Dear AO makers

[Cackle Amore]

Please stop using priority 4. Just use 3, or even try priority 2.

AO's should be at the lowest priority possible so smaller animated stuff can be played over it. AO's are just meant to be the base animation after all, not the main feature.

They don't need 4, no ifs or butts, AO's shouldn't even be touching 4. Priority 4 is more for small stuff like holding a cane, or drink, umbrellas, bags, etc. Ideally, 3 should be for emote styled animations, like dances, sits, quick gestures, etc, and AO's should be 2.

 

So please, stop using 4.

Pretend it doesn't even exist.

 

This has been a PSA by the Disgruntled About Bad Upload Practices Gang.

[OptimoMaximo]

Did you ever try to make a walk or run animation at priority 3? The default animation kicks in every now and then, more so when you hit something, like a step, on your path. The same goes with stands, should be priority 2 but if you make yours the same priority, the default animations still take over when they are triggered. You'd say that there are functions in LSL to set the new animations server-side, but let's face a sad reality: major AO makers use the free, antiquated ZHAO-II with a customized hud, and that still uses llPlayAnimation. They've just continued on their habit with the excuse that llSetAnimationOverride only allows 1 animation per avatar state, when it's really easy to make an efficient use of it. So before grunting against upload bad practices, we should be growling against the procrastinated adoption of new functionalities... Only after that, bad upload practices can be grunted against, imo

[Cackle Amore]

Yeah, I have noticed AO's haven't really evolved all that much. I think the most extra I've seen one get was including a dance button.

There was this one fellow who made a "Leg AO" though that's pretty nifty. Basically it's designed to allow for strafing, so side stepping and what not.

But beyond that, not much else. Personally, I think it'd be neat if there was two tiers for the standing poses, basic and idle. Basic standing pose would be well, simple, it'll be what plays after you move about. Then idle pose is what plays after you been standing still long enough, which is where those really fidgety and mobile "standing" animations some AO makers really love making could go. The general idea is a mimic of how some video games tend to handle character animations, like in the later GTA games, if you stood in place long enough, your character would start to fidget or even blend into the crowd a bit.

 

But regardless of the functionality and scripting of AO's, I still stand firm in my stance that AO's should stop using Priority 4 no ifs or butts.

Actually, if they were to be so bold, they could even dabble in adding matching gestures and emotes to their AO's to make use of the now freed P4 that can play over the base animations. Obviously this would be an exception to my 'no ifs or butts'

[Alyona Su]

8 hours ago, Digit Gears said:

Please stop using priority 4. Just use 3, or even try priority 2.

Why? Any smart creator will often include both P3 and P4 versions of all their stuff in the same box. Gesture overrides should always be Priority 5 or priority 6. Always.

[Cackle Amore]

2 hours ago, Alyona Su said:

Why? Any smart creator will often include both P3 and P4 versions of all their stuff in the same box. Gesture overrides should always be Priority 5 or priority 6. Always.

I wouldn't really consider it smart, more of a waste of L$. They could just stick to P3 for their AO, as there's simply no reason the characters idle pose should have top priority. And the only reason gesture overrides have to use 5/6 is BECAUSE of all the AO's  hogging up 4. If AO's stuck to no higher than 3, people could use 4 again for those gestures.

[Alyona Su]

5 minutes ago, Digit Gears said:

I wouldn't really consider it smart, more of a waste of L$. They could just stick to P3 for their AO, as there's simply no reason the characters idle pose should have top priority. And the only reason gesture overrides have to use 5/6 is BECAUSE of all the AO's  hogging up 4. If AO's stuck to no higher than 3, people could use 4 again for those gestures.

I'm now left with the impression that you've never attempted, much less finish creating an AO or set-up animations in SL HUDs or furniture from upload to final product. ~shrugs~

[So Whimsy]

I agree with the OP.

As an animation maker I am forced to make my animations priority 5 and 6 to stop complaints why the animations don't play when sitting somewhere until the AO is turned off.

AO's should be prio 3 tops.

[Cackle Amore]

4 hours ago, Alyona Su said:

I'm now left with the impression that you've never attempted, much less finish creating an AO or set-up animations in SL HUDs or furniture from upload to final product. ~shrugs~

While it's true I've not fully dug into AO making, I have some experience, mainly facial expressions for an avatar of my own, I have a couple of base animations that animate the whole face, those are 3. and then a couple of supplementary animations that are a bit more specific to be able to mix and match with one another, and play over the full faced animations, those are 4.

And then a scattered amount of isolated animations here and there.

[Velk Kerang]

3 hours ago, Syn Anatine said:

I agree with the OP.

As an animation maker I am forced to make my animations priority 5 and 6 to stop complaints why the animations don't play when sitting somewhere until the AO is turned off.

AO's should be prio 3 tops.

I actually got to agree with that. I found it annoying to turn my AO off just to sit half the time. So I stopped using my hud and went straight to using my built in viewer AO and haven't looked back since. lol 😁

[Alyona Su]

33 minutes ago, Digit Gears said:

While it's true I've not fully dug into AO making, I have some experience, mainly facial expressions for an avatar of my own, I have a couple of base animations that animate the whole face, those are 3. and then a couple of supplementary animations that are a bit more specific to be able to mix and match with one another, and play over the full faced animations, those are 4.

And then a scattered amount of isolated animations here and there.

 

31 minutes ago, Velk Kerang said:

I actually got to agree with that. I found it annoying to turn my AO off just to sit half the time. So I stopped using my hud and went straight to using my built in viewer AO and haven't looked back since. lol 😁

Here are the technical details, as I understand it. I welcome professional animator or maybe @Oz Linden or other Linden in the know to correct me. BUT, Based on my experience (I've been in SL a few days) and the effect and affect in my animation creation and uploading into SL, Priority 3 animations that are intended to replace the viewer in-built animations seem to conflict many times, things like walking, running, sitting on a prim, etc. So walking, running, sitting animations seem to require at least a priority 4 in order to work smoothly.

Priority 3 (when offered by AO creators) usually apply to the different standing poses and animations, the walks, runs, etc. are always P4.

Part of the issue you may be facing is that you are uploading BVH animation text files and the highest priority you can do with those are P4. Though if you create .anim files, then you can set priority to level 5 or 6. This is best when only a partial animation are needed, arms only, fingers only, etc.

As for animating faces, there are very, very few AOs that include the new Bento face animations along with stands, etc. 99% of all animation files in world right now do not animate the face because it was impossible before bento to build-in facial animations. As for those AOs that do include facial animations, there is always (that I've seen) a "No Face" option available. At this time the main one I know of it Vista, and they used to include both versions in one box at first, but now you must choose which version to buy.

The the issue with P4 facial animations isn't that the AO animations are all P4, but rather that the face animation is included in those to begin with.

Edited November 7, 2019 by Alyona Su

[OptimoMaximo]

4 hours ago, Digit Gears said:

But regardless of the functionality and scripting of AO's, I still stand firm in my stance that AO's should stop using Priority 4 no ifs or butts

Unfortunately, they're strictly tied together: until there's no widespread use of the newer AO related functions,  those issues I listed above are still to occur and the solution to that is the current priority habit. 

[OptimoMaximo]

Also, as Alyona stated above, the in built animations already have priorities, like walk and run have p3, stands p2 and sits p3, so in order to override them you can't simply make an animation at same priority, because in such case, last one triggered is the one that plays visually on the avatar and the other stays in background, never to be seen until the one visibly animating your avatar stops. 

Most of these issues can be avoided if animation overrides would get an update to use the server-side animation override functions. There will still be some issues for which some built in animations play for a fraction of a second, like sit on ground, but it's already better and at least an AO can establish a set of base animations that can nicely play with other animations in a sequence from the same creator i.e. A list of different stand animations