Choreography & Dance Theory in SL

Just a few notes on choreography & dance theory in SL. I will add more to it as things pop into my head. If you have anything to add please do so in the comments below.

Lead – The lead manages the micro choreography of the dance. This person initiates step changes that the followers continue. Typically a signaled change is done with hand pressure, but other signals are common.  In SL the HUD host is the lead. Ultimately it is the host’s responsibility to make your dance crew look awesome.

Choreography – A sequence of movements. In SL we blend many different styles of animations to create a look that meshes with the environment and as well as music. To many it has become a mathematical formula using a stopwatch to manage these abilities. In doing so much of the emotional aspects were removed from the dance.

Typically all SL dance HUDs allow choreography in a linear fashion. When Poetry of Dance came along these preconceived method were broken by the ability to use 3 dimensional movements without the need of animations to place the avatars position. (Poetry of Dance currently is by invitation only) 

Imperfection is Perfection – Art is beautiful to the beholder.  Sometimes parallels are appealing. But we find ourselves looking at the unusual with awe. When you remove the parallels, the linear you step beyond the common and into the unusual.  Dare to be imperfect… Dare to be different!

Pre-Stance – These are used to pose the lead and follower before the dance starts. Any professional dancer knows this is a very important stage in the dance. These movements or poses set the emotional stage for the dance that will follow.  A respectful pause is used to help build the audiences anticipation.

Post-Stance – Immediately after the dance concludes the lead and followers will pose in a completion stance. This is the final signal to the crowd of the conclusion. This must be choreographed carefully since it can leave the audience feeling as if they have missed out on the end of the dance.  Generally a reach or fall is used at this point with pause.  It is important for the lead to judge the response of the audience to know when to enter a respect and bow sequence.

Sense of Reality – The human mind does not check out when you log in to SL. Although some would argue that it does. The same thoughts and desires still apply. We have only moved them to a different environment. In that we need to think of what is expected for the dance to be enjoyable or needed for it to be possible for the mind to interpret.  2 rocks dancing the samba in a bowl of chili is a bit of a stretch for anyone’s mind.  (Now watch that be the next greatest hit on SL Broadway. *Rolls Eyes)

Sequence - This is a series of event or list. When referring to sequences in the dance realm of SL it is a list of dances with timing that is played sequentially. So dance A is played for a time specified then dance B... and so on. This is the main standard of SL.

Sequence Sets - A group of sequences played in sequential order. This is typically macro sequences. When played, these sequences continue on by playing the next macro event line or jump to a pre-specified macro sequence. The reasons behind using marco sequence set are many but primarily it gives you extended abilities far beyond that of standard sequences.

Offset - This is a choreography effect to create a dimension in your dance set. Lining up dancers in a linear method is a burlesque style. In modern dance offsets or staggers are used for a dimensional effect. As simple as this concept is it is not used in many stage shows in SL. In clubs a 180 offset give some wonderful effects to partner dancing or even groups if done right. 180 also gives a friendly non imposing style. Nothing is worse then trying to walk around a line dance group that is taking up all the dance floor in a laggy club.

Here is a nice discussion on modern dance that you may find useful. It outlines some points I leaned as a child being force to attent dance class. *Rolls Eyes*
Simple Guide To Choreography


A great source of information on SL dances and choreography can be found by following the link...
Dance Queens Blog

Barre Version 2.1 Whats New?

Barre 2.1 is a nice improvement over the previous versions. This is by far the most stablest version. I went to the bug list and started squashing bugs. I am very pleased with the results.

The feed back I have been getting consists of comment like... "OMG! The sim is full and my hud doesn't lag!" or "All my other huds are laggy, why does barre working when they don't?".

It is true. Barre does work on laggy sims where other HUDs just die out. It took over a year of development and testing to be able to offer a dance tool like this to the public. What appears to be just another dance HUD, Barre truly is not.


New features to look for...
*Sequence Recording. Now you can record your dancing as it happen directly to a database
*Play back Recorded Sequences from database
*Send Recorded Sequence to web page for

*Copy animations and note cards to HUD added.

*Menus added to the Copy animation scripts.

*Copy animations macro added to the Tools menu.

Macros Functions added…

*[NEXT]  - Runs following sequences or macros.

*[LOOP:00]  - Loops for a specified amount of times.
Note : These macros can be added to your normal dance sequences to create some AWESOME dance sets

Chat Commands added

*/11Random ON – Turns on random mode from chat

*/11Random OFF – Turns off random mode from chat

*/11Random time – Sets the default random timing from chat

Fixes…

*Sequences now run quicker.

*Sequence paging calculated incorrectly sometimes. Paging is now a dynamic calculation.

*Random and Random Sequence flopping are now quicker.

*Other minor tweaks

Sequence recorder is a hidden. So you want to pay attention here to find out how to use it.
At the top of the HUD is the ballerina icon. If you touch the head of the ballerina the recorder will turn on, record your dances and the length between each dance. Clicking on the ballerina's head again will turn off the recorder and save the recorded sequence to the recorder database. The recorder database will be displayed and you will also get a web page link that will show in chat. If you close chat or want the web page to appear again just click on the extended foot of the ballerina the link will be displayed in chat again and you can then open the web page. The recorder database can be found in the storage slot listing (the Oreos buttons at the bottom of the HUD).

The web page is there to make it easier to copy the sequence you created to a note card. Also keep in mind that any time you start a new recording the recorder database is cleared for the new recording. This also means you wont have the old recording on the web page. So copy and paste before you start a new recording.

ToolBox

The ToolBox gives you the ability to easily add or remove dance slots, storage slots, and the flight helper. So when you find that you want to host more then 8 dancers on your HUD you are able to take out the ToolBox and load in additional dance slots. If you find you need to load more note cards then adding additional storage slots is helpful. But try to keep things on the low end to help reduce lag. The more you put in the HUD the more the servers have to work. If you are over 45 scripts in the Barre HUD then you are exceeding "fair usage limits". Fair usage limits are not a requirement but more of a courtesy to other SL users. One of the main concepts of Rachael Rockers is to provide a better product that uses less server resources.

Whenever loading in dances or using the ToolBox it is best to do it in a region that is not laggy.

To load in more dance slots or storage slots, rez the ToolBox on the ground. Then rez your HUD next to it. It must be within 4 meters.

Touch the ToolBox. You will then get a pop-up menu.

You can select adding Dance Slots, Storage Slots or Flight Helper.

If you selected Dance or Storage Slots you will get a menu that asks you how many you want in the HUD. A general rule of thumb here is 10 Dance Slots and 4 Storage Slots. But if you are host or entertainer you may 

need more. After you have selected the amount you want, the  HUD will be loaded with the scripts you requested. This takes some time. You should plan for about 5 minutes. Less time if you are not loading very many scripts into the HUD. 

You will see the text above the ToolBox turn red and count up the scripts being loaded. Your HUD will reboot. Answer no to any popups from the HUD at that time. Then the text above the ToolBox will  turn white. At that point it will tell you that you may take your HUD into inventory.

It's important to keep the amount of script you wear, run as low as possible. Something that most scriptwriters don't realize is that if a script is turned off but still in an item that is worn it is still using time slices and memory from the server. Sure the overall thumbprint is reduced, but not by much. Simply put, having 20 dance slots and 20 storage slots in a HUD that has never used more then 5 at a time seems foolish.  Even with setting the the state off it is still resource abusive.

Touch my BUTT RSVP

The touch my butt RSVP is a transparent orb that you wear. It attaches to your avatars lower spine. When someone touches it they will receive an invite to dance. If they are already dancing on your HUD and they touch it they will be released from your HUD. 

If the HUD wearer-owner touches the RSVP orb they will auto invite without a popup being sent to them. Also note that the Ballerina/ME button will not reflect your correct status on the HUD if you use this method of inviting yourself to the HUD.

The touch my butt RSVP makes adding people to your HUD easy and in some case lots of FUN! *Giggles

(In the picture above the orb is tinted red to illustrate how its used.)

To use, just wear the orb. You may find it helpful to 'ADD' instead of 'WEAR' since it may take off a skirt on accident. *Blushes

The following is only relevant to 'Poetry of Dance' HUD.

In addition to the RSVP orb you will find 'Sit Join' poseballs. These contain a notecard that allows you to make them group and dance slot specific for theatrical, burlesque or just group dancing. If you sit on it you will be sent a invite. This makes it so the HUD owner does need to send an invite, it will function automatically. NOTE: The HUD will clear any current dancer on the specific dance slot before it sends an invite to the person that just sat down on the ball.

Notecard from the 'Sit Join' Poseball...

Channel=11
DanceSlot=1
GroupSpot=1
Command=PS

Owner=SomeUUIDkey

The notecard is somewhat self explanitory but I will go over it with you.

Here are a few requirements first...

You must configure the notecard for each poseball to reflect the slot the dancer will use in the event that you use more then 1 poseball.

The poseball must be within 100 meters of the HUD to be active went an avatar sits on it. 

If the HUD wearer-owner sits on the poseball they will auto invite without a popup being sent to them.

Channel, is used to establish communications with the poseball and the HUD. Don't change this option.

DanceSlot, is the spot you want the dancer to be placed when someone sits on this poseball. You must have a dance slot in your HUD with the correlating number and the slot must not be occupied.

GroupSpot, is the group you want the dancer to be using. Keep in mind only group 1 thru 3 are controlled button all other have to be driven from a macro.

Command, this will be the first animation the avatar will be doing when they first hop on the pose ball. PS is a default stand and refers to pause. When a dancer accepts an invite to the HUD they are stripped of their current animations and animated with the option you have given. The animation you place them in, must be one that your HUD inventory has or a default internal Second Life animation. 

Owner, is the person that will be wearing the HUD that needs to control the dancers. It does not need to be the owner of the poseball it can be someone else as long as they are wearing a HUD and are within 100 meters of the poseball. If you are the owner of the HUD and the poseball, then you can delete that line. By default the line is not on the notecard and is not needed.

The Power of Groups

Groups
Group controls are specific to "Poetry of Dance" HUDs. They are not part of the "Barre Dance" HUDs features.

Groups are an advanced feature of this HUD. It is a bit complicated and confusing. *Rolls Eyes* With Groups you can run different animations for different dancers at different times all from 1 HUD. If you didn’t understand that last sentence… you are not alone.


You can divide up the people that join your HUD to dance into groups. Each one of these groups can be driven separately from the HUD. This lets you choreograph some amazing dance routines! Imagine 5 dancers on stage. 4 in the background dancing a slow sway dance, you in the foreground dancing center stage on a different animation. Via a sequence or live clicking, you animate the other dancers to sit while you ballet and vogue.

Or let’s say you are at a club and you don’t want your man to look like a DORK! You animate him in male dance animations while you dance female. Maybe you DO want him to look like a dork so you animate him with a ‘duck dance’ while you are animated in a ‘crossed arms OMG you didn’t’ animation.

With groups you get control over each animation slot. These abilities are controlled though Macros. The ‘G1, G2, G3’ buttons on the HUD allow you to click switch dances for groups 1 thru 3. There is a notecard called ‘! Group Macros’ included with your HUD. It illustrates the Macros used to control Group functions.


Macro Commands for Groups
The following commands can be used in combination with other dance Macro commands or independently by ‘live clicking’ from a Macro NC to create the effects needed.

NEW FEATURE... [LOADAV]
[LOADAV] - This is a menu driven macro function for inviting a dancer. It will give you a list of avatars in the area that you can select from. Then will ask what slot you wish to add them to by listing only available dance slots. You are then given a choice of group to set the dance slot to. Using this function will avoid trying to add dancers to occupied dance slots. 

[INVITE]SLOT#|UUID - Invites to a specific slot. You can only invite to a dance slot that you have a script in your HUD for. If you invite to Slot 25 and script Slot 25 is no in your HUD it will fail.
The Invite first looks for a UUID/KEY. If a KEY is not given in the Macro stream then the HUD will force display a list of AVs in the area for you to select from. If you click back or ‘exit click’ this function will silently fail. This function pauses the Macro stream until a selection is made.

UUID/KEY invites will only work if the Avatar you are inviting is in the same region. This is simply a limitation of second life.


[CLEAR]SLOT# - Resets that slot to null, dumps Dancers and resets group to null. This is like clicking on the STOP Button but without stopping the Macro stream.


[CLEAN]SLOT# - This function will remove ALL animations that are active on an avatar that is using the specific slot. If 0 is given for the slot number then ALL slots will be cleaned. (This function is somewhat redundant do to the nature of Macro function [NOANI]) [CLEAN] does not halt Macro stream execution.


[SET GROUP]SLOT#|GROUP# - (Puts slot on group channel x) this sets it to that group. So now any animation sent to that group will be animated by this slot. This does not halt Macro stream execution.


[GROUP]#|ANIMATION or PS …. (Tells group channel # to play that animation) PS is a Pause / stand command. This does not halt Macro stream execution.


[PAUSE]Seconds – Pauses the execution of the Macro stream. This is useful for delaying the execution of the next animation. It will pause the Macro stream but not the animations. [PAUSE]0.03 - PAUSE is not a group command but it is very useful in managing group sequence dances.


The following are 2 Macros to demonstrate how to use groups in a dance sequence. Please understand these use embedded SL dances. (They don’t download fast) You may see some pause in the switching of those dances. This does not happen with dances cached from the inventory of the HUD itself. You can find these Macros on the “! Group Macro” notecard in your HUD. Load it into an ‘Quick Card’ database by using the ‘Floppy Disk’ button.

NAME]Invite 3 Dancers|[CLEAR]1|[CLEAR]2|[CLEAR]3|[OWNERSAY]Inviting dancer 1|[AVSELECT]|[INVITE]1|Inviting dancer 2|[AVSELECT]|[INVITE]2|Inviting dancer 3|[AVSELECT]|[INVITE]3|Setting Groups|[SET GROUP]1|1|[SET GROUP]2|2|[SET GROUP]3|3

[NAME]Group Dance Demo|dance 8|4.85|dance 3|4.85|We DANCE because we can!!!|[GROUP]1|dance 6|[PAUSE]5|dance 8|5[GROUP]2|dance 6|[PAUSE]5|dance 8|5[GROUP]3|dance 6|[PAUSE]5|dance 8|5|We ALL fall Down!|falldown|8|[STOP]

The first Macro helps you invite 3 dancers onto the HUD. This can include you. If you invite yourself from an invite Macro the ‘ME’ Button will act differently. The Macro will then set the dance slots your dancers are on to the groups 1, 2 and 3 each independently. Keep in mind you can use the ‘G1, G2, G3’ buttons to control them by clicking the button and selecting a dance.

Dancer 1 will be on slot 1, and in group 1. Dancer 2 will be on slot 2 and in group 2. Dancer 3 will be on slot 3 and in group 3. The ‘G1’ Button will control Dancer 1, ‘G2’ controls dancer 2 and so on. If no ‘G’ buttons are highlighted then all dancers will be dancing the same dance when the dance is changed.

The second Macro shows how Groups can be used in a dance sequence. You need to run the ‘Invite 3 Dancers’ Macro first and add your dancers. Then run ‘Group Dance Demo’. You will see everyone start dancing, all switch to a different dance then in chat you see the e-mote “We DANCE because we can!!!” Next dancer 1 will dance separately, dancer 2 will then start to dance separately, then dancer 3. All will join together to dance in sync again and then fall to the ground.

This is just a simple sequence that can be done with the HUD. The HUD is capable of much more elaborate sequences and longer running using [JUMP] commands. Remember SL limits us to 256 characters per line on a notecard. If you go beyond that it will chop off the end of the line and it won’t run right on the HUD. I have no way of error checking that issue. This is where shorter lines and more [JUMP] commands helps!
*Happy Face*

Buttons - There Function

Buttons explained...

This document was rushed out for beta testers and will be revised in the future as needed.

Speed Scroll Bar

Lag is one of the core concerns of the design of my dance HUD. Nothing can be more annoying than trying to scroll thru the display and not have it work or just take forever to get to the page you need. This is the reason the ’Speed Scroll Bar’ has been incorporated. Clicking on the percentage points will move you farther thru your display list. Then you can use the scroll buttons (arrow buttons) to land on the page you need. 

Arrow Buttons - Scroll Left/Scroll Right 

Clicking these will scroll you through the display list. When you have reached the end of the list it will loop back to the start of the list.

Pause Button

When clicked any active animations, sequences or macros are paused or un-paused.

This does not remove dancers/invited avatars from the HUD. 

Ballerina / Me Button

This is the button that activates the wearer of the HUD (Owner). You can turn this off and animate others while you stand by. This button is directly affected by other button or Macros. 

Sync Button

This brings dancers in into animation sync. This can also be done my typing ‘/11sync’ in public chat by a AV that has joined the HUD.

When you animate avatars in SL they fall out of sync (dancing the same dance and movement at the same time). This is caused by a variety of reasons. What you see may not be what others see. You may look like you are dancing out of sync with other dancers when in reality you are seen by other as in sync. Things that affect this are ‘camming’ out from your local scene, other animation overrides, internet lag, poor video cards, and the list goes on and on. 

Invite Button

Inviting another avatar and dancing with them in sync is really a fun thing to do in SL. After you click on the Invite button you will see a list of avatars that are in your local area. The HUD displays the first 16 AV’s it sees. Click on a name and they will receive an invite to join your HUD. When they accept, you will get a popup that lets you know they have accepted. Now you can animate them with your dances/animations. The party has started!!! HOOOOOOO! *Smiley Face*

STOP

The square black box button is the stop button. It functions differently than other dance HUDs. There is a reason for this. First this is not designed to be that same as other HUDs. It was designed for performance & simplicity. So STOP means just that “STOP EVERYTHING”!

When you click on stop you get a list of names. At the top is STOP”ALL DANCERS”. It will do just that, stops all dancers on the HUD, disengage them from the HUD, resets the dance spots to empty, and clears memory.

But if you pick a name on the stop list it will stop that person from dancing, remove them from the HUD, reset there dance spot, and clear that individuals data from memory.

Random Button

This button is stacked with features. You set the duration by selecting a time. Then select the Mod you wish to use. You have 2 options Random or Sequence. Random with bounce randomly around the list of dances, sequence will go down the list of animations listed on the HUD. After you have decided on the time and mode, click ‘DONE’, at the top of the list to start the action.

To turn off random or sequence mode, click on ‘OFF’.

Tool Button

The Tool Button is nothing more than a Quick Database that reads the ‘Tools’ Notecard and performs HUD functions from MACROS. If the HUD cannot find ‘Tools’ in memory it will request to load it by default. If you do not allow this function to load you will be disabling many useful features of the HUD.

Stats – Gives a report of current memory, current available animation slots, current avatars slot usage assignments, and database usage.

Big – Changes the size of the HUD

Small – Shrinks the size of the HUD

Reset –This is a reset function for all of the HUD. This will force a soft reset of all of the scripts in the HUD. If this does not work then you will need to do a hard reset thru the editor/viewer.

List Ani – Displays a list of animations in the HUD & total count.

LoadDB1 – Loads the Database 1 with notecard ‘AniCard1’

LoadDB2 – Loads the Database 2 with notecard ‘AniCard2’

NOTE: If you are an advanced users and understand the dynamics of the MACRO engine that HUD uses then you may find it useful to edit the ‘Tools’ notecard and add additional features. 

Gears Button

This button is pretty simple. The ‘Gears Button’ shifts you into ‘All Animations Mode’. It lists all animation you have to the display list, so you can pick any animation to play.

In ‘All Animations Mode’ you don’t have any limitations on the amount of animations you can have in the HUD. The only limitation is what Second Life has in the way of restrictions. If you find the upper limit to this I would love to hear what it is.

Hint: To display the current HUD Stats… Click the ‘Tools Button’; click ‘Stats’. You will see a display of available memory, Dance slots, Databases, and the total of available animations in the HUD. 

Quick Card Button

This is a performance feature that allows you to move extremely fast from one notecard to another by preloading the notecards into a select database. When you click the button you will see a list of loaded & empty databases. Loaded Quick Card databases take on the name of the notecard they were loaded with. (See FLOPPY DISC BUTTON to learn how to load a notecard into a Quick Card database.) Just click on the name you wish to load in and display.

Now you can switch from notecard to notecard in seconds rather than taking minutes. But this is at a sacrifice of server memory. So I recommend only using 2 Quick Pick Databases for a standard user and 5 for power users. The Tool Kit provides the option of many more databases but this is to be used with extreme discretion. 

Floppy Disc Button

READ CAREFULLY – This function confuses people.

You will need to use this button to load in notecards you create for organizing your Macros, Sequences and dance lists into your Quick Card Databases.

Click on the Floppy Disc button and you will see a list of databases in your HUD. Some have names and some have just ‘Empty’ for a name.

Click on any database listed. You should now see a list of notecards names show up on the list.

Click a notecard you want to load. You should see ‘Please Wait’… ‘Loading’ and in chat the HUD will tell you how far it is in the process of loading in the notecard to the database. Notecards with a large list on them can take awhile to load. When it is done the notecard will be displayed and a database will have the same name as the notecard now. (See ‘Quick Card Button’ to jump to a different database/notecard)

You can reload a database with a different notecard or an updated notecard the same way.

You first need a notecard that you have configured in the inventory of the HUD. SEE LOADING ANIMATIONS & NOTECARDS SECTION.

Floppy explained…

Click button - Pick a database name from list displayed - Pick a Notecard from list displayed: Notecard is loaded into the database. Name of database is renamed to name of Notecard.