Pondering Skin Fair 2014

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The fair is a big deal. For over a year I have looked for a new skin. I didn’t want to change my look, I just wanted a skin that photographed better. Also, I wanted a skin without makeup. This year it was easier to find skins that have natural, nude, or bare versions of the skin. I think vendors like Slink and others that use appliers creates an environment that encourages the use of skins without makeup.

Evolution of Nalates
Evolution of Nalates

Also, skins now come with some standard appliers, feet, hands, breasts, and now heads. I am also seeing more skins that include freckles.

I think each year skins get better. My Nomine skin was made for Windlight and was designed for the newest rendering features of the time. But, that was also an era of face lights. Times have changed. 

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AvaStar 1.1 Video Released

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Gaia Clary has a new video tutorial out. This one uses Blender 2.70, which has been released. Using it and the newest test version of AvaStar Gaia shows us how to initialize weighting for Fitted mesh.

Blender 2.70 Released
Blender 2.70 Released

The work flow for moving existing weighted items to collision weighting is covered in the first part of the video. Mid-way in Gaia covers starting weighting from scratch. The later part of the video is about using the shape sliders to test your weighting.

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Alert

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There is something going on with the SL system this morning (7AM-8:30AM). People in a large number of groups are talking about Bake Fail. It seems lots of people are staying gray.

There is no good work-around. Some have solved it by relogging. Some have solved it by waiting.

DO NOT clear your cache. That just makes it worse for you and everyone else.

I am not seeing the problem. So, it is not affecting everyone. But, it is affecting a large number of people.

Second Life News 2014-12

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The news in Second Life™ this week is there is no Second Life news today, at least not much.

Servers

There are no roll outs this week, main or RC channels.

Server Scripting 2014-12
Server Scripting 2014-12

Viewers

I covered the viewers this weekend in: Second Life News 2014-11 #3. Today the main viewer is: Second Life 3.7.3 (287491).

I also see the wiki has updated (Mar 17 2014) for version 3.7.4.288045… this is the Google Breakpad version that has been added to the RC Viewers List, giving us 6 RC Viewers.

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The State of AvaStar 1.1

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There is some Second Life™ news regarding AvaSta™, which has been changing almost weekly. Not big changes, but changes. People have also been figuring out Fitted Mesh. Gaia Clary the mover and shaker of AvaStar is in that group of figuring out what works for Fitted Mesh and getting Blender to work with it.

For Fitted Mesh many things are a bit confusing. Whether we use 3DS, Maya, Blender, Blender & AvaStar, or some other modeling tool most people are NOT getting the result they expect. Gaia has tried to clear up some of the confusion with a blog post. See: The state of Avastar-1.1.

Her first point is that contrary to popular belief AvaStar 1.1 has not been released nor is it complete. There are test versions available for those that purchased AvaStar 1.0. The keyword there is ‘TEST.’

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