Articulated attachments

This is more just to confirm this, but I presume that joints in articulated object do NOT work when attached, since they don't seem to work.

Is this correct or is there a workaround?

The closest I've ever come to articulated attachments is "Vehitars" (that is, avatars via the use of a vehicle) using my BVH Importer.

Actually, the farthest I've gotten is a few flying boxes, because I'm too lazy and/or busy to create an actual "vehicle" or "avatar" using the tech. It's food for thought, though.

The other ways to create articulated attachments are:

1) custom animations bound to static attachments in strange, yet predictable patterns
2) Texture animation sequencing on appendages (ie. a tail, wings...) can be quite compelling, but the range of movement or realistic nature is greatly diminished.

There are no physics-based "workarounds" to articulating an actual attachment that I know of, though.

I don't understand the application of the BHV importer to this problem. I understood it to import a mesh as a set of linked primitave surfaces.

What is am looking for is a gimbole-slide joint. I can make them with regular objects, but they use llSetLocalRot and llsetPos within the object. And those does seems to work on attachments. Are there any other calls that dont work in attachments?

Actually, the only one I've seen work reliably is llMoveToTarget, Most movement-related functions are gimped or difficult to use on attachments last I checked.

A texture animation is probably your best bet if you want to keep things simple. My .BVH importer is more advanced, but also more exact... a .BVH (BioVision Heirarchy) is the same format Second Life uses to import avatar animations... I just made it so it works on prims. Fun stuff, that.

Still can't be attached in this manner, though.

I've had some success with using object 'frames', I make duplicates of the object in all possible positions and then have the different frames fade in and out of view using llSetAlpha triggered by a linked message. I never actually put the idea into practice, but I did make a working example.

For a sample of probably working code off the top of my head, I suggest that you set the name of every prim in each 'frame' to the same thing, like for claws have a version that's out be called 'extended', then make a duplicate with the claws mostly in and call it 'retracted'. Then, in each prim, add this script;

integer on;
default
{
    link_message(integer from, integer int, string txt, key id)
    {
        if (txt != llGetObjectName()) return;
        if (!on)
        {
            on = TRUE;
            float i;
            for (i = 0; i <= 1.1; i += 0.1) llSetAlpha(i, ALL_SIDES); // for some reason I can't get a prim totally clear or totally solid without setting it beyond the bounds of 0 or 1
        }
        else
        {
            on = FALSE;
            float i;
            for (i = 1; i >= -0.1; i -= 0.1) llSetAlpha(i, ALL_SIDES);
        }
    }
}

then; in the root prim, add something like;

integer number_of_states = 2;
integer state = 1;

fmMessage(string frame)
{
    llMessageLinked(LINK_ALL_OTHERS, TRUE, frame, NULL_KEY);
}

default
{
    touch_start(integer number)
    {
        if (state > number_of_states) state = 1;
        if (state == 1) fmMessage("extended");
        if (state == 2) fmMessage("retracted");
        state++;
    }
}