Beebo Brink

After someone asked about AOs here on SLU, I had a flashback to how long it took me (almost a year) before I finally wrapped my mind around what an AO was, what my options were, and how to set one up. So I figured yet another basic tutorial wouldn’t hurt.

What is an AO?

When your avatar is created, it comes with a set of default animations for walking, standing, sitting and a whole array of other movements that are triggered when you turn corners or fly around. Unfortunately, the walk animation in particular is dreadful, absolutely horrible.

So an Animation Override (AO) is a scripted object that allows you to override the default Linden Lab animations with better ones created by SL designers.

Basic AO

The simplest AO available is a single prim with one walk animation (and sometimes also a run or a sit). There are freebie AOs of this type all around the grid that offer a few different gaits for men and women, such as Academic Man and Academic Woman, or Sexy Lady Walk. Some shoes and boots will come with a free walk as well.

All you have to do is Wear the AO prim once it’s in your inventory and you’re good to go. The default walk will automatically be replaced with the AO walk; you don’t have to do a thing.

I bought a Guy Normal walk from Abranimations for L$50 that comes in a ready-to-wear prim and that took away a major pain point in my early SL days.

Advanced AO

The advantage of more complex AOs is that you can select animations that are more suited to the specific personality of your avatar. In addition to a different gait, you can have variations of movement for your avatar while standing and sitting. You can even have a distinctive style of jumping, flying, and landing.

There are a variety of more comprehensive AOs that range from the free ZHAO II to the more expensive (but feature-rich) Huddles. When animations are dropped into the contents tab of the AO, a configuration notecard has to be updated for the animations to take effect.

Ready-to-Wear AO Sets

Because so many people shy away from the task of configuring their own AO, most any animation seller will have a range of pre-packed AO sets, usually in a ZHAO II, with the configuration notecard already filled out. Again, all you have to do is Wear the item when it’s in your inventory and the animations will play automatically.

The smallest and least inexpensive AO sets typically provide 1 walk, a sit and 2 or 3 stances, A complete AO will provide at least 5 stances, a left turn, right turn and the half-dozen or so animations involved in flying (crouching, leaping, flying, hovering, landing, etc.). The more animations included in the AO, the higher the price.

Custom AO Sets

For those who want to be more selective in their choice and also to mix animations from a variety of different designers, you must learn to configure your AO. Fortunately, the way to do this is now fairly standard, with the ZHAO II configuration card format used even in the Huddles Deluxe.

How to Configure a Custom AO

Detailed instructions are included in most AOs, so this is a broad overview to provide a general understanding of the process. Once you grasp the concepts involved, the dealer instructions won’t seem so overwhelming.

Step 1: Try out animation demos to find a selection you like. The cost of individually purchased anims ranges from L$30-200, with L$100 being the most typical price for a walk or stance.

Step 2: Rezz the AO of your choice (such as ZHAO II) on the ground. (I recommend doing this on Linden ground to reduce the risk of dropping your AO into the floor prims.)

Step 3: Drag-and-drop each animation into the Contents tab of the AO. To prevent asset server issues, do this one at a time rather than as a batch.

Step 4: Open the configuration notecard in the Contents. An empty card will look like this:

[ Standing ]
[ Walking ]
[ Sitting ]
[ Sitting On Ground ]
[ Crouching ]
[ Crouch Walking ]
[ Landing ]
[ Standing Up ]
[ Falling ]
[ Flying Down ]
[ Flying Up ]
[ Flying ]
[ Flying Slow ]
[ Hovering ]
[ Jumping ]
[ Pre Jumping ]
[ Running ]
[ Turning Right ]
[ Turning Left ]
[ Floating ]
[ Swimming Forward ]
[ Swimming Up ]
[ Swimming Down ]

These are the animation slots used by LL for their own defaults and which can be overwritten with an AO.

Step 5: ZHAO II allows more than one animation to be listed for every motion slot. The animation file names are separated by a “|” symbol, and the AO will cycle through the variations. This is especially useful for stances.

A card slot only needs to be filled in when you have animation you’d rather use. Any slot you leave blank will continue to defer to the Linden defaults. Here’s a sample card configured for a mix of Vista, cova, FORM and other animations.

[ Standing ]LB Confident |VISTAMPOSE3|VISTAMPOSE5|male standing
[ Walking ]cova8 Walk 1
[ Sitting ]cova8 Sit 1|cova8 Sit 2
[ Sitting On Ground ]LB Coy ground sit|sit ground 2
[ Crouching ]FORM Stand 00
[ Crouch Walking ]
[ Landing ]FORM Flip
[ Standing Up ]FORM Stand Up
[ Falling ]
[ Flying Down ]FORM Fly Down
[ Flying Up ]
[ Flying ]FORM Fly
[ Flying Slow ]
[ Hovering ]FORM Hover
[ Jumping ]FORM Flip
[ Pre Jumping ]FORM PreJump
[ Running ]
[ Turning Right ]FORM Turn Right
[ Turning Left ]FORM Turn Left
[ Floating ]
[ Swimming Forward ]
[ Swimming Up ]
[ Swimming Down ]

Step 6: Save your card and TAKE your AO back into Inventory. DO NOT wear your AO from the ground.

Step 7: Once it's safely in inventory, wear the AO and don’t think about it again

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Jahar Aabye

Just an aside, it's always good to test to see if your AO might be a bit laggy. The ZHAO-IIs seem to be ok, but some of the older AOs, even the original ZHAOs, could really lag up a sim. I've seen them clock 10k IPS or more (back in the days of IPS readouts), which is more than some guns firing continuously on full auto.

Similar McMillan

Agreed, it's just difficult for most people to test that in any reliable way.

Does anyone know if compiling a ZHAO-II with Mono helps make it any less laggy? I did it, just on the off chance that it might help, but since it's probably mostly the timers which use resources, it may not make much of a difference (it also makes the ZHAO claim to have 125% memory free, but that's not really a problem).

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Lewis Luminos

How does one actually DO a test like that?

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Chalice Yao

Buy your own estate sim, make sure it's completely void of any kind of scripts, and only wear your AO while watching the script time in the estate tools.

Or kick LL into the shins for not giving people the ability to see the exact resource usage of their own scripts in-world without being in such a sim.

That or attach it, stand around and go 'hmmh, well. I guess it's become a bit more laggy..than usual. Now, is it me or the 3 people who just TPed in. Hmmh. Let's detach. Seems a bit better..no, wait, it isn't. Dammit, I'm confused now', which is pretty much the only real option right now for the avarage resident.

Brave Republic

Beebo, great job. This should be saved for reference.

When I finally sorted AO it became addictive and I played with quite a few custom bult ones. It's fun once you get over the fear of losing your Zhao on the ground or borking it.

Great job.

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Ann Launay

I just want to emphasize, don't wear from the ground...it appears exacerbate that fun 'disappearing HUD' bug.

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Cindy Claveau

The latest version of Huddles (a permutation of Zhao I believe) allows as many stances as memory will hold. I think I had mine up to as many as 10 stands, but I removed a couple I didn't like.

As another addendum: When you're updating the animations and scripts in your AO, it's important to allow enough time for the AO prim to update through the asset server. During peak lag times, I've actually had it take 1-2 minutes to save a notecard. If I close it and pick the AO up before then, none of my changes have saved.

So I have this habit of just going to the kitchen for a drink or snack while the notecard is saving

Huddles also allows you to create multiple cards for various purposes. I have 2 or 3 dance notecards I can load, one for poses (because sitting on a prim lately makes my hair disappear when I zoom in for photos) and I'm sure I could create additional default AO notecards if I saw the need - like one for social and one for combat, for example.

Good thread, Beebo, thanks!

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Jahar Aabye

Actually, as far as I know Estate Tools won't even show attachments in Top Scripts...which is another major problem that LL needs to fix.

But you don't need Estate Tools to do a basic check. First, try to find a relatively empty sim. Ok, this is difficult, I know, but there are probably a few out there. By relatively empty, I simply mean that there isn't much happening in the sim, even if there are scripts running, they're relatively latent. Ok, once you've found the sim (and it's best if it's a standard sim and not an OpenSpace sim, although those will do in a pinch):

1. Press Ctrl-Alt-D to bring up the advanced menu if you haven't already. For some stupid reason, this is usually necessary for step...

2. Press Ctrl-Shift-1 to bring up the sim readouts on the right-hand side of the screen. Click where it says Simulator. It should pull down and you'll see a bunch of readouts. Find the one that says "Script Performance." To the right of this is a value in EPS, which is script Events Per Second. Some people prefer checking script time instead, but I've found IPS, and by extension EPS, to be easier to get a measurement, even if it's not as precise. Make a note of the EPS number, watch it for a bit and make sure that it's fairly steady.

Ok, now step....

3. Put on the AO. Yes, make sure you weren't wearing it before. This is important. Watch the amount that the EPS rises when you put it on. Check to see whether this is a one-time spike, or if it levels off at a higher value. If it levels off at more than 100 EPS above the background level, then trash it, not even worth going on to the next step.

4. Walk around, sit, fly, run. Do all the stuff that triggers animations. Oh, and bump into things, please. Some AOs trigger animations on collision (which is NOT a good way to do it). Check to see how this affects the EPS levels. If it goes above 200 EPS, then trash it. Anything above that is likely to be a serious contributor to sim lag. If it gets into the 400-500 EPS range, IM the scriptor (not necessarily the same as the seller or creator of the AO object) and call them a twatwaffle.

The ZHAO-II, in my experience, isn't too bad. Haven't tested it in Mono, so I don't have the EPS values handy, but I'll run some tests later today. Still, I don't really trust AOs that much. They've always struck me as a vanity thing, looking good at the expense of shared sim resources.

Also, for all the talk of how people use them to look "different," it always amuses me to see so many of the same-looking "sexy walks" which really just look more like "I've had to much to drink, take me home" walks.

Beebo Brink

Crafting an avatar that reflects my own self-image goes far beyond "vanity" to me. It is one of the lynch pins keeping me in SL. I've spent a year finding anims of body movements that suit Beebo, constantly throwing out ones that "sorta worked" for new ones that define my image more precisely.

The ability to select a so-called male anim walk, for instance, rather than the default female walk that LL provides, is integral to my enjoyment of SL. If that ability were restricted to the options only LL could envision, my immersion would be far less satisfactory. In fact, I doubt that Beebo would even have developed beyond a testing alt.

But then, I've found that it's much easier for people who are squarely in the mainstream to deride customization as "vanity." Your self-image is already the default one; mine is not.

kumi kuhr

*brilliant* tutorial Beebo!

Karl Herber

I've been in SL two and a half years and I still don't use an AO. I even have one, all set up, I just never bother/remember to get it out. The default male animations don't look anywhere near as bad as the default female ones.

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