Blender

New Blender 2.71 Weight Painting Video

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Medhue, of Medhue Animations, has a tutorial video up on weight painting for Second Life using Blender 2.71. The information in general works for any modeling system. But, is specifically for Second Life and Blender w/AvaStar users. While the ideas are transferable to any system, the button presses are specific to AvaStar users. He does not get into Fitted mesh, but for a button press or two it is the same.

[youtube h4-h-cVCPP0]

There is a commercial in the middle if you watch on YouTube. Its short but it is a surprising burst of sound.

This tutorial is based on Medhue’s work flow, which is very much like the workflow pattern I use. The basic idea is to make one master weight garment or body and then use that for all future weighting. Medhue shows how to do that.

You can discuss the video with Medhue in the SL Forum here: Tutorial – Rigging & Weighting in Blender  2.71 with Avastar for Second Life. (I modified the title a bit…)

AvaStar 1.1 Beta Released

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On Sunday Machinimatrix announced the release of AvaStar 1.1 Beta. Gaia Clary is saying there will be no more test releases as the last one is not drawing any big reports. This suggests AvaStar is near completion for the Fitted Mesh addition.

The announcement is here: Avastar-1.1 Beta is Out. The download is via your personal link for AvaStar.

I am guessing that with the exception of minor changes this beta will be the final release.

Bogus AvaStar

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Gaia Clary has posted that someone is selling a ripped off of AvaStar in the SL Market Place for L$8,000. The rip-off is an old version of AvaStar. The rip-off is here (so you know which one NOT to buy).

The real AvaStar is available at: http://blog.machinimatrix.org . AvaStar sells for US$27 or about  L$6,750.

Gaia filed a DMCA June 5th. As of this morning the rip-off remains on the Market Place.

Blender 2.71 Update

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The test build of Blender 2.71 is out. The release notes are here.

While 2.70a has some Cycles baking ability, 2.71 extends Cycles to include most of the abilities in the materials system associated with Blender Render. There are possibilities here for Second Life™ users.

There are some improvements in modeling and sculpting that may help those modeling for SL.

I see several changes in animation. I doubt those improvements will transfer into SL. But, they may improve our work flow.

See Blender.org for details and the release notes foe specifics.