This year, as you know HIE moved to a new home on HG Safari grid and got a facelift with a new auditorium on a 3x3 VAR that allowed us to have everything on the same sim, rather than four separate ones.
Another huge change was the way that the speakers and presenters were animated. This work was done by Kelso Uxlay who developed a special set of scripts and HUDs to make it happen. Why was that needed?
Kelso Uxlay: We needed something more reliable and dynamic to replace the antiquated, ugly poseballs used in the first years of HIE.
Kelso Uxlay: First, both were installed at a fixed, single position in space, forcing everyone to stand behind the podium. They were using lag inducing timers to semi-randomly change animations. They were badly affected by the body AO of the avatars sitting on them. On several occasions, we saw presenters performing unwanted, unpredictable and bizarre body motions while speaking. Lastly, standing up from the poseballs resulted in ungraceful unsit as there was no control over where the avatar would end up jumping.
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| Marlon Wayne at HIE 2023 |
Kelso Uxlay:I benefited from the work of other very talented scripters to build the replacement system. Resolving the poseball-related issues required the use of an advanced animation controller package that would use Opensim exclusive OSSL functions to increase script speed and reliability while lowering sim resources consumption. It also had to be able to interact with external scripts via an API. For years, I have been using the Paramour Multi-Animation Controller (PMAC) developed by the legendary Aine Caoimhe. This time, I tried SFposer, a newer system by Satyr from OpenSimWorld. There are differences between the two packages, but for HIE purposes they are equivalent.
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| Kelso Uxlay, backstage at HIE |
Kelso Uxlay: - After selecting SFposer, I was free to develop my own scripts to move the avatars freely on the stage using keyframed motion (KFM). KFM scripts are very low on resources consumption. They can achieve ultra-fine positioning in terms of position and rotation of avatars and/or objects , while being extremely precise in terms of timing without the need to spawn lag inducing timers. The combination of SFposer and my KFM scripts resulted in the new HIE system called KFMposer that worked flawlessly at HIE 2025, unaffected by the region lag that prevented two of our presenters to rez NPCs during their performance.
Kelso Uxlay: Yes, it's like this
- One single button controller HUD for all animations plates
- Wearing two copies of the same HUD, the first one controlling the moderator, the second one controlling the presenter
- Welcome panel and duos needed different HUDs to synchronize actions on multiple moving plates.
The HUD buttons open blue menus that spell out exactly what actions can be taken, with lots of options of sitting styles and so on. For Kelso, it was extremely important that people would all be individuals on stage, with their own unique styles, in order to create a more realistic atmosphere, to go along with their presentations, which were also unique and personal.
Since the HIE event, Kelso has continued working and refining his system and making it more secure so that it is much harder for an operator to make a mistake, by trying to rez an NPC when one's already been rezzed, and by making all the buttons explicit and clear. This way, an operator with very little experience should be in a position work the HUD. The reaction of the HIE performers to Kelso's work was overwhelmingly positive.
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| Ana Maggi |
Ana Maggi: Kelso is bravissimo! His animation system was a thing I had not seen before, it was fantastico, and so precise.
Like Ana, Lorenza Colicigno's part on the convention program involved participating both in the opening Welcome panel and also in being the Moderator of a section of the program - Ana for the Spanish, and Lorenza for the Italian. That meant going to the front of stage to say words of introduction, then sitting down during the talk, and then returning to centerstage at the end, to give the audience essential info.
Lorenza Colicigno: I found the animations extremely useful. As presenters, we all have to look at both Discord and the Viewer, as well as our notes, so we can be word perfect when speaking. It was so good to have one less thing to think about, because Kelso controlled our movements on the stage. No need to walk, or look for a pose ball!
In the case of the French session, the moderators were two, Minord Loup and LadyKa 007.
Kelso Uxlay: That was more complicated. It worked like this:
- Synchronized entry on two distinct moderator trajectories
- In alternance between the two: one stand listening while the other is speaking
- Synchronized walking move and sit on two chairs
- Synchronized stand and move back to speaking spot on two distinct trajectories
- Synchronized walking exit on distinct trajectories
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| Minord and LadyKa did a tandem introduction for all the French presentations. |
Kelso Uxlay: That involved 3 motions. 1. Walking entry from backstage to speaking spot, 2. Standing and talking, 3. Exiting from speaking spot to backstage.
Our first speaker, after the Welcome panel, was the DJ and designer Loru Destiny, owner of ArtDestiny grid. As you can see her entrance, and that of Richi Rizzoli who announcer her talk "Opensim - Where dreams can come true" It was a talk about the freedoms, and also the responsibilities, that come with being a successful part of the Opensim community.
If you don't speak German, the video doesn't start playing in your language, remember that by clicking on the Settings wheel in Youtube, and going to Subtitles/CC, click on AutoTranslate and pick your preferred language from the drop down menu.
Loru Destiny: I got to know Kelso 3 years ago. For me as a German, it's a gift that he speaks German. He also has a fine sense of humor, which I really like. I enjoy his calm, friendly manner when he tells me what to do. He is a perfectionist, I think, but one of the good kind. He wants everything to run smoothly so that everyone feels comfortable. This year, I really liked the fact that we no longer had to go to the podium on our own. Of course you can, but it's a relief, because as a speaker you're under a lot of stress. 
Perhaps the most complex one was the Welcome Panel
Kelso Uxlay: That needed 5 distinct trajectories on walking entry and sit; then successive standings to talk (one and only one standing panelist speaker at any times, forcing all 4 other panelists to sit); followed by 5 distinct walking trajectories on exit
Emil Jannings: I really did enjoy being animated - sailing onstage and not having to worry about how I was going to get off. And by the time we did the show everything was grooved and worked without a problem, our entrance was smooth and orderly.
One of our performers was Bink Draconia. Here's her talk/art performance called "From the dance hall to the stage - How simple dance pads became a show".
Kelso Uxlay: Flying entry for Bink Draconia... We could not do walking entries for Bink and her moderator because most of the stage was filled by a gigantic TV set. After a few trials and errors, I opted for a spectacular flying stage entry. I tried initially to capture camera motions driven by a space navigator 3D mouse, but the stage was just too small to achieve a nice continuous motion. I finally opted for the following trick: walking slowly along a path leading from the backstage to the front of the TV set while performing a tour of the audience to capture frame positions, and then I calculated the required change in altitude to bring the flying avatar from the stage floor to the top of the TV set. Et voilà: I was able to fly Bink around and sit her very precisely at the expected spot on top of the TV. Then I flew her and her moderator the chairs in the audience while her NPC show was running.
Bink Draconia: I owe a lot to Kelso Uxlay because he went to a lot of trouble to make my avatar fly like a bird onto the HIE stage and sit perfectly on the giant TV. He had the idea and he had the necessary knowledge - and he put in a lot of work so that the result was perfect in the end. "Danke Kelso, es war mir eine Freude mit dir Deutsch sprechen können!" “Thank you Kelso, it was a pleasure to be able to speak German with you!”
Thirza Ember: All the participants really loved the freedom they had when they stepped onto that animation pad. Will all this work you have done have other applications in other situations apart from HIE?
Kelso Uxlay: Like most of my key framed (KFM) animation scripts, the scripts developed for HIE 2025 are very specific to the current HIE stage settings. If the stage configuration changes in the future (for instance, if we move the speaking spot closer to the audience on the catwalk) new trajectories will need to be tailored to the new stage settings. Fortunately, I have the tools to do that easily.
Kelso Uxlay: Creating the KFM scripts for HIE this year forced me to add new options to my trajectory development tool set. For instance, a particular challenge was the small dimension of the stage. The motions of my avatar were just too fast to capture nice and precise paths. After I added an option to slow down my speed to a quarter of the regular speed, and lowering the data capture frequency to two seconds, I was able to draw nice paths on the stage floor. So, I got an improved tool set to develop other systems, and a HIE KFMposer system that can be easily adapted to other situations.
Sounds like the future will be... animated!
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