Aligning characters---advanced tips

[KiWolfGirl]

I tried searching for more detailed tutorials on using SL to adjust character positions during sex but didnt find what i was looking for. Maybe this thread can be used to gather some helpful tips. I was trying really hard to make some adjustments to some new creature animations so they'd work with a larger scale creature but i just couldnt get the stages to save the way i left them. So I thought of a few questions. First here are the questions that I have.

 

1. If the option to save animation settings for individual characters is checked, does this mean that each dog or wolf has its own animation setting from other dogs or wolves? So if I adjust characters for one animation for one wolf and that wolf dies, other wolves will have to be adjust again.

Or does it mean all dogs/wolves will remember those settings for that particular animation? So if I adjust one dogs stages, all dogs will now be aligned like that for that animation.

 

2. I see in the hotkeys there is a key to affect this stage only. I have trouble getting it to work right, I think. So to me, this means if I never press that key and start adjusting a character, that is the offset that they will always go by for all stages. But I dont know how the button works exactly: Do I have to hold it down whenever I am adjusting, like the shift modifier? Do I press it and it toggles on, like the button that switches which character you are adjusting? If so is there a message saying it is on or off that I am missing? If it is a toggle, does it turn off again when a new stage starts or is it on through the whole animation?

When I was trying to get the stages to save, I would get them perfect and the next time it started, theyd be messed up again, so Im not using this button right or something. At first I think that I keep hitting "clear this animation data" which is >. key by default. I use that for some of my camera controls cuz its close to the adjust buttons, so i changed it to a far away key, but then I still end up with the animations changing.

 

3. Are the back/forward and left/right adjust buttons based on the skyrim world or are they based on the orientation of the animation? So say my character is facing south in doggystyle. If I hit right, do they move right to the characters right side? Or do they move east which would be left for the character but right for the world? I have seen forward/backward move pretty consistently but at times it seems that left/right dont always move in the same direction. Maybe they do and its just a weird angle sometimes for me, it would make more sense for them to move to an orientation point relative to the animation.

 

4. If I end up adjusting characters and they end up much further away from each other from stage to stage (like maybe i lined them up with each other for stage 1 and 2 but stage 2 is 10 feet from where stage 1 is. Does this account for the lag I get between stages? When I start messing around, (or I use more complex animations with characters of differing scale) I sometimes see a long pause between stage changes. Or is it just a whole bunch of factors that could be that and its not worth trying to worry about it?

 

What I am looking to do is a lot of custom alignment (I dont always play as female ) and also my character always has a tail. Plus sometimes I adjust creature scales to make them bigger and if I align a little they can still look right doing their thing. I just have trouble getting the stages to save.

[KiWolfGirl]

Nobody can answer these questions?

[Ashal]

Read this reply I made several days ago, it covers most of your questions: http://www.loverslab.com/topic/35228-animations-alignment-another-thread/?p=887408

[KiWolfGirl]

I assume when you say breton/elf/orc, that answers my question #1 that it will save those positions for all future dogs, since you are using race and not NPC names. Maybe if I try the rotating thing you suggested, the left/right keys will work more properly so that may fix my issues in question #3. However I still don't know any better about how to use the hotkey for adjusting individual stages. That's probably the question that is most important to what I'm trying to do. I suppose I could find this external file you are talking about and edit the stages there but since I don't know anything about the inner workings of sexlab, I'd just be taking shots in the dark. So anything anyone can answer about question 2 should be fine, and I can probably figure the rest of what I need to know out with the post Ashal linked to.

 

Ty