This is kind of neat, so I’m posting it as a separate article.
The roll out tomorrow on the Magnum channel will have a server change that increases the size of animation assets (the file size) from 64kb to 120kb. This will allow an increase in the complication and length of animations.
Until the corresponding change arrives on the viewer we cannot take advantage of the change. But, this is a significant change in the animation side of the Second Life world.
Jeremy Linden has been working on the Second Life(TM) wiki, the Best Practices for building, mesh, animation, and more. Check out the main page: Good Building Practices.
Revised Wiki Page
This page covers all the aspects of building or making just about anything in Second Life. If you are building with mesh, check this out. It covers several aspects of reducing Land Impact costs.
I would say the place is being spruced up for the coming entry into Steam. Whatever, it is nice to the wiki updating.
Medhue Simoni has put up a video tutorial on using Slat to make Second Life™ animations. He announced it in the SL forum: SLat Tutorial for Animations – 15 minutes. If you are into animation or have been thinking about it, check it out.
[youtube D89x_xdBBG8]
You can find SLat on Medhue’s site: Medhue Animations – Freebies – Download SLat
If you are interested in character animation you probably know about CG Cookie. They have a load of free and pay-for tutorials. All the basic information is free. The advanced and time saving stuff is usually pay-for. So far, everything I’ve paid for I have been happy with. I haven’t paid for all that much, but I have paid for some.
Recently CG Cookie put up a new YouTube video: Animation Toolkit – Training Series for Character Animation in Blender. It is promoting their release of the new training series.
[youtube XAY3JbI4jBs]
This series gets into things that cannot be imported into Second Life™ with the BVH import. Gaia Clary’s Avastar is progressing toward what I think is the best all around tool for making mesh clothes and animating avatars, human or non-human. One of its better features is the ability to create .anim files that the SL Viewer can import. The .anim file format allows one to use more of the animation features found in Blender.
Judith Flow
I woke up way too early this morning… browsing through the forum I came across a post by Judith Flow about working with petite animations, which I am clueless about. Judith has a process for correcting animations so they work well with petite avatars.
Check it out: How to: make your animations Petite Mesh Avatar Compatible
Thanks Judith.
I would appreciate comments on how well this works from those that have been working with Petite avatars and animating them.