Today I learned ... Animation Times

[Innula Zenovka]

I'd always thought that, if I wanted to know how long an animation plays for, so I can start and stop things at the same time by script, I had to find the animator and ask them

Turns out you don't, or not in the official viewer, anyway (dunno about Firestorm):

Find the animation in your inventory and click "Open"

Then click on "Advanced" and

I'd never seen this before,  and I think I'm going to find it very useful.  I hope others do, too.

[Qie Niangao]

It is in the current Firestorm (in the "Open" dialog, no "Advanced" toggle) but not in the Catznip beta so maybe it's a pretty new feature.

Thing is, I'm wondering why it's in the viewer and not exposed to scripts. (Is it?) If a script could sequence full animations without needing to have durations specified in advance, I could live with an asynchronous dataserver query to get this info perhaps via an extended llRequestInventoryData() or a single-purpose llRequestAnimationData() function as in a Jira in state "Been Triaged" from 2014.

[Coffee Pancake]

It's awesome and should make its way to all viewers eventually, although what we really need is an overhaul of the entire animation subsystem.

It will be in Catznip sooner or later .. were behind, sorry .. RL .. blah blah blah .. s oo oo n ishly soon maybe soon sorta

[Lucia Nightfire]

Sadly, I still have to use "other means" to get further metadata, such as number of bone translation/rotation keyframes per bone, the names of all bones animated as well as when the animation was uploaded to the CDN servers.

Edited January 31, 2023 by Lucia Nightfire

[primerib1]

6 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

I'd always thought that, if I wanted to know how long an animation plays for, so I can start and stop things at the same time by script, I had to find the animator and ask them

Turns out you don't, or not in the official viewer, anyway (dunno about Firestorm):

Find the animation in your inventory and click "Open"

Well, it's also in Kokua, and also under "Advanced".

Which is not surprising actually as Kokua tries to not diverge too much from SL Official Viewer.

[Innula Zenovka]

On 1/30/2023 at 9:47 PM, Qie Niangao said:

Thing is, I'm wondering why it's in the viewer and not exposed to scripts.

I asked someone who knows about such things and he explained that the data is exposed to the viewer because it's taken directly from the animation file, to which the viewer has access on my PC.   The simulator, though, can't see the animation file -- all it does is send it to people's machines when told to.

[Qie Niangao]

2 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

… The simulator, though, can't see the animation file -- all it does is send it to people's machines when told to.

Oh, that makes sense. Presumably the simulator tells the viewer what animation to fetch from the CDN. So probably any advance here will need to await the mythic re-architecting of SL's whole animation system.

[Jabadahut50]

bit of a necro but if the viewer can see it, couldn't you add a feature to a viewer that when it receives a specific chat command on a specific channel it could spit out the info on that channel? Kind of like llListen but have the viewer watching that chat channel and then take the command let's say something like /4658 animinfo, "*insert animation name here or UUID of animation*", "*insert UUID of object you own to look for animation in or leave blank to have it search your inventory*" It could then search through the object/your inventory and get the animation's info and spit it out in the chat channel in some easy to parse way... perhaps 4,28.60,0.60,0.60,Yes,19 (in the case of the one shown at the top of this thread)? Or would this fall under "Impacts the shared experience!" issue and would cause the viewer to be banned by LL?

[Wulfie Reanimator]

2 hours ago, Jabadahut50 said:

bit of a necro but if the viewer can see it, couldn't you add a feature to a viewer that when it receives a specific chat command on a specific channel it could spit out the info on that channel? Kind of like llListen but have the viewer watching that chat channel and then take the command let's say something like /4658 animinfo, "*insert animation name here or UUID of animation*", "*insert UUID of object you own to look for animation in or leave blank to have it search your inventory*" It could then search through the object/your inventory and get the animation's info and spit it out in the chat channel in some easy to parse way... perhaps 4,28.60,0.60,0.60,Yes,19 (in the case of the one shown at the top of this thread)? Or would this fall under "Impacts the shared experience!" issue and would cause the viewer to be banned by LL?

It could be done, but that means someone has to actually do it instead of other things. And if you want it in the official Firestorm release (for example), someone has to accept the code once it's been done and donated.

[Bleuhazenfurfle]

On 1/31/2023 at 8:47 AM, Qie Niangao said:

Thing is, I'm wondering why it's in the viewer and not exposed to scripts.

Animation duration should also be tossed into llRequestInventoryData too (like, as per BUG-232877) also…

I'd say, along with the priority too (separated by a simple space).  Adding any of the other stuff would be getting over-complicated.