Viewers
The main viewer remains 3.7.14.
RC Viewers
My SL Viewer updated this weekend. It is now version 3.7.15-293376. This is the Snowstorm RC viewer I previously covered here: Second Life Bits 2014-36 #2.
Second Life Bits 2014-37
AvaStar RC4 Released
Yesterday Gaia Clary released a new Release Candidate of AvaStar. This release is mostly cosmetic. Tool labels have changed to better reflect industry jargon. Some may have moved to smooth out some bumps in workflow.
Also, the Help Documentation has been updated to reflect the AvaStar 1.1 user interface. You can access the AvaStar Help pages here. Once on the first page there is a tree-like menu giving access to other help pages.
Gaia is revising the workflow documents to AvaStar 1.1 interface. There is no mention of an ETA for when those will be available.
AvaStar has context sensitive help. When in Blender, with AvaStar installed of course, right click a control and select Online Manual. Easy.
Ebbe Altberg @ TechFlags
I see the Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab’s CEO, will speak at TecgFlags’ Expand event in November. See TechFlags’ post listing speakers for the event.
Since Altberg broke the news about the Lab building a new world, we haven’t heard much from him. This may be an opportunity to hear something more about SL2. Or all we may hear is on where tech is heading, but that would sort of be what SL2 will target.
Second Life Bits 2014-36 #2
CG Awesome
I suspect most people know there is a lot of CG in moves these days. This is an interesting video showing some amazing CG work.
#GamerGate
Have you heard of #GamerGate? I suppose it has been growing for days. The long and drama filled story can be found here: GamerGate: A Closer Look At The Controversy Sweeping Video Games.
#GamerGate is drama just as we see in Second Life™. Only on a larger scale. It is a story complete with sex, vigilantes, hacking, rage quits, and all the rest.
Second Life Bits 2014-36
Miscellaneous
Daniel Voyager has a post up listing the Second Life™ events happening in September. See: Second Life events happening during September 2014. Of course you realize these are only a few of the events that will happen this month.
Fabulously Free has a post listing the top 10 hunts going on today. See: Today’s Top 10 Hunts. Some of the hunts listed run all month.
One of the hunt information sites is HuntSL.com. The site lists hunts in progress and is updated often.
Blender-AvaStar Animation IK/FK Tip
I am getting deeper into making animations I’ll use in Second Life™. I am a novice animator/modeler, so I probably don’t know the best way to accomplish any given task nor do I understand Blender cooncepts all that well. But, I wasn’t seeing any tutorials and I haven’t been in any classes that helped me with using both IK (Inverse Kinematics) and FK (Forward Kinematics) in a single animation. (See What is IK/FK for more information on IK/FK.)
Since I’ve had to figure out how to do this, I thought I’d make a short tutorial.
I used Blender 2.71 and AvaStar 1.1 RC3 while experimenting and writing this.