There are several steps you must take in order to have personal avatars working in your universe.

• The first step is to set the Personal Avatars path in the universe options. This should be set to the directory where all of your personal avatars and their related animations, textures, and ini files are stored. This path works much like a world objects path. Zipped sequence files go in the /seqs directory. The avatars in their individual setup files go in the /avatars directory. Textures go in the /textures directory.
• For each world where you want to allow users to use personal avatars, you must enable personal avatars in the world options.
• Personal avatars require at least two files for each user that uses them. One is the avatar geometry itself, which is named avXXX.zip, where XXX is the citizen number of the user who will use the avatar. The other file is the avatar ini file (see below) and must be named sqXXX.zip. So, for citizen 5, you would need av5.zip and sq5.zip to be in the /avatars directory under the personal avatars path.
• In addition to the above files, you may also need various textures and sequence files. These should go in the /textures and /seqs directories under the personal avatars path.
• And finally, personal avatars must be enabled on a per-user basis. Open up the citizen attributes dialog for the user and check the "personal avatars enabled".

Just like with world avatars, the geometry defines the shape of the avatar. The geometry file is named avXXX.zip, where XXX is the citizen number of the user who will use the avatar. Note that this file should not be passworded.

Personal avatars may be either .rwx or .cob files. The browser determines what file type you are using by looking at the extension of the file inside of the zip. While the name of the file does not matter, it is very important that the extension is correct or the browser may not be able to load the avatar.

For each personal avatar, you must have the ini file to go with it. This is a standard text file, which is to be placed in a zip file with the name sqXXX.zip, where XXX is the citizen number of the user who will use the avatar.

Here is an example of a personal avatar ini file.

[options]
autowalk=1
autolook=1

[implicit]
wait=eblink
endwait=qendwait
warp=
idle=
fly=testfly
swim=qswim
fall=qfall1s
hover=neohover
float=neohover
jump=qjump1
run=qrun
walk=qwalkf

[explicit]
gesture1=turn,g_turn
gesture2=wave,qwave
gesture3=jump,qjump
gesture4=spin,qspin
gesture5=yes,qyes
gesture6=egyptian,qegyptian
gesture7=karate,qfightm
gesture8=kick,qfightf

The ini file has three sections: Options, Implicit, and Explicit.

The autowalk option tells the browser to attempt to scale the walk sequence so that it repeats once every time the avatar walks its own height. So, for a two-meter tall avatar, the walk sequence will animate so that it loops once every two meters. For most human avatars this will scale the walking so that movement looks realistic. This allows many avatars of varying heights to share the same walk animation.

Autowalk will probably not work right for non-humanoids (such as four-legged animals) or for avatars with very unrealistic proportions. In these cases, autowalk should not be used.

Set this to zero to disable autowalk, or non-zero to enable it.

The autolook option tells the browser to turn the upper body, neck, head, and eyes so that the avatar is facing the way the user is looking, even if they are walking in a different direction.

In most cases, this can produce very lifelike movement and avoid the problem where an avatar will slide sideways when the user is sidestepping.

Implicit sequences are built-in animations that play under certain circumstances. Please see Avatar List for more information on implicit animations.

This is list will define all of the gesture buttons available to this citizen when they are using their personal avatar. The entry should be the label of the button, followed by a comma and then the name of the seq file. So the following:

gesture1=Wave,hello

Will add a button to the user's gesture bar labeled "Wave", and pressing it will cause their avatar to perform the "hello" sequence downloaded from the /seqs directories under the personal avatars path.

The browser will add a button for each entry available, starting with gesture1 and proceeding until a given number is nout found. For example, the following:

gesture1=turn,g_turn gesture2=wave,qwave gesture4=spin,qspin gesture5=yes,qyes gesture6=egyptian,qegyptian gesture7=karate,qfightm gesture8=kick,qfightf

Will give the user only two buttons: "turn" and "wave". Buttons 4 through 8 will not appear because "gesture3" was omitted.