The Blender-AvaStar combination is still the least expensive entry point for making clothes, animations, and avatars for Second Life™. Blender is free and awesome, if difficult to learn. AvaStar has sold for US$27 for, I think, a couple of years. So, a price increase is to be expected.
It’s Oh So Quiet
At the end of March 2017, the price of AvaStar will increase from US$27 to $40 for the full version and yearly support from $14 to $20. So, if you have been on the fence about purchasing AvaStar, now would be a good time. I plan to update my support package. See: AvaStar Pricing.
This week I actually got everything working and captured the meeting on video. Next week there is no CCUG meeting.
I sped up the video to cut the run time from an hour and a half to about an hour. About the only noticeable change is people’s voice pitch goes up.
Synopsis
The additional assets via HTTP viewer is in the pipeline. The server changes are running on ADITI (preview grid) now. As well as the new server OS versions. We can expect both of these to show up ‘soon’.
While I am happy with my new Slink Dynamic Hands and the add-on Stiletto Nails, Strawberry Singh is pointing out that not all add-ons work with all mesh body parts. See her article: Cutie Loot March 2017 Unboxing Video. She is working to keep people honestly informed about the products she reviews.
That all this new Bento stuff doesn’t work together is no surprise to me. I was expecting problems, especially for facial animations. Strawberry ran into the problems with Catya’s Bento Bubblegum. Catya, to their credit, tells you the gum is designed to work with a specific Catwa head, not all Catwa heads.
Bento Heads are going to be a problem. Trying a demo before buying any Bento product or add-on is very important, especially animations.
The Bento heads have a load of new bones. Each of those ‘head’ bones is rigged and weighted to some part of the head’s skin. So, it isn’t surprising that each developer will do things differently… even the same developer trying to make their products as similar as possible will likely not be able to achieve full compatibility.
This means add-on and animations for different heads, even in the same brand, will likely have to be tweaked. A great looking smile animation for one head is likely to look odd when run while wearing another head. So, I expect to see a lot of …for specific brand and model only… notes on Bento products.
There are some conversations in the user groups about how to minimize these problems. But, it may be awhile before things get ironed out, if they do.
So, be careful. Try a demo before you buy.
Hopefully, we will see some people using Advanced Experience Tools (AET) to make some nicer demo tools. I really don’t want to see more animation demos that work like dance demos… the ones where they put 10 to 50 animations in a pose stand and you click through them. Tedious.
And wow… it is an update… no additional cost… WOW!
To get yours visit the slink main store and find a REDELEVERY terminal. Have the system redeliver the hands you previously purchased. Take them home and figure them out… J
If you purchased the multi-pack hands you get all the new Bento stuff. If you purchased a smaller pack or a single hand pose… you get less stuff. See the Slink Dynamic Hands (aka Project Bento comes to Slink) article in the Slink web site for more precise details. Or just get your update and open it.
Who knows? The Second Life blog/forum is still off line. There is no ETA for its return. Every week or so they post in Grid Status about it being down. Duh! And that it is taking longer than expected to get it going. The excuse is they want to be sure they get it right… the post must be written by a former politician… They blew the time estimate. Software developers ALWAYS run into unexpected problems.
I’ll stop the world and melt with you
The Grid status seems to be on automatic so, update or not it tells us there is an update. My region device tells me the main channel region I live in has not restarted since 2/24. So, no roll to main channel today (Tuesday) as of 10 AM SLT/PT.
There are a number of good and really bad Photoshop 3D tutorials online. I think Michael Hoffman makes one of the better sets of tutorial videos for those starting out. Clicking his name takes you to his YouTube channel. Here is his BASIC tutorial for getting started with Photoshop 3D (#1 in series) but, it isn’t specifically for Second Life users. So, I’ll add some SL specific help.
More to Know
There are some things left out that I think are important for the basic starting out tutorial. Plus, it doesn’t answer questions about using SL Classic Avatar files. I’ll try to answer those questions and jump you to the things we do in Second Life.
