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 should have simply said "internals". I was referring to the fact that this article is primarily about the internal format BVH files are converted into. It discusses various priorities, the base priority versus the per-joint priority, and how they relate to the built-in animations.

There is almost nothing here of use to someone that just 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.

This article would, however, be useful for someone working on a viewer or a tool that works with the internal animation format.

After becoming more familiar with the built-in animations my attitude towards people wanting to upload animations at above priority 4 has changed. Many of the built-in animations have base priorities of 0 or 1, but joint priorities of 3, forcing people to upload their animations at priority 4. This makes mixing difficult. You can consider this me officially eating crow.

After looking through the relevant source code it appears that the highest priority that will deserialize is 6.

I think this article's discussion of the uses of various priority levels is misleading in places. For example, animation overriders will need to override animations from priority 0 (e.g. stand) through at least 3 (e.g. ground sit). The article seems to indicate only priority 0 animations are intended to be overridden. Further, after having actually tried it for all the animation types animation overriders usually support I've found that matching the priority of the built-in animation tends not to work. You usually have to exceed it. I'm not sure why this is, but it's fairly easy to observe with flying animations.

It may be best to have a article that discusses the priority system supported by the internal animation format, and a separate one intended for people who just want to know what they need to do to upload a animation that plays correctly. I had personally rather read many short articles that only contain the information I asked for, and point to information they think I really aught to read, rather than long articles I have to sift through to find what I was after. This may be a matter of taste, however.

Coaldust Numbers 22:45, 27 September 2011 (PDT)