Second Life and Virtual Worlds
AvaStar is Second Life’s handiest tool for animators and clothing designers. It comes as an add-in for Blender.
The next release of AvaStar will have several changes in the menus. It is always a pain when a designers moves things and changes labels in a program we use. We users have to relearn the menus and adjust our work flow to deal with the changes. Ugh!
Ciaran has an article up on what Skill Gaming is. If there is any confusion on your part check it out. See: LL Issue Reminder And Warning On Skill Gaming Policy. His information is based on Linden Lab’s latest: Reminder: New Skill Gaming Policy in Effect September 1, 2014.
Be sure to check out the comments below that article. It seems they are a bit one sided… Where do all these negative people come from?
Purdie Silkmour made a video that popped up on YouTube today: How To Improve Your Appearance in Second Life. (11 minutes) This is much better than your typical SL How To. Purdie does a great job of showing how to change avatar appearance and gives a good taste of the verity in Second Life. Plus they get to see search in action and learn how to find shapes, skins, etc. It isn’t just about the technical details of using SL. Nice!
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I think the big problem is how to get this video in front of new SL users. This would be a good URL to save and give to new peeps you meet.
It seems there is a series of these videos… well two.
The current release of AvaStar is RC3. It includes Sparkles.
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The makers of Avatar and other SL/OS related products have started a instituted a trouble ticket system for support. No other support is offered or provided. The time being consumed by answering questions was too much. They had to do something.
So, you can get most questions answered in-world in the Blender-Avastar group. It is free to join and enough users are around to answer questions most of the time. Plus various other groups like Builders Brewery and others answer questions and provide classes.
On the Machinimatrix.org site questions will only ne answered if you file a trouble ticket. No more impromptu help. See: New Ticket System available.
Current version: avastar-1.1-RC-2_blender-2-70.
Machinimatrix.org is releasing a new tool for use by Second Life™ creators. This one is called Sparkles Tool Box. The promotional video comes as a tutorial for merging UVMaps and shows people how to perform the task manually. Then goes on to show how much time can be saved by using the new tool.
[youtube HBU6f-AIXdI]
If you already have AvaStar, you may not need the new tool, depending on your workflow. I have Blender 2.71 and avastar-1.1-beta-4_blender-2-70 installed. When I copy the AvaStar model’s lower, upper, and head and combine them I get the UVMap result that Sparkles provides as shown in the video.
But, if you are working with anything other than the AvaStar model, Sparkles is going to be a time saver.
Gaia Clary of Machinimatrix.org is making a new video tutorial on weight painting for Second Life™. A new post is up on her blog asking for input. See: Weighting with Blender.
The actual tutorial part being worked on is here: Course: Weight Painting (Blender&Avastar).
AvaStar is not required. Plain Blender (2.70+) can be used for the tutorial.
One handy thing is the free ‘blend’ file with example clothes. There is also a free OBJ file with the same models. The models are licensed via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 with accommodation for the current Linden Lab TOS. The models are not yet weighted, that is for a class activity.