Monday, July 19, 2010

My AO


Chey Loves Her Sits

Written 19 July, 2010

My AO

Animation overriders are highly personal, especially when you pack them with custom poses.

I got by for more than a year with a purchased AO. I tell you, it was hard to find one that didn't make me simper, preen, flirt, act haughty or childish, or in general make me look like a tramp-- which is just what most AOs do. Sorry to have to say it, but most female AOs are entirely I'm a Whore and most male AOs are entirely I'm an Ass.

Which is fine, I suppose, if you're a whore or an ass, but I'm certainly not the former and hopefully not the latter. I wanted a reasonable AO and it was hard to find.

After a year I was weary of the limited moves in my AO and competent enough to stuff my own overrider.

I found a free, full-perm ZHAO-II (the script, written by Ziggy Puff and given to the public domain; people aren't allowed to lock it up, but most AO makers do just that. But I digress.)

I spent some time finding poses for the various animations: walking, sitting, flying up, down, and sideways; swimiming, prejumping, jumping, landing, landing hard, flying up, flying down, falling, and of course, standing.

I pulled my ZHAO II to the ground, opened the script, and dragged a variety of poses to the object. Then I spent a good while assigning animations to each action (and multiple poses to stands, sits, and ground sits), in a notecard, and then testing them.

It required a bit of debugging, as spelling had to be exactly right, but eventually I was able to cycle through all movements without getting a script error message.

Woo hoo!

But when I added even more sits and stands, the script broke: out of memory.

So I saved with mono. That gave me memory enough for dozens and dozens of animations-- not that I need all that many. I just wanted enough sits and stands to animate my avatar as naturally as possible.

I could have made additional notecards for different purposes-- mermaid, wearing tight skirts, for business or romantic settings, but I stopped.

Why is my AO noncopyable? Glad you asked. Some of the anims it contains are no copy, and transfers to the object. So when it's lost, it's gone. That's why I was in a frazzle.

5 comments:

Fiasca Blaukempt said...

Very interesting I love your work ;)

Maireen said...

I wish you would make a dignified AO for clueless AVs like myself and sell it. I would buy it....mine makes me look like a dolt and I can't seem to get it right.

Cheyenne Palisades said...

Maireen:

IM me and I'll be happy to give you names of some of the stand and sit anims I like and let you see them in action.

I could make an AO, but the problem is the perms on the animations. Making a good one is a lot of work and requires a lot of skill, especially with the free programs Avimator and QAvimator. I think they're easier with Poser, but the really good ones use labs set up with motion capture software-- you know, people wearing suits with sensors that record their movement which then become animations.

Anonymous said...

I love the looks of your skin! Its funny but her makeup looks similar to one I posted on http://www.slskinmint.com. did you go through them?

Cheyenne Palisades said...

No, I didn't, anonymous. I wasn't even aware of skinmint until I read your comment. I bought my skin in October, 2006 and have worn it ever since (I have gone back to buy different makeups). It's an olive skin tone which is rare in Second Life, but right off the shelf.