How to solve mermaid tail problems with dance animations?

[Gwendolyne Finney]

Both my husband and I noticed, that when we try the dance animations in mermaid places, our tails go in a bend mode as if we were sitting down on a chair. We both have different tails (he has a Nemissa and I have a Cove tail), but we hit the same problem every time when clicking on a dance pose ball. According to the Cove tail developer, the problem lies in the way how the tail/back bones are used, but after so many years you would expect this issue to be resolved, especially with such popular tails? Has anyone else found a solution for this yet? Looking forward to your replies.

Edited February 25, 2023 by Gwendolyne Finney
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[Aglaia]

If the animation is made for being used with a given tail, it might not work well if using another tail, if this other tail doesn't use the bones in the same way (same positions / rotations). Same problem as with mesh heads : a smile animation can look good with some mesh head brands, and ugly with some other ones.

Only fix is to ask the animation creator to make several versions of their anims, for each mermail tail brand.

Edited February 25, 2023 by Aglaia

[Wulfie Reanimator]

There's two sides to the problem.

1. When an animation is uploaded, it will always and only move the specific avatar bones that the creator defined. There's no way to change the animation without uploading a new version.
   • If the tail you're using is not rigged to the same avatar bones, the tail will not be affected by that animation. (There's multiple ways to create mermaid tails, so not all creators may use the same bone-setup. The animator has to choose one for reference and can't make one animation work for all tails.)
      
2. The tail you're using may be scripted with its own animation overrider. Whenever you sit on an object (scripted or not, and whether or not it animates your avatar), the AO in your tail will start a sitting animation, which is what you saw.
   • Depending on the priority of the tail's sitting animation (and the dance animation), it may replace part of the dance anim when they're both using the same bones. It might not be possible to disable the sitting anim, but it could be stopped manually (by finding the sitting animation in the contents of your tail/HUD) or by a separate script.

[Katherine Heartsong]

Also, in terms of mermaid tails, if you were "standing" in the water facing me, is the tail something I can fully see, or would I need to rotate you 90 degrees to be viewing your from the left or right profile to fully see?

If we're supposing you're a mammal like a dolphin, whale, porpoise etc it would be visible looking straight on at you ... but you'd have no scales since you're mammalian and not a fish. If you had scales, i.e., you were a fish, it would need you turned 90 degrees since fish tails run vertically aligned with their bodies.

In other words ... Mermaids are always depicted as having horizontal tail fins. Fish have vertical tail fins. This makes mermaids half human and half whale/dolphin and not half human and half fish. But in that case they should not have scales!

This has always bothered me.

[Gwendolyne Finney]

On 2/25/2023 at 8:19 PM, Aglaia said:

If the animation is made for being used with a given tail, it might not work well if using another tail, if this other tail doesn't use the bones in the same way (same positions / rotations). Same problem as with mesh heads : a smile animation can look good with some mesh head brands, and ugly with some other ones.

Only fix is to ask the animation creator to make several versions of their anims, for each mermail tail brand.

This issue with the tail bones overlapping those of the animations is exactly the problem as explained by the creator of the Cove tail. I doubt, however, that the animation creators will take the time to make several dance animations for all the different tails that are out there. That might just be too much work. It is a shame though, that they didn't think of the most sold tails to fit with the dance animations. Alas, we'll probably have to live with that.

[Gwendolyne Finney]

Katherine: when the mermaid is in a "standing pose", you can indeed see the full tail, so it is indeed as looking at a dolphin's tail. Funny is, that in past times some sailors thought that the manatees, dugongs or Steller's sea cows (aquatic mammals which became extinct by the 1760s due to over-hunting) were mermaids. They happened to have human-like eyes, bulbous faces and paddle-like tails and not fish tails. Another fact is, that sharks are fish, but do not have scales, i.e. not every fish does have to have scales. I think the mermaid is quite a nice mixture of both.  

[Quarrel Kukulcan]

On 2/25/2023 at 7:20 AM, Gwendolyne Finney said:

Both my husband and I noticed, that when we try the dance animations in mermaid places, our tails go in a bend mode as if we were sitting down on a chair.

Is it a single dance that locks you to a preset position and that you have to stand up to stop? (There are some dance and poseballs that work that way.) If that's the case, then you are sitting. You'll need to control your tail manually or find a different way of dancing. AOs typically can't tell the difference between sitting on an invisible ball that plays a dance animation on you and sitting on a prim that lets the default sit animation play.