Changing materiels on a mesh face.

[Frankie Rockett]

Hi

AS with everything else I know about LSL, I am self taught by looking at other's work and experimenting from there. In this way I've become 'average to good' with LSL, but every now and then I'm completely stuck, so I hope you guys and girls can help - even if I struggle to find the right way to describe the problem. Here goes.

I was examining a mesh animal which when it's script runs, appears to move it's legs through about 8 positions, in a cycle. I have seen it done in the past using multiple meshs, each in turn being switched to visibility on or off, to create the effect, and I understand exactly how to do that.

However, what new voodoo is this?! Now these mesh objects consict of only one mesh prim and worse, only 2 faces (0 and 1), and yet they have the shape and textures for 8 changes in leg position! So - how on earth would I address them to switch each on and off in turn, when the limit of apparent addressability is (assuming prim number / face number) is just 0,0 and 0,1? How do I switch any 7 of them off and one on, in turn, to create such animated illusions?

Thank you for your insights!

Frankie.

Edited May 7, 2019 by Frankie Rockett
Still learning how to spell, too.

[Kardargo Adamczyk]

This is called Animesh, and basically animates the mesh like it does with avatars, check

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Animesh_User_Guide

For more info one the subject

 

[Frankie Rockett]

Hi  Kardargo

Thank you for your reply, but I may have misled you. This item has no real movement animation. What it is is a 4 legged beast which actually has 8 sets of 4 legs - each set depicting the movement in a different phase of it's cycle. With the entire thing set to visible it looks like a grotesque 32 legged genetic experiment gone badly wrong. The idea is to do with switching portions of it off and on in the correct sequence to create the illusion of movement. It's  essentially cell animation performed in three dimensions. From what I read of the link you gave me, Animesh is a way of actually animating parts of a mesh object - moving them for real - not just making a 'flick book' from a static mesh.

To restate my problem, this mesh has just 2 sides (0 and 1), yet it somehow shows not just a two stage leg movement, but 8 stages, as at any time, 7 are turned to invisible and 1 set to visible, in sequence, creating the illusion. How can address / manipulate the 8 different textures / states when I can only refer to one of two faces in the code?

Thank you.

Frankie.

Edited May 7, 2019 by Frankie Rockett
Fixed a typo.

[Wandering Soulstar]

might it be that they are using offsets in the texture .. simple example .. all the actual textures you see are on one uploaded texture .. so one face .. but by changing the scale and offset we have different parts of the texture show. I've started to do this quite a lot lately .. So for example have a deck with mulitple wood boards .. with a texture that has 8 different board styles in it my mesh can have but one face, but have set different offsets to each individual board.

[Frankie Rockett]

Wandering!

That's a brilliant possibility! I'll go check and report back tomorrow!

Thank you for that insight / possibility meanwhile.

F.

[Frankie Rockett]

Damn!
No, alas that's not it. The original has but one 1024 x 1024 texture (it's a cat) - and it 'wriggles' through these 8 various positions, despite consisting of just one mesh object with just two faces, as I mentioned above. Wandering's idea was great, but when I tried to offset a texture, I messed up about half of those positions simultaneously, telling me that that wasn't how it was done. Examining both of the faces, they both seem to have the same identical cat texture, so not even any real difference there. I would ideally ask the creator, but as it's an object for sale I doubt the sharing of techniques for learning will be foremost in their mind!

Any other possible ways this is done?

Thank you!

Edited May 7, 2019 by Frankie Rockett

[Wulfie Reanimator]

Is this item available somewhere, like Marketplace or rezzed inworld?

Trying to make guesses from a vague second-hand description doesn't seem as productive as being able to inspect it.

Edited May 7, 2019 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Qie Niangao]

7 hours ago, Frankie Rockett said:

Examining both of the faces, they both seem to have the same identical cat texture

You can actually see the textures? and they look like a single cat skin, not several tiny cat skins surrounded by a lot of transparency? (That would be the appearance of the offset textures in Wandering's suggestion.)

[Frankie Rockett]

No Wulfie, as far as I know the item isn't available somewhere. My vague, second hand, inarticulate and wholly inadequate description is of course lametable, laughable - and all I have to offer.

Yes Qie. I can see the textures both on the object and in edit/texture view. In texture view it's definitely one cat, albeit fragmented as through a prism. I note from it that only one eye is defined, so presumably it's the same eye on both sides of the head - the point being that there is no apparent duplication or redundancy in the single texture I find.

I will try to add some screen grabs in the next few days - away from home at the moment!

Cheers.

 

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Just use animesh tho. Stop motion meshs need to die, quickly if possible.