Blender Testing Needed

Gaia Clary has been and is working with the Blender Development team. In Blender 2.64, the likely next release, we will see a revised Collada Export. Gaia is looking for people to help test the revisions while the code is in beta.

Coming Blender 2.64 Release w/New Collada Export

Blender Installs

Using Archive installs will allow you to have multiple independent installs of Blender. See Blender Archive Install for more information on doing a Blender Archive Install.

Downloading Beta Versions

You will find the various beta versions of Blender on a site named GraphicAll.org. Look for a release build designated r47979 or newer.

Discussion

Gaia posted the information in the SL Forum in: Blender Collada news. If you want to provide feedback or ask questions this thread would be a good place. If you find a bug, report it in the Blender.org patch tracker.

Gaia posted a longer and more informative post on Mahinimatrix.org. It gives some of the background on Blender Collada and plans for the future.

New Stuff

There are new features in this Collada Exporter version.

One nice new addition is the ability to handle Modifiers. Prior to the planned 2.64 release all Modifiers had to be applied before you exported. Now you can leave the Modifers active and make the export.

Also, Shape Keys will be exported. I’m not working with Shape Keys yet. So, I’m not sure how they can best be used.

We have had some problems with the order of exported information. The SL Import is sensitive to the order of the data. Blender is sensitive to the order in which things are created and deleted. The result is some edits in Blender have created odd changes in the SL Import. With the new option to sort the export by object names we have better consistency in the imports.

The Collada Import in Blender has been improved and works better. There are still problems. Plans are to get the export and import from and to Blender working well.

Summary

If you are working with mesh clothes in Second Life, try out this version and file reports on any bugs you find.

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