is there a tutorial for making feral avatars?

[Torako Haiku]

i'm not exactly experienced in making avatars, but i wanted to know if there's a tutorial somewhere about what you need to know in order to make a feral avatar. i understand how building works and i know how to make an animation and although i'm not very experienced in LSL, i do know how to program... and i know it's an ambitious project, i just want to know what sort of information is out there. thanks!

(reposted from the forums, since it made more sense to post it here)

edit: not all feral avatars are meshes...

[Rolig Loon]

Actually, it made more sense to post it in the forums.  We would have just sent you back there.  :smileytongue:

If nobody in the Buildng & Texturing forum or the Mesh forum is answering, then there may not be a tutorial.  I wouldn't be surprised.  After all, people have only been able to create and import mesh objects of any kind for a few months.

[Cinnamon Lohner]

Ok I'm just curious.  What's a feral avatar?    The word feral is used to describe a domesticated animal that has become wild.  So feral dogs, feral horses, feral cats etc.

So what's a feral avatar?  I always thought Storm Clarence had a wild side, but I never suspected he was feral! :smileyvery-happy:

--Cinn

[Rolig Loon]

A wild-eyed furry?

[Charolotte Caxton]

Ferals are those people that play animals, strictly animals. No talking animals, no walking on hind legs etc. Scooby doo is not feral, for example, but Lassie is. Snoopie and Woodstock are feral, Brian from Family Guy, no way

(I guess Snoopie would be up for debate, since he can fly his house and all that, but he doesn't talk and mostly acts like a real dog)

[Cinnamon Lohner]

Interesting usage. Does it have an origin? Or is it unique to SL?

[Rolig Loon]

Well, now, Snoopy walks (or at least dances) on his hind legs, so he can't be feral by that definition. I think "feral" is simply "wild", in the sense of being untamed or savage. So Snoopy doesn't count by that definition either. But I'm not going to make a feral case out of it.

[Charolotte Caxton]

To Cinnamon, I dont know of its origin, the first time I ever heard it used was here in Second Life.

 

Rolig, you are correct about Snoopy, he is not really feral. Feral in normal human terms does indeed mean wild, but in the whole furry, animal, neko subcultures within SL, say feral and most if not all will know what that means:

 

http://kotaku.com/5122671/a-field-guide-to-second-life-animal-hybrids

[PeterCanessa Oh]

So - all the OP needs is a) a realistic pose, b) a costume, c) with a target on the back?

(Roadkill takes too long)

[Ceera Murakami]

I believe they are asking about quadruped animal avatars, as opposed to furries that have Human-like bodies and animal characteristics like heads and tails of animals.

There are three main parts to the task.

First, you usually need to make a "deformer" of some sort, that changes the bone lengths and joint rotations of the avatar, so the front and rear legs can be the right lengths and rotations, and the body can be the right size. For example, I have one quad horse avatar, that if you look at the avatar without most of the prim parts on it, you can see that the prim hind legs are actually attached to the feet of the avatar, and the hip and legs are locked in position, so the neck to ankle length makes up the horse's torso length. I have some quad dog avatars where the hand and forearm and the foot and lower leg get folded up by the deformer, and the prim animal legs attach to the upper arms and upper legs.

Next, you have to make the prim parts that give the body the appearance of an animal shape, and attach these parts to the avatar body. Invisiprims or alpha layers may be needed to hide some parts of the actual avatar body.

Finally, once you have figured out a way to warp the shape of the avatar's body, and to make the prim parts that cover parts of it, you need to make custom animations and an animation overrider that will translate walking, running, flying standing sitting and swimming into actions that move the deformed avatar's joints appropriately to make the animal avatar seem to move correctly. Often the A/O is incorporated into the torso of the animal avatar, so when wearing that part the body is automatically deformed and animated correctly.

For bonus effects, as with any other full-prim or partial prim avatar, it helps to have a HUD attachment that can be used to trigger additional actions, like making the eyes narrow suspiciously, or the mouth snarl, or the ears fold back, or the tail wag. These all get communicated from the HUD to the associated attachments via chat commands on a non-zero chat channel, that answers in the prim parts only if the owner of the prims is saying the commands.

(Edit for clarification: All of the above applies to using the normal SL avatar, with prim or sculpted prim attachments, to make a quadruped avatar. The comment below this point acknowledges that the new "mesh" avatars exist, but would have many of the same requirements to make a quadruped form.)

 The new Mesh capabilities will change how some of this is done, as  a replacement avatar body with a jointed skeleton can be worn while the avatar body is completely hidden. But for a quadruped much of the above still applies, because you can't change the number of joints or their placement in the mesh avatar's skeleton, and because without a deformer and/or an animation overrider, the mesh body still is affected by al the slider settings that affect bone lengths.

[Charolotte Caxton]

No, I think it involves a lot more than that., and I don't get the target reference.

[Charolotte Caxton]

I found this in the old forums, I cant vouch for its accuracy though, but it makes sense:

 

And, no, "Lost Ferals" aren't the origin of the term. The use of "feral" to refer to four legged "intelligent" animals in furry fandom goes back to the '80s at least. It's inspired by Beatrix Potter and Kenneth Grahame's illustrated stories about animals who had *chosen to* walk on two legs and wear clothes. When Tom Kitten or Peter Rabbit loses his jacket then they're "going feral". The stoats and weasels of the wild woods who don't wear clothes like the civilized Mole and Ratty and Mr Toad are ferals. I haven't read the Redwall books, but I suspect that there's a similar concept there.

 

Civilized animals get up on two legs (it's easy enough for Mr Tod or Squirrel Nutkin) and wear clothes. Savage feral animals don't. It's as simple as that. It's like the difference between wearing a shirt and trousers and wearing a loincloth and a bone through the nose.

 

http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/8/61/314604/1.html

[Rolig Loon]

Well, it all sounds too much like Alice to me. Feral means "feral". If SL subcultures want to mean something else, they can use a different word.

ETA:  Although I have to admit that Peter Rabbit "going feral" explains a lot.  I always thought he was just a disobedient, clumsy bunny.

[Charolotte Caxton]

Furry to me sounds like when something is furry, not a person in an animal suit, and scripts I always thought were for actors in a play or movie and when I joined SL, I had thought builders made stuff out of stone and wood

 

Too much like Alice? I thought that was the draw of SL

[Rolig Loon]

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

 

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

 

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'

[Charolotte Caxton]

Oh cute! I never knew Humpty Dumpty talked!

[Rolig Loon]

He wasn't feral.

[Charolotte Caxton]

lol, if he were, I suppose he would be a baby chicken! lol (or deviled, hahahahaha!)