jas0n

Before modeling the pet, I did a little survey amongst my friends to decide on the design style of the pets.
26 prefered the "Cute" style (eg Pokemon) while only 18 supported the realistic style.
Of the 26 that chose the "Cute" style, only 1 liked "Alien-type" pets, while 15 prefered "Animal-type" pets. 10 thought that both were good.
So, I started to model the 1st pet..

On further testing of the importer, I found out that it might not work so well after all.
1st I modelled out the model inside 3dsmax..
and then I tried importing into SL..
It came out weird!.. I'm not sure is there a step that I've missed or did wrongly. Anyways, so I re-did the model inside SL.
Anyway I changed the initial design slightly (eyes and mouth), because some of my friends pointed out that pikachu styled eyes are cuter ;)

As for animations, we might have a problem because all the animation programs for SL use a human "biped" layout.

Also, the animations are uploaded in the form of gestures. Therefore, it only works on your avartar, not the items/objects.