Talk:Animation Priority

I added a page to the wiki about assigning uploads a appropriate priority. It's written more from a artist's perspective (concerned with the kind of animations used in AO's, attachments, and poseballs) rather than a server internals point of view. That said, there may still be some duplication that could be cleaned up by moving information from one article to the other.

Animation Upload Priority

I didn't touch this article, to avoid upsetting anyone.

Coaldust Numbers 00:35, 28 February 2011 (PST)

I think your article should be merged into this one. There is no reason to have two articles that discuss the same things. That said don't worry about stepping on anyones toes. I don't think this article has a champion. Animation Upload Priority is really a subtopic of Animation Priority. This topic is more complicated than just upload priority and your article makes brief reference to this but fails to provide adequate details.

I'm kind of disturbed that you would categorize the complex logistics of the animations as server internals, the server does very little with regards to animations (from the point of view of the server, your avatar never moves it's limbs). The only aspect of animations the sim actually handles is distribution and tracking; compiling, animating and precedence are all client side. -- Strife ^{(talk|contribs)} 09:15, 1 March 2011 (PST)

P.S. While this article does go into some of the more technical details, your article is more useful as it does a better job of emphasizing the important details. I'd like to see an article with both.

I'm not sure what complex logistics are involved, but my statement about server internals referred to the fact this article primarily lists the various priorities as they relate to the default animations and information about the binary format the BVH files are converted into. There is almost nothing here of use to someone that wants to upload an animation and needs to know what number to choose in the Priority spinner. I suspect well over 90% of the people that look up an article on Animation Priority will only be interested in the topic to find the answer to that question. That's not to say this article is useless. It may be of interest to someone maintaining a viewer, or some sort of animation tool, for instance.

As far as I know there is only one priority 5 animation, the one that plays when you Edit Appearance. Given it is treated specially (e.g. the viewer shows the appropriate tag over your head when it plays, and it possibly has other effects) I would be reluctant to say they are "fully supported". At the least, Linden Lab has never stated that they are supported or provided a interface to create them from the official viewer, which should be expected for such a thing. I think users uploading priority 5 and above animations would fall under the same category as creating megaprims. You might be able to do it, but it's not officially condoned.

I find the listing of priority 6 as a category as very questionable. The article itself states no such animations are known to exist, and while they may, in my informed opinion, it would be better if they did not.

Arguably, the tone of the article encourages people to search for hacks that allow the use of priorities 5 or higher. The priority levels we have right now work just fine when properly applied. The problem is it's nearly impossible to buy an animation in-world that isn't priority 4, and defined for all joints, making them aggravating to use in a AO, and impossible to 'mix' correctly, which is to a large extent what provoked my article. The other reason I wrote it is I needed a reference for myself, and nobody else had stepped up. People really need to use lower priority levels, not higher ones.

So, if the merge was left to me, my changes might upset people due to the fact I would change it heavily. I suspect all that would survive of what is here would be:

• a brief mention of the currently used priority levels
• that priority 5 is special in that users can't normally upload animations with a priority above 4
• possibly mention that the internal format actually allows per-joint priority levels although the user interface does not expose this, and this feature is used by some internal animations (and use the walk animation as a example)
• a pointer to the internal animations article

Some of what I would leave out is misleading. For instance, users are intended to be able to override everything but priority 5 animations, but the way the article is written it makes it sound like only priority 0 animations are okay to override most of the time, and there are special cases where it's okay to override higher ones. Dances and (non-ground) sits should definitely be priority 4, because they need to be able to override the joints in the default sit animation, which is priority 4, and will play when they try to sit on the poseball.

So I remain uncertain as to whether I should make such drastic changes. I just hope what I wrote will be read, and improve the quality of animations for sale in world. As is I'm going to have to make everything I want to use due to people not understanding the proper use of the reference frame or priority levels.

If you wish to do the merge, all I ask is that you preserve all the information in it, including (especially) the mention of the common bad practice of uploading everything at priority 4, and why that's wrong. It would be nice if it retained the "why you should care" tone for the average animator, who is probably more interested in "what do I need to do" than "what do about 100 built in animations do, and what can I extrapolate from this myself". I think I did a good job with that with the table, and the sections Overriding Animations and Animated Attachments, most of which just condenses the information relevant to animators from the Internal Animations article. I also made it a point to use the name that third party viewers with built in AO's, and the ZHAO-II AO, do for the animations, and list them in the order they are usually listed in (though I made sure the table is sortable various ways). I think all of those things are important.

If you really want me to do the merge, I'd like an okay on the changes I said I'd make to what is in this one.

Coaldust Numbers 03:46, 2 March 2011 (PST)