Clothes Skins Etc

Fabulously Free on Second Life Boobies

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Hemi Violet
Hemi Violet

I am sort of pleasantly surprised by the answers to a question in the Fab Advice column. When the advisors were asked which are the best boobs and butts, only one had answers. The others have little experience with add on boobs and butts and theirs spend most of the time in inventory. See the full article here: Fab Advice #15.

Skyler refers us to Big Boobie Babes. This is a site that keeps up on the latest in Second Life™ boobs and butts with reviews and release news. They also have a blogroll of other sites covering boobs and butts.

Verotic Muscle Skins and Appliers
Verotic Muscle Skins and Appliers

 

I do see more and more clothes coming with appliers for the various add ons. I have my Slink hands and love all the nails I get. But, I haven’t gotten into implants… yet. I do like my smaller breasts. But, I do like the nicer shaped ones too. So, I have thought about … having some work done.

WARNING: NSFW… past the fold. 

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Second Life Fitted Mesh Doesn’t Fit

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Well… surprise, surprise…

There is an excellent thread in the Second Life™ Forum about the designer side problems of getting fitted mesh to fit. See: Blender/Avastar [Fitted Mesh]: Need help/advise with a few issues. Posted by Zakiel Windlow the problems are clearly expressed. Zakiel includes a great set of images to show the problems.

ZAkiel's Images on Fitted Mesh Problems
ZAkiel’s Images on Fitted Mesh Problems

Zakiel explained where he is coming from and what he has realized, “A few weeks ago I was using a workflow that gave me good, fast and (more or less) SAFE results:

Standard rigging and 5 or 6 sizes (or more). But I wasn’t happy, anyways. I always wanted the “fitted” mesh so all the girls could use my clothes without problems or restrictions. That was what I thought or was expecting.

Now I realize that with the fitted mesh there are restrictions too; and the workflow (for now) is harder, longer and not safe as the standard rigging. I have to check the fitting with big breasts, small breasts, big+high, big+low, small+high, small+low, big+close, big+open, big+high+close… You get the idea… And what works for 1 combination probably won’t for the other…” 

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The State of Avastar & Fitted Mesh

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Numerous people are running into the problem with their mesh clothes creations not working well with the Second Life avatar. Gaia Clary’s latest comment in the SL Forum is here:

‎2014-04-14 06:35 AM – edited ‎2014-04-14 06:36 AM

Maybe I [Gaia] can add 2 remarks here:

  1. You could use the Morph targets to create a dummy character and implement the SL Shape sliders to shape the dummy into the SL shape. Then you can use that dummy as reference for making your mesh garments of course. But note that the morphs themself [sic] take no active role in the fitted mesh deforming.
  2. If you wanted to create something reasonable then you would create some sort of controllers that modify the Collision Volume bones. If properly done, then you could immediately see how your mesh would react in SL with changing slider values.

The main problem is to understand which bones are affected in which way by which slider. Most of this is noted down in the avatar_lad.xml file. And yes, in Avastar we actually have ported the SL Shape slider system into Blender This works as intended for the dummy itself. But for the mesh garments there is still something wrong (so right now we do not have a complete solution )

BTW: Blender allows to export shape keys to Collada, so in theory you could take our workbench blend file, then export the character with shape keys, and then try to upload that to Maya. Maybe that works, maybe not, I have never tried it myself.

(Reference)

At the Content and Mesh Import User Group we got some new information on the problem and what it might take to fix it. Don’t get your hopes up. It looks like we are going to have to learn to work around the problem. But, At least we know what the problem is and can quit wasting time searching through viewer code. 

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Second Life and What Fits

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A couple of days ago Jeremy Linden put a new page into the Second Life™ Knowledge Base: Buying clothing that fits your avatar. The same day a post appeared in the Second Life Blog: Help Customers Buy Clothing that Fits their Avatars. Both of these target the confusion surrounding mesh clothes and avatars.

Consider. We started out with what I call system clothes. These are the decals we place on the avatar that look like clothes. This is the shirt or pants we make when use the features in Appearance. We hang prims and sculpties on the avatar to embellish the ‘decal’ clothes. These clothes fit the avatar perfectly. Consider ‘perfectly’ to mean no skin poke through.

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Second Life Avatar Shape

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Loki Eliot has an article up titled: Exploring the future of my Avatars Shape.

The article is a good account of the problems and decisions we must handle when making full avatars and clothes. It is worth the time to read.

[youtube 4TP4L1vHfpk]

We have many considerations related to where the Second Life Avatar is going and how we will work with it. The Lindens see things in terms different from those we see. The Lindens are dealing with programming issues and development costs. Since they seldom make clothes and seldom are involved in fashion the priorities are lopsided toward the technical. Lindens may not change appearance/clothes for years.

Of course the majority of SL users have no idea of the technical complications. But, they are into fashion and may change their appearance several times per week, if not per day. So, the majority of users have priorities lopsided toward the aesthetic side.

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AvaStar 1.1-1039 Video

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Early in Week 14 Gaia Clairy put a new video on YouTube. This is a bit of a revision to an earlier one and I think a clarification of the note card she sent to group members of Blender Avastar in-world. I reviewed that and published my understanding of her instructions in: AvaStar 1.1-1039 Released. AvaStar 1.1-1039 is still a release candidate and not a final version. The latest test RC is: avastar-1-1-1045 blender-2-65. The 2.65 is misleading, I think 1045 will only install in Blender 2.70 and up.

The point of the video is to show AvaStar users how to convert previous mesh clothes made for the standard sizes into Fitted Mesh. In other words, how to take mBone weighting and move it over to collision bone weighting. Plus what adjustments one needs to make for the new bones so the items work with the shape sliders.

[youtube QPMZrszi5rw]

In a discussion over on SLUniverse I was pointing out the similarities between Liquid and Fitted mesh. There was concern because some people were finding what was supposed to be Fitted Mesh being sold with multiple sizes included. I think Gaia’s video shows that multiple sizes may well be necessary for close fitting clothes. It seems many think Fitted Mesh eliminates the need for multiple sizes. We are learning that it may not.

Just as we have problems with RL clothes and size designations, I suspect we will see the same thing happen with Second Life clothes. It is a matter of time and someone figuring out a sizing scheme that works and is as easily understood as possible.

The video shows how to create basic weights from scratch and move them to the collision bones. There are many possibilities for how to weight a new item using AvaStar. The video show a simple ‘from bones’ example. But, it should suffice for figuring out the basic idea. The challenge is in explaining what all is possible and still keeping it simple.