Day 300: Second Life Poseball Tutorial

Im 300 days old! Eeek...Im getting old. I need some new skin! ;P



You know I have a thing for poseballs, particularly the Blue variety :P So I thought it might be fun to write about creating your very own perfect poseball :)

This tutorial will explain how the poseball script works. We will create a poseball and position it on a chair.



To complete this tutorial, you will need the Poseball folder from Sirena Hair & Fashions (Search/Places for "sirena", the SLURL is West Sunset (160,50,22)). The Poseball folder is under the giant mermaid sign in the Tutorial Supplies area.




Poseball Overview



Poseballs...you see them everywhere in SL. The blue/black varieties are typically meant for guys, the pink/red varieties for women, and other colors for either gender.

If you Right-click on a poseball and select "Sit Here" (or the replacement text), your avatar will perform the animation contained in the poseball. A poseball's animation may be a static pose, or it could be a moving animation (like a dance, for example).

Poseballs are typically spheres about 0.25M in size. Some have writing above them giving a hint of what they do, like "Sit", "M", "F", "Relax", "Cuddle", or "Mermaid Sunbathing" (I see the last one a lot ;P) Some poseballs respond to chat commands, like "/8 show" or "/8 hide" to show or hide the poseballs.

Most poseballs in SL use a free script written by resident Sitting Lightcloud called "Nyterave Anim8 Ball 2.1". To create poseballs with the features we just talked about, all you need is this script and an animation file.

So poseballs are great for poses in an open area (like cuddle balls) or dances. But do you need poseballs for a piece of furniture? Actually, no. You can place the "Nyterave Anim8 Ball 2.1" script and animations directly into a piece of furniture. Poseballs do have the advantage of showing that a "pose" is available. Poseballs also enable you to pose multiple avatars on a piece of furniture. Lastly, poseballs make it easier to position and rotate a pose (if you just put the script into a chair, you can only rotate the chair; if you put the script in a poseball, you can then rotate the poseball independently from the chair).

(Just in case you dont like poseballs, check out Malia's comments on this post: Theres a cool script on SLExchange called "Antiposeball" that lets you setup poses without poseballs. I havent tried it, but it sounds cool. And its only L$10 :D)

Not to mention, we can always use more Blue Poseballs in SL ;P

BTW, you may have seen some couples poseballs at clubs or animation stores that does synchronized couples dances. These poseballs use a different (not free :( ) script. There are some discussions about this in the SL Forums. If you know some scripting, it doesnt sound like a super hard script to write...just too hard for this mermaid :)



Also, Essensual Designs (Search/Places for "essensual") gives away a set of synchronized poseballs that you can use and modify with your own poses. However, the script is "No Mod". Its off to one side of the building, where the hot tub and outdoor furniture are located.

OK...lets make some poseballs :)


Creating the Poseball

We are going to create a poseball.

You need to go to a place where you can build. When in doubt, try a Sandbox.



First, click the Build button on the bottom of your screen and then click on the ground to rez a Box.

Change the Building Block Type to "Sphere". Change the Size X, Y, and Z to 1.000. (Making it big helps with positioning later...)



Go to the Texture tab. Click on the picture above Texture. Click on "Blank" and "Select" to pick a blank texture.

Click on the picture above Color. Pick a color (either pink or blue) and then click "Select".



Go to the Contents tab.

Look for the "Nyterave Anim8 Ball 2.1" script in the Poseball folder you picked up at Sirena. Drag and drop the "Nyterave Anim8 Ball 2.1" script from your Inventory into the Contents tab of the poseball.

You should see the words "Sit Here" appear at the top of the poseball.

Look for "Animated sit (bored)" animation file in the Poseball folder you picked up at Sirena. Drag and drop the "Animated sit (bored)" animation from your Inventory into the Contents tab of the poseball. (BTW, you can use any of the "Sit" animations. Im just using this one because its a moving animation...)

Go to the General tab. Change the Name to "Tutorial Poseball".



That's it! You are now the proud owner of a giant poseball.

Go ahead: Right-click on it and select "Sit Here". You should be sitting and looking bored :)


Positioning the Poseball

Now, lets put the poseball on something. In this case, lets use a chair.



Look for the "Tutorial Chair" in the Poseball folder you picked up at Sirena. Drag and drop the "Tutorial Chair" from your Inventory to the ground.

If you recognize this chair, its the one from the Tea for Two scene from the Miss Second Life Pageant. Back when I was younger :P



Move the poseball over to the chair. Because the poseball is so large, it will pretty much cover the whole chair. Dont worry, theres a reason for all this :)



Right-click on the poseball and select "Sit Here".

Depending on which way you were facing when you created the poseball, you will probably end up sitting sideways or backwards. No problem...thats why we made the poseball so large :)



Right-click in the middle of your avatar, around where the center of the poseball should be. Select "Edit".

You should now be editing the giant invisible poseball! :)

At this point, you can position or rotate the poseball as you need, while you are sitting on the poseball. This makes things a lot easier to position...



To rotate the poseball, click on "Rotate (Ctrl)" at the top of the Edit window. Then use the color wheels to rotates your avatar.



Once you are facing the right way, click on "Position" at the top of the Edit window. Then use the color arrows to move your avatar into position.

Once you are done, click "Stand Up" at the bottom of the screen.

We still have a giant poseball, so let's shrink it down to size...



Right-click on the poseball and select "Edit".

Go to the Object tab. Change the Size X, Y, and Z to 0.250M.



If you plan on taking the chair into your Inventory, you should link the poseball to the chair.

Just Right-click on the poseball and select "Edit" to edit the poseball. Then press and hold [Shift], and Left-click on the chair.

Select the "Tools" option from the top menu bar, and "Link". Now the poseball is part of the chair.

To take the poseball/chair into Inventory, just Right-click on the poseball/chair and select "Take".


The Poseball Script

Lets take a quick peek inside the "Nyterave Anim8 Ball 2.1" script...there are some interesting setting we can play with :)



Look for the "Nyterave Anim8 Ball 2.1" script in your Inventory. Double-click on the script to open the Script Editing window.

There are 6 settings we can change to customize how our poseball behaves:

POSITION - This determines where the avatar would be positioned relative to the poseball (or object containing the script). You probably want to leave this alone for a poseball, since you can just move the poseball around. But if you use this script inside a cushion or a piece of furniture, then you may need to adjust this setting to get the correct position.

HOVERTEXT - This is the text that shows above the poseball. You know...where its suppose to say "Mermaid Sunbathing" :)

SIT_TEXT - When someone Right-clicks on the poseball, this is the text that shows up in their pie menu. If you leave this blank, it will just say "Sit Here". You can change this to "Pose", "Cuddle", "Kiss", "Sunbath", or whatever is appropriate for the poseball.

HOVER_RGB - This is the color of the text over the poseball. The 3 numbers represent amounts of Red, Green, and Blue. So "0,0,0" is black, "255,255,255" is white, "255,0,0" is pure red, and "0,0,255" is pure blue.

LISTEN - This determines whether the poseball would listen for Chat commands (the CHANNEL setting below determines which channel to listen on). You can use Chat commands to show and hide poseballs. Turning this on adds some lag, so keep it off unless you really need it!

CHANNEL - This determines the Chat channel that the poseball will listen on. Channel 0 is regular Chat (so you can just say "show" or "hide" in regular Chat and the poseball will respond accordingly). Typically, you should avoid Channel 0, since theres a lot of unnecessary Chat that the poseball would have to process.

If you use anything above Channel 0, you would need to use the channel number when talking to the poseball. For example, if you use Channel 8, then you have to say "/8 show" and "/8 hide".




Congratulations! You are now a poseball expert, ready to put poseballs all over Second Life.

So go make some Blue Poseballs for me :)

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