Second Life and Virtual Worlds
With Project Bento in the works I expect lots of changes in AvaStar. Machinimatrix has announce a change in AvaStar 2.0.6. See: Avastar-2: Bind to Pose Operator.
I generally find these privacy settings annoying. I consider this change in AvaStar a promotional advantage, so I think you would want the information to get wide coverage.
The Project is months old. But, it has a history already. Cathy Foil was one of the developers aske into the project and under NDA. Now the NDA has been lifted and she has made a 52 minute video relating her experience in the project. I have an index of the video below.
0-11:00 – Mostly audio talking about the people involved in the project. Cathy talks about her MayaStar and cooperating with the Machinimatrix AvaStar people to solve various problems.
Gaia Clary, of Machinimatrix, has an excellent post in the Project Bento feedback thread.
See: Gaia – Project Bento Feedback Thread.
…OK, this is probably my shortest post…
This is a big deal. I’ll get into what it means and what some of the possibilities are.
For years Second Life™ users have been asking for more bones. That would let users make avatars with tails that are easily animated. Or with more than 4 arm-leg appendages. We will be able to have a centaur with 4 legs, two arms, and a tail, something that is way complicated now and pretty lame. Or a spider with 8 legs.
If you are an AvaStar user, you paid about US$22 for the program. It was supposed to come with lifetime updates. The developer had no idea what they were promising when they set that financial model. They are finding to stay in business they are going to have to make some changes. They announced those changes a couple of days ago.
See: Avastar new Product Definitions
We now have two products; Avastar-1 (Infinite support) & Avastar-2 (Annual renewal). Sounds like AvaStar-1 is the way to go. But, realize that AvaStar-1 is what people have purchased up to this point. It is this product that is sort of coming to an end.
Machinimatrix is offering ten prizes of L$5,000 for those helping improve the documentation for AvaStar 1.6. They seem to be taking a new tack with new documentation. Read the deals of the prize offer.
Spelling mistakes and minor corrections are not what they are looking for and are unlikely to win a prize.
There are still pay-to-watch tutorial classes. But, the manual appears to provide all the basics of AvaStar.