It used to be that we would configured animesh and poseballs manually. And, know that you still can. But as we go from a maximum of 9 dancers to a maximum of 18 we felt it was time to provide an alternative to manually configuring each animesh/poseball dancer by hand. Expect there to be future
product enhancements as well as to unwelcomed performance issues and occasional bug fixes to accompany the ongoing need to add and remove animations, make across-the-board changes to notecards as well as ease the process of initial installation.
Introducing the SmartDancer File Copier and the SmartDancer Replicator.
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The first thing to do with your new animesh, we sometimes just call ‘ani‘, is to RENAME it to ArtistePalette_01_? where ? is a letter between A and R in the alphabet.
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In order for the SmartDancer FileCopier to copy animations, scripts, and notecards into animesh/poseballs, each animesh/poseball you needs to load FIRST with the
*filemanager nc and
*smartdancer nc and THEN copy in the
*AA_FileManager and
*AA_ScriptLoader and
*AA_Refresher
scripts.
You can use the INITIALIZE button to automatically copy these 5 files, as a convenience. Advised that the description field be A-A or J-J so that you configure one good animesh for making duplicates to rename.
Also added for ArtistePalette_01_A is a special script called
*AA_ArtistePoseBallSit
So you could have 5 or 6 files in total as a result of Initialization.
For your safety, honoring best practices as an added precaution, INITIALIZE will ONLY initialize animesh/poseballs named A and/or J. This is to allow you to use one for animesh (A?) and one for poseballs (J?).
Your goal is to end up with an animesh that looks like the following.
You may have also have extra script(s) or animations that came with the animesh when you bought it. These should have been deleted, those in the root prim, when you added the PinMe script
Sample output from running Initialize from the SmartDancer File Copier, assuming TRACE,off in the *filecopier nc, is listed below:
[01:51:40] SmartDancer File Copier 4.3: [FILE COPIER] Initialization Started…Please Wait…
[01:52:03] SmartDancer File Copier 4.3: [INITsc] Initialization Completed for ArtistePalette_01_A !!!
[01:52:09] SmartDancer File Copier 4.3: [INITsc] Initialization Completed for ArtistePalette_01_J !!!
Should you accidentally run Initialization more than once, the File Copier system is smart enough to remove the existing files and just recopy them again.
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Now with those 5 or 6 files loaded, it is easier to transfer animations, scripts, and notecards. This is the bootstrap.
Next, the INSTALL button/feature is handy for first time preparations because first it DELETES any EXISTING animations and scripts and THEN copies the 6 needed animesh scripts, and 1 animation called ‘standing’, bypassing the files and ncs initialized using INITIALIZE.
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SmartDancer Replicator
Touch the replicator to bring up its menu.
This handy tool can save you some work, once you have an ideal animesh or poseball. Simply put the range of replications you want in the description field. Example: J-R. This will replicate 9 copies of the single animesh/poseball that you put inside of it. Of course the animesh/poseball must be copyable. Then press the REPLICATE button.
ArtistePalette_01_J thru
ArtistePalette_01_R
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CopyAnims
The main process you will likely use most often is CopyAnims. Each animesh and poseball must have the animations they plan to use, inside of them. SmartDancer FileCopier makes it easier to load ONLY COPYABLE animations into each of animesh/poseball.
Place all of the animations you plan to use in your routine inside the SmartDancer FileCopier. Then make sure you limit the animesh/poseballs to be updated by specifying in the description field of the SmartDancer FileCopier, which animesh/poseballs are to be updated.
As a convenience, animations will not duplicate existing animations, just in case you forgot that you already installed an animation.
Examples:
To update ALL, specify A-R
To update a single animesh/poseball, specify J-J;
To update a subset, specify A-I or J-R as examples in case you are using A-I for something else like normal Artiste setups.
After you install new notecards and scripts into your animesh/poseballs then its time to configure the notecards. Please see the following link: ==>SmartDancer SETUP
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CopyScripts
The only difference between animesh and poseballs is that poseballs have one EXTRA script called: ArtistePoseBallSit (v5.8 – 11-08-20).
Other than copying the ArtistePoseBallSit into poseballs that avatars use, the only other time you would likely use CopyScripts is if when we might send out an update to an existing script or create a new script for SmartDancer. So these should be rare occasions.
This button/feature, CopyScripts, is useful when you want to selectively control an update by, maybe, copying particular scripts. The system is smart enough to match existing scripts in the animesh/poseball and then delete them before it copies new scripts of similar name so that there are not duplicate scripts with slightly different names.
When copying scripts, you are allowed an extra method of specifying which animesh/poseballs will receive updates. Instead of being limited to indicating a range in the description field of the SmartDancer Controller (i.e. J-R, A-I, A-R, etc) you can indicate specific animesh/poseballs. For example: AGM, assuming those were maybe dance-leaders of 3 divisions that needed the poseball script… Don’t be misled by a confirmation message saying it installed into animesh A thru M. It really just means A,G, and M.
You will of course need to reset your SmartDancer Controller after ANY script copy/update. Be sure that the *smartdancer notecard is already in the animesh/poseball before copying any scripts to avoid needless but harmless error messages.
*smartdancer
*filemanager
*filecopier
I suggest configuring the *smartdancer nc prior to copying it so you only do it once, prior to making copies of your animesh/poseballs.
Also configure the *filemanager nc so that its channels match those of the *filecopier nc. Be sure to make your channels unique to avoid collisions with other users even though the system has safeguards as to owner. This will allow you to work on more than one SD configuration at the same time as a safe-guard even though its likely you will separate by animesh/poseball name (i.e. A-R).
*filemanager
TRACE,on
FileCopierToMeshChannel,-1325
PingBackFromMeshToFileCopierChannel,-8945
END
*filecopier
TRACE,off
FileCopierToMeshChannel,-1325
PingBackFromMeshToFileCopierChannel,-8945
END
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INSTALL
First, INSTALL will delete all scripts and animations in the targeted animesh/poseballs that were not installed with Initialize. This is meant to help clean up any animations and scripts that the animesh came with.
The INSTALL button/feature will install (copy) all scripts that don’t begin with *AA_ from SmartDancer File Copier into animesh/poseballs whose letters are within the range of the letters in the description field of the SmartDancer File Copier
INSTALL currently installs one default animation called ‘standing‘ and 6 scripts. The number of scripts may change in the future but at this writing, it is 6.
You are tasked with copying the poseball script, ArtistePoseBallSit, into those poseball objects upon which avatars will be occupying., assuming you did not use its automatic pre-install into ArtistePalette_01_A. You can do that by indicating in the description, which objects are to receive the special script called…ArtistePoseBallSit