Animation overrider with facial expressions, built-in animations, and more!
Wear the Bright AO to change the way you stand, walk, fly, and move through Second Life.
We provide two basic forms - the 'Bright boy' and 'Bright girl', and each adds realism and sophistication to the way an avatar moves.
However, following the detailed instructions included with the AO, you can add your own favourite animations: animations taken from other AOs, or which you've bought from SL Marketplace or in Second Life, or even animations you've made yourself. You can even distribute the AO with your new animations in it freely, commercially, or accompanying your own products such as avatars, clothes or shoes.
Just wear your AO and it will work, controlling the way you move. But it also displays a HUD menu of buttons which let you play your favourite animations at will, to wave hello, sit on the ground, or just smile.
The HUD can be reduced to a single button, if you prefer less clutter on your screen. All the functions are still available through a "pop up" menu when you click this button.
The AO has many more features, which are described in more detail in the instructions: but in summary, this is an attractive, effective, and versatile AO, and since it's release has become one of Second Life's most popular freebies.
Enjoy!
An AO actually consists of two parts, so permissions are a little complicated.
1. The main part is the AO itself: the Bright AO is full perms - you can modify it (apart from the script inside), copy it, and transfer it.
2. The second part is the set of animations added to the AO. We've added two sample sets - one for males (in the 'Bright Boy') and the other for females (in the 'Bright Girl'): but these *animations* are copy-only, so you can't give the Bright AO away while they are still inside.
Confusingly, when you look at an item in your inventory, it will show you any restrictions which apply to *any* part of it, so it will describe the Bright AO as "(no modify) (no transfer)" because the script is no modify, and the sample animations are no transfer. But when you rez your AO, you'll find you *can* modify it perfectly well, and if you take out the animations, you *can* transfer it.
But why would you transfer it without animations? Well, this is useful for *creators*. If you make your own animations, or buy them and assemble them into sets, you can add these to your Bright AO, and then give it away or sell it with your *own* animations inside, and with our blessing. You can even include it with your boxed avatar, shoes, or anything which might benefit from its own AO.
Some AOs are distributed empty, specifically for people to add animations and release their own versions. We could have done this - but we thought it would be useful to include a set of animations because we thought many people would like them, and as an example creators could examine when creating their own sets.
We were trying to be helpful, but in doing so, we made the permissions a bit harder to explain. We hope this explanation helps :)
Search for the "Bright AO boxed" object in you Inventory, and drag it onto the ground to rez it. Right-click it to bring up it's Second Life menu, click "Open", to display it's "Contents" window, and click the "Copy To Inventory" button you'll find at the bottom.
This will create a new folder, also called "Bright AO boxed", in which you will find objects called "Bright AO (Bright boy)" and "Bright AO (Bright girl)". Right-click one, and from the menu displayed choose "Wear". This will show the Bright AO HUD (or 'Head Up Display') on your screen. If you wish to display it somewhere else, choose "Attach to HUD" instead, and then choose from the menu of positions displayed.
To fine-tune its position, right-click the HUD, click "Edit", and then drag the head of the blue and green arrows which appear. (Note that because of an SL bug, dragging an arrow from a point other than the arrowhead will sometimes fail.) To save the adjusted position, find the AO in your Inventory again, right-click it and click "Detach", and then right click it and click "Wear".
Once you've put on your AO, and given it a few seconds to warm up, it will start working automatically. You don't have to do anything! Just walk, or sit down, or have a fly around: you'll just notice you are moving differently.
Below, you'll learn what the buttons on the HUD do, how to play your own favourite animations (or Second Life built-in animations) "on demand", to express yourself, show emotion, sit, dance, and even sleep where you like, and how to change your AOs settings, and add or remove animatons.
The notecards button is at the top left of the AO: blue with a dog-eared page symbol.
Click this button to display a menu of the notecards inside your AO. Each notecard contains its own list of animations, so by choosing a new notecard, you choose a different way of moving. Your new animations will last until you detach your AO: when you reattach it, it will reread it's "usual" notecard.
To learn how to edit and create notecards, and to control which notecard is read when you attach your AO, read "CONFIGURING YOUR AO" below.
If your AO only contains one notecard, this button will be disabled.
The setup button is at the top right of the AO: blue with a six-buttoned menu symbol. Click it to display a menu with information about your AO's current settings.
This will have one button for each "state" - like walking or flying - which has more than one animation linked to it. For instance, both the "Bright boy" and "Bright girl" notecards have multiple standing animations, so you will see a "standing" button. Click it.
You will see a new menu, with a list of all the animations the AO can play while your are standing. Normally, it will switch randomly between them, giving you a tendency to "fidget", as people do in real life. If you would like to stand still, choose a single animation by clicking the corresponding numbered button: or click "auto-fidget" to return to fidgeting.
The choices you make using this menu will last until you detach your AO: when you reattach it, each state will return to its usual behaviour, read from the notecard. To control which animation, or fidget, used by default, see "CONFIGURING YOU AO" below.
Not everyone realises that Second Life has dozens of animations 'built in', which you don't need animation inventory items to play. You can play them through your Bright AO.
We have organised them into four categorised, easily used menus, displayed by clicking one of the four purple buttons in the middle of your Bright AO:
Purple laughing face button: facial expressions, from smiling to sticking your tongue out.
Purple head lowered button: emotional gestures, from punching the air to crying.
Purple pointing man button: body language, from nodding to wagging your finger.
Purple raised arms button: other actions, from the peace sign to punching someone.
Click the button for the category you want, and the menu of 'built in' animations will be displayed. There are roughly 20 in each category: you will see the first 11. Click a button to play one, or click 'MORE>' to see the rest.
The favourites button shows a heart symbol on a red background.
Click it to display a list of favourite animations. If you have more than 9 favourites, you can move through the list by clicking '<' and '>'. Click '<<' to return to the beginning.
These animations aren't associated with states like "walking", and you can play them whenever you like.
Some are will play once and stop automatically. Click "'phew!'" to wipe your brow.
Some favourites are "looped", and will keep playing. Click ">" and then "club dance", and notice that the favourites button turns green. Press it again to stop dancing, and it will turn back to red.
By clicking "sit here!" you can sit on the ground even if it is covered with prims, which stop you right-clicking the ground to sit in the usual way. In this way, you can sit anywhere: or "lie here!" or even "sleep here!".
If you have no favourites set up, this button will be disabled.
To find out how to add and remove animations from your favourites list, see "CONFIGURING YOUR AO" below.
The fidget button shows three arrows in a circle on a red or green background. It will be disabled if your current state doesn't have multiple animations linked to it.
If it is enabled, you can click it to switch randomly to another animation: to fidget.
If your current state is periodically "auto-fidgeting" anyway (see "THE SETUP BUTTON" above), this button will be green: otherwise it will be red - but you can fidget *now* by clicking it whether it is red or green.
The sit button shows a chair on a red or green background.
If it is green, your "sit" animations will play when you sit on something.
If it is red, they are DISABLED, and will not play when you sit on something.
Click the button to switch between green - enabled, and red - disabled.
Our advice is to leave it red - disabled. Almost everything you sit on in Second Life - chairs, cars, surf-boards, beds, sex-toys - contains it's own sit animation. If the AO overrides it, you will look as if you are sitting when you are supposed to be standing on a surf-board, and you'll look silly.
If you do sit somewhere, and think you'd look prettier with your sit animation running, click the sit button to enable it temporarily, but out tip would be to switch it off again.
(The button doesn't disable ground-sitting animations, which you can override safely.)
In the bottom right of your HUD is a button with a circular "power" symbol.
If this button is green, your AO is on and working.
If this button is red, your AO is off, doing nothing.
If you ever need to, simply click this button to switch your AO on and off.
Before changing your AO, *take it off* and *make a backup*.
Find it in your Inventory, right-click it, and click "Detach" in the pop-up menu. Right-click it again, and click "Copy". Finally, right-click it and click "Paste". You'll now have two, identically named AOs. Right-click one, click "Rename", and add "backup" to its name.
Drag the AO out of your Inventory and onto the ground to rez it. Note where you put it, as it is very small. Right-click it, and click "Open", to display the "Contents window".
This shows everything "inside" your AO. You will see:
1. A script called "Bright AO": this is the program which drives the AO. Leave it be.
2. Lots of animation items: these are the animations played by the AO. Enable the AO to play new animations by dragging new items into the AO from your Inventory.
3. Notecards, called "Bright boy" or "Bright girl". Each notecard contains a different configuration: and you can switch between them while wearing the AO by clicking the "notecards" button. You can modify these, or create a new notecard of your own: but keep the name short (12 characters or less) so it will fit on a button in the menu.
To change one of the notecards, double-click to open it. Each line takes the form "Setting=value". Just change the values to control how the AO works.
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minimum fidget=20
maximum fidget=30
If a state has more than one animation, the AO can "auto-fidget", switching randomly between them. The time between fidgets is a random number of seconds between the values above.
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tick=0.3
The AO repeatedly checking your "state" (standing, walking, etc) to see if it has to start a new animation. The interval between these checks is called the "tick", which we set to 0.3 seconds. Please don't change it without good reason. Make it larger, and your AO may become sluggish. Make it smaller, and it may become laggy.
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repeat menus=no
If 'no', when you click (say) 'smile' on the expressions menu, you will smile, and your menu will disappear. If 'yes', the menu will reappear, letting you choose *another* expression.
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test mode=no
If 'yes', the AO displays technical information about what it is doing (and slows down). Sometimes useful to us at BrightCorp during support, but you won't normally need it.
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standing fidget=Stand (boy) 1/Stand (boy) 2/Stand (boy) 3
"Standing" is the first of a couple of dozen "states" or basic activities which an avatar can carry out. To tell the Bright AO which animation to play in each state, put its name after the "=" sign. To give yourself a choice of animations while using the AO, or to let you "fidget" between animations - specify more than one, with slashes ("/") between their names, as here.
If you want the AO to fidget between the animations, put the word "fidget" before the "=": otherwise the AO will start by playing the first animation in the list, and the others will only be played if you click the fidget button, or click the setup button and switch on "auto-fidget" while you are wearing the AO.
Each name must be...
(a) one of the "standard" Second Life animations
(see a complete list at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Internal_Animations)
(b) the name of an animation item you have dragged into the AO from your Inventory, or
(c) the word "normal", for the animation Second Life would normally play in this state.
The list of possible states is built into Second Life itself, and as new versions come out, sometimes new states are added. One of the problems with some older AOs is that they assume the list is fixed, and so they provide no way to animate new states, or even produce error messages when the new states happen.
The Bright AO comes with sample settings notecards with the current list of states included: but if new states should be added to Second Life - say, a state for swimming - you can just add the line "swiming=...".
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standing up=
If you don't want to add your own animation for a state, simply leave the appropriate line blank after the "=" sign. The standard Second Life animation for that state will be played. Here, for instance, no special animation will be played as this avatar stands up after sitting.
(Note: though it's not immediately obvious, "init=", which you'll see in the notecard, is just another state. It seems to happen, amongst other times, after a teleport.)
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favourite scratch automatic=Scratch bottom
favourite sit here! loop=sit_ground
favourite yoga lie 20=Yoga 3
Each of your "favourite" animations is defined by a line made of the following bits...
favourite (name) ["automatic"/"loop"/(seconds)] ["combine"]=(animation)
(name) - the name to appear on the button in the "favourites" menu
["automatic"/"loop"/(seconds)] - Optional: how long the animation should play. "loop" if the animation is looped and should play until stopped, "automatic" if it is not looped and it should finish naturally, or simply how many seconds to let it run before stopping it (whether it is looped or not). If you don't specify any of these, the animation will be stopped after three seconds - as if you had written "3".
["combine"] - Optional: normally, the current animation is stopped while your favourite animation is played. Add "combine" if you wish the current animation to continue playing while the favourite is played.
* If you like a particular standard Second Life animation, but want a little variety, remember that you can use "normal" in a list of animations in the settings notecard. For instance, to fidget between the standard Second Life standing animation and a custom one, put: "standing fidget=normal/Stand (boy) 1".
* Even if you don't want to automatically fidget in a given state, it's still worth naming a few animations for that state: the first one will normally be used, but you can still switch between them by clicking the fidget or setup buttons. For instance, to use the normal stand animation most of the time, but give you the choice of using a custom animation when you want, put "standing=normal/Stand (boy) 1".
* Keep an eye on the list of states, as every now and then Linden Research add new ones, and you may want to add them to your settings notecard. This list is at: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlGetAnimation
* Create different AOs for different outfits. One with elegant animations in the folder with your posh frock or dinner jacket: another with more casual movements in the folder with your favourite jeans and tee. When you wear the folder to put on the whole outfit at once, you'll wear the appropriate animations with it.
* Don't feel you have to override every state. Some of the built in animations - like that for walking - are dreadful, and you'll probably want to animate them yourself. But others, like crouching, aren't bad. Don't take the lines out - it's better to have the state names in the settings notecard in case you want to animate them in the future - but leave them blank after the "=" sign to let your avatar use the default animations.
* Two states are seldom used: "crouchwalking" (which you do by pressing "Page Down" to crouch and then your up arrow to walk forward), and "running" (which you do by pressing up arrow twice quickly, holding it down on the second press). Attach your own animations to these, and use them, and you can add variety to the way you move over the ground. In the Bright AOs we've set up a sneaky tip-toeing and sprint animations for "crouchWalking" and "running" to show you what we mean.
Shan Bright
Chief Executive Officer