The IMVU Action System

Introduction

Animations add life to all environments including IMVU and Actions are the tool Creators use to piece those animations together in an IMVU product.

What is an Action?

An Action is a collection of animation assets that play in IMVU. Actions follow several hard coded rules but can be as simple or complex as you like. Actions also afford you the incredible ability to create random playback events that add a feeling of life to all of your products.

Adding Actions is well worth the effort as those products that contain Actions (and chickens, mustn’t forget chickens) sell very well with IMVU players.

The IMVU Action System

Some basic rules

An Action is a collection of one or more Ensembles and a few rules that the Ensembles follow.

There can be multiple Ensembles in each Action.

The name supplied in an Action dictates whether it is played automatically by IMVU or is Triggered by a user.

An Ensemble contains the actual animation assets and the rules that those assets follow.

There can be multiple Actions of the same name. For example, there can be multiple Actions named “Fly”

Action names cannot contain spaces and are case-insensitive. For example “Fly High” is not valid and “FlyHigh” is the same as “flyhigh”.

Actions have ‘Scope‘ of what they effect. They can effect the product, the avatar, or both.

What products can contain actions?

Almost every product type can include Actions. This includes Avatars, Avatar clothing and body parts such as heads and hair, Avatar Attachments, Pets, Rooms and Furniture.

In most cases the Scope of effect of an action is on the product itself, but for some product types actions can effect both the product and the avatar. More on this later.

Action types

There are two types of Actions:

1. Stance Actions
2. Triggered Actions

Stance Actions

Stance, or Idle actions play automatically. If named correctly, the IMVU code knows to play them without any input from a user.

The most common Idle actions in Attachment, Pet, Room and Furniture products are named stance.Idle.

The most common Idle actions effecting the IMVU avatar are Standing and Sitting actions named stance.Standing and stance.Sitting.

Stance actions  can also be built into room or furniture seat nodes. For example, if a seat node is named seat01.Sitting when an avatar is placed on that seat it will automatically assume a sitting position.

Another example is if a seat node is named seat01.FloatingInWater, then IMVU will play an avatar action named stance.FloatingInWater.

And if a room or furniture action is named stance.FloatingInWater-seat01 it will play a room/furniture action when an avatar occupies seat01.

Triggered Actions

A Triggered action is played when you select it from the app or by typing the action name in chat. For example when you type “LOL” in IMVU, you trigger an action named “LOL” to play on your avatar. Triggered actions work on rooms and furniture too.

Any product that can contain an Action can contain either or both Stance and Triggered Action types.

Supported animation assets

As mentioned above, actions can effect both the product they are included with and the avatar. This varies depending on the animation types used in the action’s ensembles.

IMVU supports the following animation types:

• Skeletal animations: Animations that manipulate a hierarchy of bones.
• Morph animations: Animations that manipulate a mesh object directly.
• Particle Systems: This is the built in IMVU particle system accessible within IMVU Studio. Particle systems can be triggered and controlled by the IMVU Action System.

Any product that can have an action can also have a particle system, but the effect of skeletal and morph animations varies by product type. Here are details of each product type:

• Avatar products
  • Avatars have their own skeleton.
  • Scope – Actions effect only the avatar product.
  • Skeletal animations effect the avatar skeleton and therefore animate the avatar.
  • Morph animations effect any mesh that has been included with the product, but not products worn by the avatar.
• Avatar clothing and body products
  • Clothing and body products do not contain a skeleton but use the skeleton of the avatar product being worn.
  • Scope – Actions effect either the clothing or body product or the avatar depending on the animation type.
  • Skeletal animations in clothing products effect the avatar skeleton and therefore animate the avatar the same as with avatar products. These animations will override the skeletal animations of the avatar product being worn.
  • Morph animations effect the product mesh. This would be the clothing but could also be avatar body parts. This is in fact how facial expressions on heads animate and is the only way to animate clothing or hair.
• Avatar Attachment and Pet products
  • These products have their own skeleton and are “attached” to an avatar. This is done by selecting a bone of the avatar skeleton to which the root bone of the attachment product skeleton will attached to when the product is worn.
  • Scope – Actions effect only the attachment or pet product.
  • Skeletal animations only effect the attachment or pet product skeleton.
  • Morph animations only effect the attachment or pet product mesh.
• Rooms and Furniture: Like attachment and pet products Rooms and Furniture have their own skeleton.
  • Scope – Actions in room and furniture products can effect the room/furniture or the avatar! This means you can create a furniture product with multiple actions that animate both the furniture and the avatar at the same time, such as a bicycle that the avatar can ride. We call these Prop Actions.
  • Skeletal animations effect the avatar skeleton or the room/furniture skeleton depending on how the action is set up.
  • Morph animations effect the avatar mesh or the room/furniture mesh depending on how the action is set up.