guess I had better leave it up to the customer to put pose balls on the sofas, if they so desire.

Ah, Sys, I'm afraid that sounds much too advanced for me...

remind your customer that

1. the pose ball does not have to be a ball. it can be a free pillow you give them, or even invisible
   
2. you could give them some sample pose cushions they can put their own sits in
   
3. have you looked at how SexGen beds work? You could do the same thing only with couch sits
   

Thank you Lee, I will follow up on your suggestions. Not seen those beds you mention, but will investigate into it.

Xylo

Several choices, some already mentioned here.

Let's say you want to have a couch with room for three people to sit on it, each with a different pose.

Option 1 - Lowest prim solution:
Design the couch with the seat cushion made of three prims. Put a pose ball script in each seat cushion, just as you did with the chair that has no pose ball. They can click on the cushion they wish to sit on. Has the same problems as any no-pose-ball chair, in that to adjust seating position, you must tweak the script.

Option 2 - Use Pose balls:
This is the most common solution. Make the couch, and use seperate floating pose ball prims for the seating positions. Use a show/hide script in the pose ball so the un-used ones can be hidden or shown. You can see furniture that I have made this way on display in my store in the Isle of Nepenthe sim. (Turn right from the telehub. It's the corner store on the right as you enter the side street). This is the most advisable solution, as it is easy to build and easy to tweak pose positions for different size avatars.

Option 3 - Pose Ball Generation:
The SexGen, DevPose and similar beds and similar scripted furnishings use a more complex scripted method to actually rez pose balls on demand, for a variety of uses. You can purchase a core unit for these systems and load it with your own animations and pose ball coordinates. The up side is that one piece of furniture can do a LOT. I have one sexGen bed that has 100 different animation pose balls sets, complete with 'props' for some of them! But rather than having a cloud of 200 to 300 invisible or visible pose balls attached to the bed, it has a menu that I pick an animation from, and it creates the appropriate pose balls for that use. The animations and props and base pose ball scripts are stored in the core unit, usually a single prim concealed inside the furnishing item or made invisible. Both DevPose and SexGen also allow you to switch poses without getting off the pose balls. It re-scripts the balls and moves them while you're still on them!

The pose ball generation systems are not cheap, especially if you want a resale license. But for high-end products, they are fantastic. Imagine a comfy Victosian chair that on a menu command can switch between a standard relaxed sit, a chatty conversing animation leaning to the left, a similar animation leaning to the right, and one where you're taking a nap in the chair. And that doesn't even get into possible adult animation options!

Actually there's a free one. Look up Miffy Fluffy to pick up a copy of MLP. Just send Miffy a donation of thanks every time you make a commercial product with MLP.

Thing is though it is pretty complicated to setup, and if you don't even know how to put multiple sit positions on your couch then setting up MLP will be way over your head.

ADDITION: Incidentally, MLP was affected by the llSetScriptState bug for the last week, but according to the blog the rolling restarts today fixed that bug. I'm not able to go in-world to actually check until later tonight.

I have a two prim sofa with two poses.

The main pose is in the prim that makes the back and seat area. The second pose is in the prim that makes the arms. The main pose prim is the root prim. Positions set using Lex Neva's helper.

Not ideal if you want to be very clear about where sits end up, but I have a big sofa with poseballs I acquired a long time ago, that'll whizz you off to one of the couples balls if you try sitting on the sofa, so it's not a problem specific to ball-less solutions

Thanks, everybody. Once again a very detailed reply from Ceera - thank you for that. I will look into all that you've said. My seats are always one prim only, so alas, putting sits in different parts of the seat will not work. Which is what made me wonder, Ace, how that works with your sofa? You put a pose in the arm, you say - but in that case someone will have to click on the arm and choose Sit Here, no? I don't think most people would naturally do that.

***/me faints***

One other way of looking at pose balls. They are usually so big and pink and blue. They don't have to be. For one thing, they can be smaller, and perhaps semi-transparent, maybe little flat disks instead of balls, and colored to co-ordinate with the furniture. In this case, maybe you can put six of them on a one prim couch without making it look like a hallucination.

Of the two poses I use, one is a snazzy lounging around one, the other is a simple, perched on the sofa one. So you're more likely to hit the loungy one, but if someone is sat on that already, even clicking on the main seat will send you to the next (only) open sit target, the one based out of the arms-prim.

It's not as obvious as a pair of blue and pink poseballs for couples stuff, but it gets two people sat on a sofa with poses, though without knowing the specific pose they'll get unless they're familiar with it- the same could be said of generic poseballs though.

Before i embark on my next project, reliable multi-sitter sitting on a one prim bench, lets explore and discuss offsetting the sit target position by a little bit once one person has sat down, shall we?

Can't you:

(1) set the original sit target position in your code as 'default'

(2) offset the x,y,&/or z by a small amount when someone else sits on the object

(3) record the new position in a list;

(4) repeat steps 2-3 for each new person that sits down;

(5) open/revert to a stored position when someone leaves that position, setting that vacant stored position as the next sit position;

(6) revert to the original (default) sit target when everyone gets off?

heck, couldn't you add a cap on the number of positions and say, ''sorry, this bench/couch is full" when too many people try to sit on it?

Anyway, i was planning on developing this but if anyone has some hard evidence that it won't work, please tell me. (i.e.) changing the sit position while someone is sitting on something boots them off of it?

Little, I believe you will find that for a single prim, you can only have a single sit target. You could possibly make a pose script that looks at the height of the person who sits on it, and adjust the sit target a bit for their body size. I know you can move a pose ball via a script while the person is on it, and can move them in that manner. But if you move the sit target, you do move the person seated on it. It does not become a new position to sit.

You could use an auto-rezzed script so the first person uses a deafult sit target, and that spawns a one-prim pose ball next to them for the next person to sit on, I think, and repeat that with an offset until the number of available positions on the bench is full. But it's easier and more versitile to just make a bench with individual pose balls for each position, thus allowing each to be adjusted for the person sitting on it.

What you want (I think) is in the SCRIPTING forum here:
/54/f8/64644/1.html

I've used this on benches and it works fine.

thanks sterling

That script will put you inside the bench at various positions.
To fix it, change the two llSitTarget calls inside changed to have a z value of .5 instead of 0.