Getting to grips with overriding animations

[Loki Eliot]

Ok today i plan to get stuck in and finally work out how to overide animations, or simply activate animations. Down the road i plan to make some characters for my island that i can use to run RP's. For this i need to learn and understand how to script so that animations kick in for various tasks, basically built in AO's for the Mesh Avatars. 

My limited scripting experience so far resulted in making a torch that could be held up in a custom holding pose and also weapons that you can swing to attack monsters. But i really dont understand fully how it all works yet so this is what im setting out to do here. Any help or advice would be welcomed.

Im going to start with what im hopeing will be a simple AO task.

The Goal : To create a Slingshot that (1.) when worn animates Avatar to stand in a bouncing ready pose. (2.) when fired in mouse look animates a pulling and release animation. (3.) allows default run & walk.

Now i've discovered this was pretty easy to do simply in the way you upload with priorities, but for a while now the priorities have changed in the official LL viewer (which i wrote a Jira about here) making it now impossible without script intervention Unless there is some way to script a debug change.

[Loki Eliot]

So first thing i needed to do was create Two animations, one for when you stand with the Sling Shot, the second for when you release the slingshot. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When it comes to uploading Animation it's 'Priority' number is important to how it is effected. It's a rather confusing subject but i think im beginning to understand it all. Animations override lower numbered priority animations, so for my two animations i made the 'stance' animation priority 3. This will overide default standing animations as they are set to 1 or 2. My 'Release' animation is set to 4 and will overide the 'Stance' animation. 

So i know need to script the Slingshot to animate the 'Stance' when wearing, and animate 'release' when fireing which should be easy.  But i then have to script it to stop animating 'stance' if you run or walk. This is wear it gets really complicated since the UseNewWalkRun priority change. 

[Qie Niangao]

(Just making sure: these RP "Mesh Avatars" will be regular, logged-in sessions, right, not simply Mesh objects that look like avatars? There's no way currently to use normal avatar animations to deform unattached Mesh objects. I'm guessing that's obvious, but "just making sure.")

I don't exactly understand how the cited problem with default animations applies in this case. You'll be overriding animations anyway, so... why not just use a different walk and stand animation, with the desired priorities? ... and if any default animations interfere, just stop them?

[Loki Eliot]

@Qie Niangao

Yes these will be Rigged Mesh avatars

The sited problem is making me learn how to script to override the sited problem. I dont yet know how to script to override the sited problem. 

[Qie Niangao]

The details of the animation priorities are something that might be better addressed on the animation creation forum, maybe. The complexity here is that, in fact, animations may have joint-specific priorities, too. But in general, if we're dealing exclusively with uploaded .bvh files, yeah, the priority applies only to those joints that are moved in the animation, and a higher number priority overrides lower priority animations as well as already-playing animations of the same priority.

[Loki Eliot]

OK so i have animations and objects and i have a script that is dealing with all the permissions, and shooting the shot. the bit im trying to work out is the area in the script that will deal with when the avatar is standing still or running or walking.

In this instance i need the script to 'play the STANCE' animation, then when someone clicks the keys to go forward back left or right to turn off 'STANCE' animation and turn on the 'RUN' pose which only animates the top half of the avatar to hold the sling shot while walking or running.

This is the bit i've not had to do before.

[Rolig Loon]

Use llGetAgentInfo and check it in a fast timer event.

 

timer(){    if (llGetAgentInfo(This_agent's_UUID) & AGENT_WALKING)    {        llStopAnimation( My_stand_animation);        llStartAnimation( My_walk_anim);    }    else    {        llStopAnimation( My_walk_anim);        llStartAnimation( My_stand_animation);    }}

 

 

[Loki Eliot]

@Rolig

Thanks for that, it's funny as i was just looking at a similar scrypt, but yours made more sense. Unfortunitly with this implemented it's sort of working but it takes up to 10 seconds for the animations to change and i cant figure out why, but im closer to my goal so thanks for that

[Loki Eliot]

I've now realised that messing about with my Avatars default animations can cause quite the screw up. My avatar now appears to be stuck in  my stance animation even with the overriding object off, even after selecting 'stop animating me' even after a relogging. I guess i screwed something up with permissions making the Slingshot stance a perminant stand :-s

[Rolig Loon]

The animations should change instantaneously, and if you are firing your timer event rapidly --- I hate to do that, but there's not much choice here --- you should get very quick response when you stand or start walking.  Clearly there's something else going on in your script.

Instead of just stopping that one animation, you might want to do a fail safe move and stop any animation that might be running.  This sort of function ought to do it unless you have an AO running that is restarting some anims continuously.

 

StopAnims(key UUID)  // Pass the function your av's UUID{    list Anims = llGetAnimationList(UUID);    integer i = (Anims !=[]);  // Same as llGetListLength(Anims)    while(i)    {        --i;        llStopAnimation(llList2String(Anims,i) );    }}

 

 

 

[Loki Eliot]

Im pretty sure its all my fault :-p one of the changs i made ended up giving an object permissions to animate me even when not attached which caused alot of problems. Thanks Johan for helping me fix that.

[Loki Eliot]

So with help from some people i ended up using this evolved version of what Rolig shared. 

    timer()    {        if (have_permissions == FALSE) return;        llSetTimerEvent(0.1);        armed = TRUE;        if (llGetAgentInfo(llGetOwner()) & AGENT_WALKING)        {            if (walking == FALSE) {                llStartAnimation( "sling_run");                llStopAnimation( "sling_stance");                walking = TRUE;            }        }        else        {            walking = FALSE;            llStartAnimation( "sling_stance");            llStopAnimation( "sling_run");

The biggest issue i had was understanding permissions and i'll need to get to grips with THAT if im going to be using LL's new experience tools which hinge on getting user permissions.

Whether with this i can expand to include overriding other default animations i'll find out later when i start on some RP Mesh Avatars but it's a good jump off point. Thanks everyone who send me IM's of advice and ideas

HERE IS A VIDEO OF THE SLINGSHOT IN ACTION on twitvid.