Animation

Avastar 1.0 Released

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Gaia Clary has a new release of Avastar out. This trailer promoting it was released Saturday July 20th. The 1.0 release number should not be the significant problem it is with most other software. I’ve been using the release candidate builds and think the software even in pre1.0 releases is has been pretty solid.

[youtube MtwRAxZZbWA]

You can get more details about Avastar 1.0 on Gaia’s site: Machinimatrix.org. There is a list of improvements (14) and highlights (13). There is a known bug that has to do with animating the aSpine bone… I’m going to have to look for this problem, as I haven’t noticed it. But, I don’t recall attempting to animate the aSpine bone.

I will have to wait until I’m home sometime Monday to get my copy of Avastar 1.0. I’m looking forward to checking it out.

I’ll also be downloading Blender 2.68, which was released Thursday July 18th. This is the version Gaia used for testing Avastar 1.0. Less testing has been done with other Blender versions. Gaia believes Avastar 1.0 should work well with Blender versions 2.64 to 2.68.

Note: This is NOT a paid promo. I purchased my own copy of Avastar (US$22).

The Drax Files – World Makers: Episode 6 – Abramelin Wolfe

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This episode is about Abramelin Wolfe one of the people behind Abranimations. His wife helps him. If you have ever searched for a hard to find animation in Second Life™ you have probably come across Abranimations.

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Check out Abranimations web site. If you like Jo Yardly’s 1920’s Berlin, then you must have Abranimations’ 1920’s Flapper Dances… or so I think. Abranimations also has a collection of Vintage Dances. They should work too.

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Animation Overrider Scripting Information

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Kelly Linden gave us some more information about the new animation functions added to the scripting language.

Kelly said, “The server has supported overriding animations for over a year. The missing piece was the LSL calls and a couple bug fixes. It is expected that once overridden they would continue to be overridden on older servers.”

This means this was something started some time ago. Those old changes have been in place for some time. So, if one overrides an animation in one of the Release Candidate channels, the override should work across ALL servers. It is only the script that has to have the new server code to work. This is the behavior Amber Murfin discovered and commented about.

Kelly also told us the new override functions do not allow setting by UUID. They must be set by a string constant, read that to mean an animation file’s name. The reason for this reveals some possible future plans of the Lab. Kelly says he originally planned to use integer ID’s to handle the state names. But, others in the Lab wanted a more flexible system that would allow additions or changes and possibly and update of the state machine.

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#SL Animations Growing

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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.

#SL Best Practices

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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.