Combat animations, fists open to relaxed palms even when set to priority 4

[Helm Anton]

Im an animation creator, recently i have moved to making combat animations for people.  A problem im seeing is that the hands which are set to fists will open up into palms after about 30 seconds time.  They are set to Pri 4 which is as high as i can go through upload.  I know theres highier priorities though, i just cant set them.  Whats going on here? why are or what is over riding the fists animation?  I was told by another animation creator to try and set the fade in and out to .5 and see if that helps , as they think its the T pose in the animation programme is causing the hands to relax, but if so why?...the animations are set to start at frame 2 not 1 which is were the T pose is.

[Medhue Simoni]

As we can only guess, I will give my best guesses. There are no priorities higher than 4. We have asked for it, but LL ignores us, probably cause very few people at LL actually own complexly animated items. A higher priority is needed, as most animators in SL just make all their animations priority 4. This is probably why you are seeing problems. It is likely there is an animation change during your strikes, which causes the hands to change. A priority 4 animation will always play, unless another priority 4 is play right after it is played. If all creators used the proper priorities, then this would not be an issue.

Now, we can't talk about all this unless be bring BUGs into the conversation. There are a number of bugs directly related to what you are talking about. All of them are many years old and LL refuses to actually fix them. The first bug I will bring up is the First frame repeating bug. The T-Pose is getting duplicated and bleeds into the actual animation. Most people will not notice this bug but it causes all kinds of problem if you try to be creative at all. A very obvious example would be to sit and then change the sit. This also causes problems with blending the animations into each other, which is great to get smooth transitions, but not when the animation jumps because of the T-frame.

Other notable bugs include the hands bug which seem to me to affect relaxed hands, and fists. This results in a spread hand. Again, looked at many times by LL, but never actually fixed. The last bug that could be related is the turning bug. LL messed up when they changed the default animations a couple years ago and they used the wrong priority walk, run and turn animations. They have since fixed the walk and run priorities, but have ignored the turns. So, you can't completely overide a turn, unless you use a priority 4 animation. This is very problematic to combat systems, as the turns should all be priority 3. It should also be noted that because walk and run priorities were wrong for so long, even if a creator knew not to use a priority 4 for walks and runs, they were forced to use them as there was no other way to overide the walks and runs.

I don't know if any of this will help you, but maybe it can help to have some understanding of the neglect of the system, so that you can make good decisions.

[Helm Anton]

Thanx for your reply.  yes i know what you mean by the T frame showing through one anim to another, i got that when I punch the return to stance, i changed the stance alittle and that seemed to help alot...shrugs.  But yes i made the punching anims priority 4 so to try and sholve the fists to open palms prob.  What you said about the bugs makes sense too.  So basicly we got to live with fists to open palms....unless we get priority 5 or they fix the T pose over ride inworld, that would stop it as well. Fingers crossed :0

[Medhue Simoni]

Well, you don't have to live with them. There are ways to override what is happening. A simple trick is to use different hands morphs in the AO, like Typing, which does not seem to be affected by the hand bug. I generally make AOs that use a combination of relaxed, fist and typing hands for the AO stands, and Typing hands for the turns. Yeah, I know, this is about AOs, but many people will be using an AO with your combat system.

Another thing that may help, is to trigger the fist separately, not just in the animation. I don't generally do this as it requires more scripting, which is not beneficial to most combat systems. You can try different combinations too. Like, maybe use a typing hand for the combat animation, and then trigger a fist morph separately. As I said, I haven't played with any of this as it is not as important and I have less issues because of the AOs that I make for the systems.

[Helm Anton]

Thanx again for you reply, i think i will change the stance hand pose to relaxed and leave the rest with closed fist, that should work with any luck.  One other thing i have just noticed..is that at priority 3 my stance anims would allow normal sl walk and run to over ride them, this is what i wanted so your not sliding along the ground locked in that pose, but now for some reason even priority 2 anims stances wont allow normal sl walk to over ride them ?????.  Thing is up until about a week ago all my prioroty 3 stances allowed normal sl walk and run to over ride, not now...sighs.

[Medhue Simoni]

Stands should be priority 2, while walks and runs are 3. If your stands are 3, you might have issues, depending on the AO system you are using. I can't really explain what is happening with your priority 2 stand, but I would suggest double checking it, especially the Tframe. I always use my own walks and runs so I don't really have any experience with how the defaults interact, other than if mine can't override them, lol.

[Helm Anton]

Ok something weird is going on, not even priority 1 stance anims will allow normal sl walk or run to over ride...as i said earlier my Pri 3 anims would allow it to over ride but dont now...has LL lowered the priority on the internal sl walk and run anims???. Cos if they have then this is crazy.

[Medhue Simoni]

I just logged in to check, and there is definitely a problem with walks. I played a priority 2 stand and the default walk would not override it. Like I said before tho, I never deal with the default walk so I have no idea when this started. You should make a jira for this.

[Helm Anton]

1. Thnx for verifying that.  Ive made a jira about it.  hopefully get some answers soon.
2. But im thinking, if they have lowered SL internal walk and run to 0 priority, then its not all bad.  Stands and stances can be loaded at pri 1..walks pri2...object sits etc at pri 3 and any other object animation to over ride Ao's at pri 4, pity its come so late if this is the case.

Wouldnt be so bad if i was making weapons and scripts for a sim that allowed AO's in combat, but they dont allow it,  Your only allowed standard sl walk and run, jump when moving about in combat, so the stance animations must allow it to over ride or you slide lol, maybe i add ice skates and roller blades with my stuff now .  Only other way i can get around it is to make the scripts stop the stance animation when left mouse button is released and trigger the stance again when left mouse pressed and held.  Just more scripting and added lag though......stopping the animation and reloading again and again...

I hope its a bug..

[Medhue Simoni]

I completely agree with you that it is not such a bad thing that the walks and runs might be of a low priority, but this should be consistant across all the overrides. It makes no sense to have turns at priority 3, and walks and runs lower than that.

As for combat sims not allowing AOs, to me, this is ridiculous. There is more than enough resources to allow all the combatants to use AOs. It is likely that the sim owners overload their sims with irrelevant items that soak up all their script resources, which leads them to not allow AOs. A combat sim should really not use any scripts that are not directly related to the combat experience. I own a whole region. I have my main store, which is quite large with many items. My scriptor also has a large store with ALL his scripted items, and all the items he is testing. I also rent 1 plot to a furniture creator, which uses more scripting resources than both me and the scriptor. The sim also host my combat areas to test and sell my combat system. We have had many small battles there, and I never restrict the other players, and we have never seen any lag there. This is with thousands of rounds of rezzed bullets flying. Oh, and I have some 20 animated NPCs roaming around which will attack you. And, they blow up and you can eat them, lol.

[Helm Anton]

Yes its odd that the 180 internal anim still over rides all when the walk and run are seen to be set to 0 pri now.

 

Ive had a look at other anims ive made and when i walk with them, a lower leg will try to animate as though walking..looks really weird because it just the lower leg of one leg, almost like limb priority over ride...which is even odder lol.  First time i have seen animations behave this way when i have made no changes to them.

Aggh yes the no Ao's in combat came about because some AO animations over ride the meter ones...skills such as stun wont stun you if your AO is active, thats the main reason why we have the no AO in combat rule, its seen as an exploit.

[Helm Anton]

Ok found the problem, theres now 2 sets of internal walk and run anims in the new viewers.  To use the older set with highier priority you have to go into advanced settings in your veiwer.  Debug settings - UseNewWalkRun - set to false.  You will have the old walk and run now. 

[Alyx Enderfield]

i am having problems with some of the animations i am working on, my friend who makes guns had made her own animations in qavimatior or what ever the program is named. up until now she was uploading animations without the t-pose at frame one because she didn't know about it and nobody told her, when i told her she needed the t-pose to be at frame 1 she basically sent me her animations so i can fix them. heres the problem, i use Poser Pro 2010 and i have the SL avatars loaded into the program, i put the t pose at frame one then her pose at frame 2 then i went to the beta grid to do some testing, when i upload the animations all looks fine in the importer but then the right leg looks like it has rigor mortis so it is stiff and not allowing the SL default walk to pass through. i did some investigating and found that the t-pose was not set to all 0s on the limbs so i fix it and tryed again but i am still getting a stiff right leg. is there something i am doing wrong? was the t-pose for poser offset for a reason or did i forget to do something that i am not aware of?

 

oh and i am using the latest firestorm to upload.

[Medhue Simoni]

I'm guessing that the leg is set to 0 also. It is not really that the tpose has to be all zeros, it can be whatever you want it to be, but it must be different than the 2nd frame. The Tpose or first frame serves 2 purposes. 1st is to position the avatar, the 2nd is to allow for animations that only animates specific parts. So, if you only wanted to move the arm, you'd set all the parts to zero, except the arm. If you Tframe is all zeros, and your 2nd frame is all zero, besides the arm, then only the arm will move. In your case, I'm guessing the 2nd frame for the leg is accidently at zero, matching up with the Tframe and causing the system to think you don't want to animate it.

[Ormand Lionheart]

Very interesting explanation of the issues with animations. I use animations for Machinima and even though not an animator I do see the limitations you mention because of priority. Is there a way to edit the animation's priority level? Are these still issues in SL? I have seen some improvement with couples dances so maybe everything is fixed? One thing I have been tryng to do is film a combat. Hud anaimations are generally way too fast. The best way seems to be an approach to use a couple's animation and be able to pick and choose animations and timings. However can a director like myself have options to do that or is that strictly in the domain of an animator at this time. There may already be options out there just difficult to find googling and on Marketplace.

[Medhue Simoni]

The priorities are set when the animations are uploaded, so only the animator can change them. There can be many issues with priorities and AOs, as many people make AOs with priority 4 animations. I have more perfectly real life timed combat animations at my store. You can make your own animations system for Machinima. You could even create your own animation system where all your actors click at prim and allow you to control them with a hud.