A number of people still use Blender 2.49 to make their rigged mesh exports for Second Life. This means many people use the new 2.5 and 2.6 Blender installs to make mesh and move to 2.49 for the Collada export. Now there is a work-around to eliminate the need for Blender 2.49. \o/

Multiple Versions of Blender

Having multiple version of Blender is common. Depending on what you are using Blender with, having various versions can be a necessity. One never knows when a future change will render a feature or plugin we depend on useless. So, keeping a working version and installing a new version for testing is a good practice.

Because Blender depends on Python, changing versions can become a real pain. Some features and plugins used in Blender require a specific version of Python. One soon learns how much of a problem this can be.

However there is an easy work-around that allows one to have as many versions of Blender installed as they want, without conflicts. I realized that and wrote about it in: Blender 2.57b Released. The alternate install process works for all versions of Blender.

The Rigged Mesh Work-Around

Over on the SecondCitizen.net forum Masami posted the work-around. See: Lesson #1: How to export rigged meshes from Blender 2.60.

In the SL Forum the post is being discussed. See: Rigged mesh export from Blender 2.60+

From the Sl Forum you will find out that Gaia Clairy has made a copy of the ‘repaired’ avatar for download. See: Avatar Workbench.

Summary

RL is keeping me busy this week. Once I have some time I want to check this out. Then I can write up any gotcha’s I hit and hopefully the work-arounds.