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PRODUCT REVIEW What does your avatar's body language say about you? Isn't it time you had an animation override? By Pollywog Gardenvale
Research has shown that over fifty percent of our communication takes place on the nonverbal level. Although the meaning of each pose or gesture can vary from culture to culture, in the international community of Second Life, most residents still rely on the default set of animations. For example, standing with your hands on your hips is included in the animated loop of default standing poses. However, in many cultures, standing with “arms akimbo” is considered an aggressive stance. Wouldn’t it be nice if your avatar would keep its head up while having its picture taken, or how about smiling once in a while? So how hard is it to override your avatar’s animation, anyway? You might be surprised to discover how common an occurance it is. Your animation is overridden every time you click a pose ball, or sit down on a chair that makes you do things that seem out of character for your same old, default self. (Just watch out for those Gorean pose balls!)
The Gestures dialog box displays the properties and triggers that are associated with the gesture. A single gesture may be a combination of several elements, including sound and pauses. You can experiment by making changes to a gesture, and then take it for a test drive by clicking Preview.
You may be surprised to discover how many free gestures, dances, and other animations are in your inventory. If you want something more specialized, you will find many animations for sale in the classifieds. Most of the third-party animations that are available in Second Life were created with Poser 3D Figure Design and Animation software from eFrontier. The completed animation is saved as a .BVH file and then uploaded to Second Life.  So here’s how it works: Your avatar has a set of preprogrammed animation channels that determines the way you walk, run, sit, stand, and fly. However, the default animations that are assigned to each channel can be replaced by wearing an animation HUD loaded with replacement animations. That is what animation override is all about. In the military, a “Head-Up Display” (HUD) is an electronically-generated navigational panel that is superimposed over the pilot’s field of view. In Second Life, a HUD is a control panel that can either be worn or displayed in a fixed position on the screen. Most animation overriders have a notecard that lists each possible position (or channel), followed by the exact name of the replacement animation. When the notecard is loaded and the is HUD activated—voila! Well, maybe it’s not quite that easy, or at least it hasn’t been so for me. I have lost track of the times I have gone flying into outer space (which seems to happen if your default animations are not correctly overwritten). Before you start experimenting with animation overriders, make sure that you do the following:
Animations
Outrider Animations
The Motion Merchant Their Typing Override product replaces your default typing with an animated conversation and gesture—but here’s the catch: Whenever you type, you are transformed into a virtual, hand-flapping, tongue wagger. I was amazed to find myself typing things like: “Here I am stuck in a house full of screaming kids while you go out running around with your hoodlum friends!” I think I’ll keep my nose buried in the keyboard for now, but the code looks like it might be fun to play around with.  Overriders
Huddles EZ Animator Basic v1.0.1. Up to ten people can be invited to “boogie on down” to your favorite dances. The HUD has a clean design and can be set to varying degrees of transparency so it won’t interfere with your field of vision. I like this product so much, that I’m going to buy the more expensive model.
WetIcon Animation Overrider
Although I loaded the notecard with most of the animation categories, there were a few lines that I left blank. As a result, whenever it tried to use one of the missing animations, it attached an error message to my body. This happened only when overrider was attached to my body. However, I found that even with missing animations, it works fine when attached as a HUD on the screen.
This product also uses the Franimation Overrider engine and has the same notecard setup as the WetIcon overrider. The ZHAO HUD is designed to be displayed on the screen and has buttons for Walk, Sit, and Ground Sit. It also has chat commands, which I don’t have room in my brain to remember. Each button in the HUD displays a pop-up menu with five buttons that correspond to the five animations in each category. It would be nice if it had a Standing button so I could use my (rather expensive) Outrider Female Standing Poses 1–5. When I click Sit, a menu appears with buttons 1 through 5. When each button is clicked, the wrong animations appear. Here’s what each button on the Sit menu displayed: 
I spent a lot of time on this, but still couldn't get it right. So I finally called my friend Charm March and she told me that she uses ZHAO all the time without any problem. So maybe it’s me. Stopping an Animation One of the biggest problems I’ve experienced is not being able to stop an animation after it has taken possession of me. As I write this, I am still wriggling around like a mermaid, although I am long out of the water and back in my clothes. It seems that this has become a routine expereince for me. Here are the steps I normally take to deal with the situation:
As I was testing these instructions, I found myself back at Huddles Games & Gadgets, looking at the EZ Animator Deluxe. It’s L$1499, but here goes: KA-CHING! I'm thinking, "This store is great!" I can’t decide... should I get the Huddles Poofer Pal, the Wizardy Arena, or the Zombie AO? There’s also a Huddles Chat Macro, that’s free, and a Vendor Locater—which sounds like something we could use to I keep track of our newsstands. There’s also a Sound Buddy and a Landmark Pal. But wait—there’s an Animation Stopper! It says: “Find yourself stuck in compromising positions? Get this button for your HUD to stop those annoying anis!” And it’s only L$1. This must be a public service they provide. I ended up also buying a Rainy Day Umbrella for “those days when the rain seems to follow you everywhere.”  Well, now that I’m back home, I’ve had a chance to try it out and I’m still wiggling around like a mermaid out of water. No wonder it was free! But I still have the Huddles EZ Animator Deluxe to try. If that doesn’t work, I’ll put my Siren Crafter bits and pieces back in place and leave it at that. Things could be worse and I’ll figure it out one of these days. * * * Sponsored Links |
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Have you ever wondered why some avatars have more expressive body language than others? What about those saucy AVs who saunter confidently along the avenue, while you go clomp, clomp, clomping along? Does it ever feel like the whole world is a tuxedo and you’re just a pair of brown shoes? Maybe they know something that you don’t—it's the secret of animation override!
Your Inventory contains a selection of gestures that can be triggered by typing a chat command or by pressing a shortcut key. To display your list of active gestures, select 
Another easy way to animate your avatar is to go to your
When the dialog box appears, click the 
This product is a synchronized dance machine that is by far, the easiest to use of all the products I tested. The product documentation is excellent, and consists of both online help and a convenient quick reference. In addition, the company maintains a Customer Service SL Forum.
The WetIcon Animation Overrider is based on the Franimation Overrider engine, and is designed to be worn on your body, rather than attached to the screen. However, it is so small that you need to be careful not to lose it—especially when loaded with all your expensive animations. While I was working on it, I put it on a pillow next to the cat, just to be safe.
ZHAO HUD Animation Overrider
