Seating Multiple Avatars
Setting the position for the 2nd, 3rd, and etc. avatars, is done by adding a new ANIM line to the note card. If there are 3 ANIM lines in the card there will be three seats. They can be at 3 different locations and rotations.
You do NOT have to use the same animation in each line. The first ANIM line could be for a female and the second a different animation for a male. Typically couples animations would use two ANIM lines.
The suggested practice is to make the first seat in a set for the female. Manners and etiquette have the female being seated first in RL. Conforming to that practice in SL saves some learning curve.
You may have to edit several Adjusters to find the one currently active, depending on how you initially setup the note cards. If 0,0,0 was used to initialize the note cards, the Adjusters will all appear at the exact same location (left side of image). I have two suggestions. You can select an Adjuster and move it to see if it is the active one (right side of image), in which case your avatar will move too (mine didn’t). If the avatar does not move, just select another Adjuster and move it. Repeat until you find the one controlling your avatar.
Multiple Seat Adjusters
An alternative would be to change the initialization position when you build the note card to something like this:
ANIM|sit crossed|<0.0, 0.0, 0.0>|<0.0, 0.0, 0.0>
ANIM|sit crossed|<0.0, 0.0, 0.0>|<1.0, 0.0, 0.0>
ANIM|sit crossed|<0.0, 0.0, 0.0>|<2.0, 0.0, 0.0>
Any or all of the position values in the vector can be changed to alter the starting positions.
You can go back to the main menu while you are in Adjust mode. Once you have an animation set, just navigate the menu to click your next button and adjust it and paste its settings in the appropriate note card and repeat.
Choosing a Seat
I think the weak point in the nPose system is in how a user knows which seat to use or how to change seats. With poseballs it is obvious. With nPose there is no apparent hint as to how things work. There is no pink pose ball for the female. So, I think it highly likely people will be needing to swap places and change seats. So, I think this should be a more obvious and intuitive control.
In the utilities there is a card named BTN:Utilities:ChangeSeat-. You can change the name of this button to add it to any SET you have created or the top menu. I plan to change the name to BTN:Select Seat to have it appear in the main menu. My hope is this will give people the idea that this control allows them to select where they sit on the sofa.
I’m too green with nPose to know if I can put labels in place of the default labels Seat1, Seat2, etc. via an nPose command, … Or if there is a way to put a message in the dialog that seating is left to right… or something like that.
It is possible to change the nPose menu script to change the wording in the dialog. But, that seems a bit awkward.
Users
End users that use the furniture get a similar set of menus as the owner does. There is a menu that allows them to adjust their position, swap seats with another person (if you set up multiple sit positions) – sort of like changing pose balls, a sync for sync’ing couples and group animations, and a control to adjust where one is sitting.
End User Controls for Position
For most installs of nPose, a click by the end user on your furniture does nothing. They need to sit on the furniture then click on it for the menu. This is becoming common enough that most users will know how to use nPose furniture. I’ll probably write a script to handle that problem. Also, the new version I got does pop up a menu when you left-click the furniture. But, it doesn’t give the end user a hint as to what to do.
Summary
This seems to be a good system for controlling animations placed in furniture. While I have yet to try other features of nPose it has about everything I can think I would need. There is provision for RLV, props, and for playing sequences of animations.
It needs some minor tweaks to be end user friendly for people new to SL. But, otherwise it is pretty nice.
Being free and full perm qualifies it for use by builders in items they plan to distribute.
I tried nPose some years ago and thoroughly hated it for several reasons, one of them being that I couldnt get the menu looking the way I wanted it. I went back to MLP and stayed with it as it is easier. Nice to see though that nPose is still being worked on, maybe one day I will go back to it.
I have considered MLP… I’ll experiment with it later this month. But, reading through MLP instructions I didn’t see how to control the menu. Do you know of a good tutorial on MLP?
It would of course depend on what extend of control you want but for me, I was able to do it all via the notecard system. I dont have a tutorial on hand but MLP has a good reference manual here:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/MLPV2_Reference_Manual
as well as a inworld group MLP (?) that is very quiet but resourceful when needed (at least for me).
I think the choice between nPose and MLP (IF you have to make one at all) comes down to wether you want a system that rezzes balls or one that allows you to sit on prims. Ball-rezzing systems seem to be associated with sex toys.
Some people say that ball rezzing devices like MLP are outdated and that “Sitons” are the future. If i had 10L for every time I hrard that… well, I would not even have 50L but those 50L would come from really convinced people. Whatever that is worth.
Thanks for the link. I do want to look at MLP. But, not having pose balls is a plus cost-wise but a negative user-friendly-wise.
People tend to use a lot of legacy stuff in SL. So many are new to game modeling and building they don’t bother with optimization and script inefficiency.
Hey, I just stumbled over this manual after grabbing the scripts and noticing that there was no manual in it. It does look okay to set up, I do have a problem though. After putting in the core scripts, the adjuster and resetting the scripts, the Adjuster does not show, so I cannot sit on it to go on. I checked if the item is in the proper rezzing group and all, but nothing seems to work.
Any idea what the problem might be?
Hey. There are people here speak German or Russian? I speak English only with the help of Google, unfortunately. I hope you understand me … I have a question. I bought at the convenience store the script. I bought a plug-in again. I learn to do rez objects. Objects appear correctly. But I can not learn that objects have died, when I switch animation. The plugin is written instruc to how to do it. But it is written is not very clear. I can not understand what I’m doing wrong. Can I write a more detailed example that must be inserted in the note and paste it somewhere
There is an nPose group in world where you can ask questions.
Thank you. I find this group