Avastar 1 RC 1 Released

Gaia Clary has a new version of the Avastar/Blender tool for working with rigged mesh headed for Second Life™. The fun part of the announcement is a video showing how the tool can be used to make non-human avatars. The video runs about 16 minutes.

You can find the announcement for RC 1-775 at Machinimatrix.org.

This video is a relatively quick look at how Avatstar can be used. A more complete tutorial can be purchased from Machinimatrix.org. Avastar it self is a US$22 add on to Blender. I will point out that while Avastar is a Blender add on, the package coming from Machinimatrix.org has handled all the integration between Avastar and Blender. So, all one has to do is install Avastar.

The video shows some of the controls and features that Avastar adds to Blender for those working with models headed for Second Life. While there is nothing there that you cannot do manually without Avastar, well mostly, it is going to be far easier with Avastar.

If you are new to Blender, I think Avastar will reduce your learning curve by a considerable amount. But, avoid getting the idea it will remove the need for all learning. Building models and rigging them to skeletons is a complex task with many aspects.

Making non-human avatars for Second Life is an advanced task. It is a pretty big first bite for anyone new to character modeling.

2 thoughts on “Avastar 1 RC 1 Released

  1. I’m one of those people who haven’t bought Avastar mostly because I enjoy figuring out all the complicated bits myself. But there is one feature that Avastar has that you just can’t get elsewhere, and that’s export of animations to LL’s internal anim format. If there’s an alternative implementation of this, I haven’t found it. BVH export is good enough for me at the moment, but if I ever need the flexibility that the anim format offers, I might just have no choice but to pick up a copy of Avastar.

    • Maya has a plug-in for anim export.

      Blender has some internal construction that allows anim export. So far Avastar seems to be the only addon providing anim export.

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