Gadgets ‘N Gear: Have a Seat…

… any seat you like. Do it yourself. It’s easy if you know how.

You know the deal. You love the furniture and hate the sits. You can suck it up and tolerate the sits to get the great style or pass it by. If you buy it, sooner or later you’ll file it in the FAIL folder.

Ever since I first faced this quandary, I vowed that one day I would seize control of my destiny and lounge about any way I please. The day came when I purchased the spectacular ”Midnight Fairy Oak with sits” from Natural Fantasies earlier this week.

I love this tree. It has a magical tone to it and broad flat limbs that cry to be climbed and sat upon. Out of the box it comes with three sits that are assigned in a fixed order as people sit down. I wanted more. More sits. More positions. More people. More control. More, more, more.

I’ve long admired the sit system in use by Rayvn Hynes in her furniture, so I IM’d her to find out what she used and headed out to pick up:

• Perfect Sitter by Piero Padar

Weighing in at a cool 2500L, Perfect Sitter is targeted at the commercial builder. For single, non-couple poses it’s powerful and straightforward to use once you know how, but…

…Documentation Matters

The notecards and web documentation that come with Perfect Sitter are a fail. I started out with the notecards, which was painful and confusing. I followed a link to the web docs (which can only be described as garish) and FINALLY ran the walkthrough video clip, pausing it to make a sequential list of instructions. Once I had those, I was away. Hint: Start with the video clip.

How it Works

Perfect Sitter consists of two major bits:

1. An assistant for positioning poses and eye positions. This enables you to set each animation and dumps the positioning information to local chat. You then cut and paste it into a config card. It is removed once you have set the positions.
2. Scripts that stay in the item to provide a menu for selecting poses. It also provides the ability for individual AVs to fine tune their positions, storing customizations for up to 50 avatars.

Linked Prim Independence

This sitter is pretty cool. You can have a different set of animations and position data in each prim of a linked set. Each prim will operate independently; you can edit linked parts, move them around, and all the positions are kept straight.

The Cushion Scatter Sofa from MudHoney Designs above is a good example of this. You select the cushion you want to sit on, you get a menu of animations and you sit down. Each cushion is independent of the others.

You have two modes to choose from on each prim:

• Single Sit. One person only can sit down on the prim. Perfect for things like individual cushions on a couch, because you’re only going to put one person on it anyway.
• Multi Sit. More than one person can sit down on the prim. This is what I’m going with for the tree, because I can spread the poses out and keep each pose separate, so folks don’t collide.

Animations

One final point of prep. I need animations for my sits. There are two possibilities here: find copiable animations in stuff you already have or go get some. I ran out and picked up 25 Sitting Animations from A**Bliss Houses (which is hard to find. It’s top of the stairs on the wall, right by the floor). I picked through these and pulled a few I thought would work on the tree.

Dismantling the Tree

So my first task is to get the existing sits that are in the tree out of there. I unlink the tree, and show transparent objects (ctl-atl-t), revealing five round balls. Not so fast on the delete, bucko. Only three of those are posers – two are blue lights. Don’t assume.

Tip #1: I pulled a Doh moment. If you’re going to unlink and re-link a 26 prim tree, don’t do it where the tree mixed in with a bunch of other trees and flowers. Do it on a platform in the sky. Just a thought.

Set the Poses

Remember how the docs suck? Ok, here is the bullet list the docs really need, right up front – for setting up a prim:

1. Drag into the prim: a) Your sit animations, b) !!!multipose settings c) *MultiSitter Script d) *MultiSitter Object
2. Sit on the *MultiSitter Object, and allow animation.
3. Position the first animation, then hit set sit on the menu
4. Select a different animation, position it and set sit – repeat for each animation
5. Hit End, which deletes the multisitter position helpers and reports the position info to local. Cut and paste this into the config card.
6. Copy the animator scripts in, as many as there are animations, and either the “Single Avatar MultiSit” or “Multi MultiSit” depending on if you are going single or multi-sit.

I’m not big on the ol’ attention span and once you get into the loop of setting the poses up, it is an exercise in finicky tedium. This will nuke anyone with even a slight ADD inclination. As you set each individual pose it reports the pose coordinates to local. You don’t need to wait until the end. I started cutting an pasting the data so I could do it in phases.

Tip #2: When positioning poses on trees, get the darned leaves out of the way. The mostly transparent textures used for leaves completely mess up your alt-click cam mojo. Put them back when you’re done.

Starting Over

Ok. So I spent a good hour and a half positioning all the poses, things are lookin good. I’m ready to go. I right click and select sit to sit on the tree.

“No room to sit here. try another spot.”

It’s time to use the eff word. When I re-linked the tree, I didn’t think to check to see if I could actually sit on the base prim. I can’t. Since the sitter menu wakes up when you sit down, it’s not gonna work.

Repeat entire process from “unlink tree.”

Tip #3: Make sure you can sit on your prim before you start.

Tip #4: For fine tuning positioning on the opposite gender, get a shape you can switch into of that gender. If you want to look sensible, you could get a skin and outfit too, but that is entirely optional.

It’s Working

It works now.

I am happy. Isle is pretty. This is romantic.

This will go better next time.

Other Items Pictured.

Native American Cargo Canoe II: Crimson Phoenix Creations
Birch, Heart Garden Center
Emerald Forest Tree, Particle Cattails, Rock: Botanical
Stepping Stones: Organica
Flowers (Lavender, Purple Aster and White Daisies): Organica
Waves: Thick foam wave, Real Waves!
Reef: Outside Sim Landscape Items

Thanks

Ravyn Hynes (for the lead on Perfect Sitter), Gabby Panacek (for plurkin the tree), CodeBastard Redgrave (for helping me find it @ Night Flower) and Piedras Chama (for helping me find it @ Natural Fantasies).

Cushion Sofa Models (L-R): Jordan Morgenrote, Tillie Ariantho, Nika Dreamscape, Aisling Easterwood, moi, Harper Beresford, Rayvn Hynes.

Final Shot: Isle Lunasea and Raven Haalan.