Interactive Animations and Inconsistency

[Tommy Rampal]

I have been having some hassle with interactive animations (hugs, handshakes etc) and varying avatar sizes. In most cases, my animations work together fine but a lot of the time I find that avatars with drastic height differences find that the animations are completely off, e.g. the hands do not meet or limbs go through bodies.

I know animations and body parts do not use any kind of physics or magnetism, but has anyone come across this problem and found an alternative/hack? I was thinking of using a script to detect height differences, and if that's the case play a different animation (with the hand aiming towards a different angle). Does this seem practical, or are there better solutions out there?

[Lanas Criss]

I'd be all sorts of interested in learning some magic to fix what you're talking about, but alas I'm not sure there is a perfect solution.  Fortunately there's some easy scripts for furniture, and anything for pure poseballs is no problem, but even if a hug script compared avatar height you'd still have dangly different arms to deal with (although it would be a great start I suppose).

The best I've come up with is if you're doing something for a particular community of giants for example I've simply had them send me an example of their shape and through trial and error on the 'Beta Grid' I've made their 'pick up and choke the little guy' animation sets specifically for them.  The problem with making specialized animations like that is that you have to sell them to giants who want to pick up and choke little fellows... less L$'s for you of course but its still all fun and creative therapy. 

It is just impossible from what I've experienced to begin to predict how some of the arm, height, shape combinations will connect in a handshake, kiss, or hug but I'll share what I do to try my best.  For animations for 'normal' sizes and situations I actually have three male and three female shapes that I try them on just to see how bad they sink in the floor or where the hands end up on the hips or where the lips meet in a kiss and I try my best to get a happy medium where the animations looks great on all of them, but honestly it's reallly realllly hard if not impossible.  Usually I end up with a great animation set for the middle 'average' pair of shapes and then the bigger and small sizes end up at least not looking ridiculous, and that's when I call them done.

Perhaps a pro like Medhue or someone else will chime in and I'll be all ears, but short of a miracle from them those compromise tips are the best I can offer.

Enjoy your animating!

Lanas