Slides of the Non Profit Commons presentation from 1/18/2019 that explain the new AniMesh Feature in Second Life.

1. What is
AniMesh?
by Frans Charming

2. What is wrong with how we animate
Objects?
We used two methods to animate objects(not avatars) before AniMesh.
1. We used show and hide on multiple meshes or prims
a. Made us load more Mesh then needed.
b. The animation has a stutter effect as it is never completely smooth
2. We moved prims around
a. It is often very obvious that you see the independent prims move and
rotate, often out of order, not simultaneously.

3. Example 1
Skate - Multiple Meshes
➔ Left
Illusion of movement
➔ Middle
Looking behind the Animation, all the
meshes visible
➔ Right
Show who we move through the
meshes to create the illusion of
movement.
Every time scripts shows and hide a mesh, it
sends multiple updates to the client.

4. Example 2
Penguin - Moving Prims
1. The penguins head, body, arms
and legs all move and rotate
independently
2. If you watch closely you can see
they don’t always seem to move
at the same time, lagging
behind each other.
3. Each movement update
controlled by a script.

5. AniMesh
AniMesh is a object with animation (bento) bones just like your own Avatar.
This means it can be animated with the same animation files that allow your
avatar to dance, emote and anything else that you use animations for.
The biggest example for AniMesh is avatar like NPCs. (Non Player
Characters)

6. NPC Examples
Examples roles for a NPC.
➔ Greeter
➔ Dancers
➔ Surgeon
➔ First Responder
➔ Cleaner
➔ Anything you might have used a
bot for.

7. ButterFly
In the past if you wanted butterflies
flying around you would use one of the
previous tricks, which meant lots of
script updates potentially causing lag.
Or used some texture animation trick.
In the current example you can have
many butterflies that use one
animation file that only has to be
downloaded to your viewer once.

8. Fabrics
Other Examples you could even
animate flag, (wall)papers.
Here I have a British flag that is moving
in the wind very subtly.
And a Artwork that comes out of the
frame. You can image that can be used
in a ghosthouse, Or in a experience that
shows what people might see with
certain mental conditions, or on
psychedelic drugs.

9. Edit
To add your own flag it’s easiest to turn
off the Animated Mesh option in the
edit Window. You can find that under
Features.

10. More NPC
➔ Kung Fu Travis
Silly NPCs just as well as serious NPCs
➔ Piano Man
Fill up your party with NPC Musicians