Walk Animations Overriding Restraints- Can I Fix This?

[Cornelia Cooperstone]

Not sure if this is the right forum to ask, so please forgive me if my question is out of place. I've been trying to figure out how to prevent walk animations from overriding handcuff animations when wearing various restraints I've purchased. For example, my avatar is handcuffed behind her back, using a typical set of Open Collar-scripted cuffs. As soon as she walks, the arms and hands go into the walk animation as if the cuffs aren't there. Then, once she stops walking, her hands do not always return to the cuffed position.

I understand the concept of animation priority at least on a basic theoretical level, but I have never been able to find out of there is a way to apply the principle in cases like this. Am I missing something obvious?

[Zagnut Avedon]

Unfortunately, animation priorities are not something which you can change.  The priority level is "baked" into the animation at the time it's uploaded into SL, so if your "walk" animation has a higher priority than the "handcuff" animation, it will always override the handcuff animation.  (Same goes for "stands", "sits", etc.)  There's no setting or script function which will allow you to change an animation's priority.

The only fix is to either find a walk animation with a lower priority, or replace the cuff animations with ones of higher priority.  (Or turn off your AO whilst wearing the cuffs, but that's probably not an ideal solution.)

Or, use a better set of cuffs.   Basically, the OpenCollar ones "fail" in this way partly because of the priority levels (I'm pretty sure most of those free anims are not priority-4), and partly because they don't re-assert the cuffed animations; they just fire a single llStartAnimation() when you engage the pose.  The issue here is that even if the two different animations are of equal priority level, the most-recently-played one "wins" -- so, if your "handcuff" pose is priority 4 (the highest officially supported, though supposedly it's possible to "hack" a priority 5 with certain 3rd-party animation-creation tools), and your "walk" is also priority 4, then as soon as you start to walk, the "walk" animation wins and overrides "handcuff" because it was played more recently... but the cuff script doesn't know this, so when you stop walking, the "handcuff" pose is not reasserted; as far as the script is concerned, you're still in the "handcuff" animation.

Better cuffs, such as the Mesmerize Dungeon models, not only have their animations all baked at P4, but the script frequently reasserts the selected animations to insure that its own animations are always the "most-recently-played" ones and that any walks, sits, etc. from other AOs or furniture are continuously overridden.  They're a bit costly (although let's be honest, L$800 is only a bit over 3 US dollars ... or £2, or not quite 3 euros, or a bit over 4 dollars Australian or Canadian, so in "real" money, they're still fairly cheap; a takeaway coffee and donuts will cost you more than that!), but they work a treat in keeping your arms from flailing about when you're supposed to be cuffed.

If you're really on a tight budget, then Bondage Witch Project has a set of free (non-Opencollar) ones that work fairly well, although I hesitate to recommend them because they've not been updated in ages and are script-heavy as hell.

[Cornelia Cooperstone]

Thanks so much for the detailed reply- this is really helpful!

[Cornelia Cooperstone]

Just a quick further response. I am totally blown away by how helpful people can be. Zagnut, you took the time and effort to explain the basis of the problem in a way that made the techincal issues completely understandable to a non-tech type person, and then offered specific, very useful information on where I could find accessories that might overcome the problem.

Then meanwhile, inworld, a well-known content creator, whose identity I will not reveal online unless she asks me to, completely out of the blue sent me an animation from one of her products to place into the cuffs I already own.

I can't even begin to express my appreciation for the generosity on display here. Thanks both of you!