Mesh Deformer Update Week 25

I’ve been busy the last couple of days solving video display problems of MP4, WEBM, OGG, and SWF file for a web client. I missed the mesh meeting in SL9B because of that, which really bummed me. Fortunately Inara Pey did a good summary of the important Mesh Deformer part of the meeting. Read it here: Mesh deformer: interview with Qarl Fizz. Note: Look below the Rate, Share, and Like parts of the post for the page links for pages 2 to 4.

Reading Between the Lines

With the information that Karl Stiefvater gave us in the MetaReality posdcast (MetaReality Week 24) and what he has said in the SL9B meeting we can piece together a better picture of what he is expecting the next version of the Deformer to be like.

We know that considering each vertex’s normal in addition to its position will be added to the math of the Deformer. Nothing said at SL9B changes that.

This change should improve the mathematical idea of which vertices in the avatar mesh and the attached mesh item are ‘closest’. The result should make for better deformations. May be thinking smoother shapes as the sliders reach their maximums and minimums best describes the results.

A new bit of information from SL9B clarifies how the base avatar information will be added to an uploaded mesh. Karl describes radio buttons, like we have in other viewer settings, added to the Mesh Upload panel. This would allow the designer to select from several base shapes. These would likely be the Default Avatar Shape and a few shapes more toward the extremes. I think of petites and giants. But, we don’t know.

Karl mentioned in the MetaReality podcast that Third Party Viewers might make all the various shape settings available rather than just a few radio buttons. If that is true and happens, building for a seemingly infinite array of custom shapes would be possible.

This next update to the Deformer looks to be an interesting update.

The Shapes

Presumably the Lab would define the shapes added to the Linden Lab viewers. I expect we would find, provided for free, the shapes somewhere in-world or in the Market Place. We could export them and build for them just as we would any custom shape.

If the TPV’s include the ability to do detail base shape specs, will be able to handle the extreme and custom shapes. We could do that just as we do now and as I described in: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial.

Reminder:

We need more test clothes submitted to Oz Linden. See: Examples Request for information on submitting test clothes.

One thought on “Mesh Deformer Update Week 25

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *