It's Halloween. Pardon the silly question.

[Dillon Levenque]

Was working on a costume; it's in a historical theme and includes a hat. I thought of a gesture/animation that would be very nice but in looking for it found nothing even close. I'm guessing that's because making it would be way too hard if not impossible, but I thought I'd ask.

Is there such a thing as a (for want of a better description) sweeping bow with hat gesture/ani? You know the one—the guy pulls his hat off his head, steps back with one foot, and with a big sweeping move swings the hat in a big arc in front of him while he bows his head. Is that even possible in SL terms?

I'm guessing, and believe me I am only guessing based on the kinds of things I can obtain—I have only read about scripting and avimator stuff so I'm clueless—that even if it could be done the whole thing would have to be tied to the hat, making it less attractive. But if there was some way to create it and allow users to 'add' a hat of choice....seems  to me it would be a big hit.

[Charolotte Caxton]

Since the hat is attched to your head or whatever, it would have to be then attached to your hand right as the bowing gesture begins.

If you don't find the script to do this, you could always detach and wear the hat on your hand as soon as your gesture (bow) begins. Here is  a bow that sounds similar to what you mean.

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Sweeping-Bow-CMNT/781460

There are probably many more. 

[Dillon Levenque]

I did see that bow on the MP, but that was the only one I saw. I didn't try it. Your idea of doing a quick 're-attach' right before the gesture might work well, though. You'd have to do a bit of editing to get the hand attachment to look right and get really good at the timing but I think it would be more than worthwhile if it could be made to work. It didn't look like that gesture you linked kept a hand out in front, which would be absolutely required for the hat sweep.

 

 

 

ETA the reason I didn't look too hard at the one bow I saw on the marketplace.

[Charolotte Caxton]

Yes, if you edit the hat to look correct in your hand, it will be in the same position when you attach it there. You will need at least two copies of the hat, one to wear on your head and one to wear on your hand.

There may be a better way though, everyone is asleep right now.

[Dillon Levenque]

Thinking about it more, it could be something like the draw/holster or draw/sheath animation used with weapons. I can wear my Beretta anywhere I want. If I put the RH pistol backwards on my left hip, my right hand reaches across my body  and draws (and holsters) the gun. No matter where or in what orientation I wear the holstered gun, it always appears in my hand properly. That's what made my fabulous (okay, I exaggerate) crossdraw technigue work.

Seems to me the same thing could work with a hat. I realize that makes my earlier fantasy of having the animation independent of the hat even more idiotic than I thought it was, but I still think the idea has merit. A proper hat combined with a courtly bow would look pretty cool.

[Charolotte Caxton]

That's a great idea, I bet it would work. I think you just need the right script.

[Da5id Weatherwax]

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Dillon Levenque wrote:

Thinking about it more, it could be something like the draw/holster or draw/sheath animation used with weapons. I can wear my Beretta anywhere I want. If I put the RH pistol backwards on my left hip, my right hand reaches across my body  and draws (and holsters) the gun. No matter where or in what orientation I wear the holstered gun, it always appears in my hand properly. That's what made my fabulous (okay, I exaggerate) crossdraw technigue work.

Seems to me the same thing could work with a hat. I realize that makes my earlier fantasy of having the animation independent of the hat even more idiotic than I thought it was, but I still think the idea has merit. A proper hat combined with a courtly bow would look pretty cool.

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Bear in mind that for most weapons the holster and drawn weapon are worn at the same time, it's just that the drawn weapon is transparent when its holstered and the holstered weapon is transparent (leaving only the empty holster) when it's drawn.

You do the same thing with your hat, you need two objects. One is the hat worn on the head - it is listening on some negative channel for a message from the "other" hat, the one in your hand. Let's call them "Regular Hat" and "Bowing Hat" - you could end up with a sequence like this....

1. You are wearing the regular hat. It is fully visible and listening for the bowing hat, which is still dormant in your inventory.
2. You wear the bowing hat and it attaches transparently to your hand (make sure of this in the script to avoid glitches) and triggers an anim to put your hand to the brim of the regular hat.
3. bowing hat becomes visible and tells the regular hat to vanish, the visible hat is now the one on your hand, the one on your head is transparent.
4. bowing hat plays the bow animation, that ends with your hand back up by your head as if you were replacing your hat.
5. bowing hat tells the regular hat to become visible again, makes itself transparent, stops the anim (reverting you to your regular pose) and detaches itself from you, retiring to your inventory to wait for your next encounter with royalty.

If it is something you might have multiple wearers of within chat range, make sure you script the comms protocols so that somebody elses bowing hat cant control your regular hat and vice versa. You do not want the spectacle of your bow to the visiting dignitary having the side effect of knocking off everyone elses hats!

 

Edited to add: It would be two scripts, two anims and could be applied to any copy/mod hat of your choice, which at least gets you part way to your ideal of the system being independent of the hat - You could theoretically make it one script that detects where it is attached and acts as a regular hat or bowing hat accordingly but that would not be as visually effective since we depend on the bowing hat rezzing transparent for best effect.

 

[Dillon Levenque]

Da5id, I truly do thank you for that information but I regret to say it's mostly wasted on me. While I did manage to write the script that makes a box say "Hello, Dillon" I have never gone beyond that point. I posted to this section because I assumed it was populated by people who DID know how to do all that stuff you wrote about—which, by the way, sounds like exactly what I am looking for.

The description of how you envisioned it all working sounds perfect and I've saved a copy for possible future use.

Thanks again.

 

ps: If you see 'Bowing Hat' for sale on the Marketplace you will have this post to prove you described it first and best. Unless it's the Levenque Bowing Hat, that is. In that case I never heard of you :-).

[Charolotte Caxton]

Lol, that's perfect.

[Da5id Weatherwax]

For what it's worth, just to see if it was as simple as I thought I roughed out the scripts and there are some pitfalls in trying to script a "generic" solution that will work with any arbitrary hat of any construction and still keep it to one script per hat (which can be a big deal if you're dealing with sims that have script limits as a lag-control measure - it's bad enough having to leave a listener open all the time without adding to the script count). I'm not working on it as a project, just as an abstract exercise but if it should ever come together and work I'll throw together a couple of basic anims to go with it and drop you a copy of the whole shebang. If that should ever happen and it works well enough for you it might end up either on the MP or in the script library depending on how well it works

[Dillon Levenque]

Thank you for that. As I said, I know zip about scripting but it seemed to me that the issue of having the hat in exactly the right place in the hand (even though it could be anywhere on the head) would mean the animation would have to be hat-specific. I am at least happy to know my idea that it could work sort of like the 'draw/hoster' animations used with weapons was not completely ridiculous.

 

[Da5id Weatherwax]

possibly, but in general "any hat with a brim" then generally one tends to wear the brim at about the same height on the av's head most of the time - it certainly works that way in RL. (yes, I wear a lot of hats in RL - fedora, bowler, topper, flat cap, assorted wide-brimmed stuff for historical costume - and the brim is about the same height every time) If the two hats coordinate well enough (lag permitting) then any minor displacement to have the second hat be properly positioned in the hand to make the sweep work will just look the start of the sweeping anim anyway. But yes, you've touched on another one of the scripting pitfalls there - the user has to have a way to "wear both hats" in a fitting mode that keeps your hand up to the hatbrim and keeps both hats visible so that you can adjust the one on your hand properly, again without needing to add too much in extra script code to it.

Thank you for mentioning this, it's a lovely scripting design challenge. Probably one that if I pursue it will end up with me dropping it in frustration, but it does seem to be within the realms of possibility so far