Animated discourse

I have often complained about the lack of suitable animations in Second Life of use to a designer of mechanical items, such as myself. I have often complained at quite tedious length, in fact; I was doing so just yesterday. The issue is that the standard method of creating these thing is a program called Poser, which I'm sure is a fine piece of software but seems not only over-featured for use with SL, but also overpriced.

I was therefore extremely pleased to come across a forum thread devoted to a free animation production program called Avimator. It is claimed that it is still in an early stage of development but I found it perfectly adequate and, indeed, intuitive for the production of custom animations and poses. For instance, my Mk909 Engine Rifle and swordstick (both unreleased at this stage) now have holding poses more suitable for their designs than the standard, and I produced a "lunge" animation for the swordstick far more appropriate than the existing "sword_slash_r" (only a very poor fencer would swish their blade about in such a manner).