Second Life Shape Export

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I recently decided to buy Avastar-1 (RC2-782) and see if it could solve some problems I’ve run into with posing the avatar for weight painting. I’ve also had some problems getting custom mesh to fit my avatar. Tight skirts require everything be precise. Things weren’t as precise as I hoped. I was getting frustrated.

Comparing In-world with Avastar and OBJ Export
Comparing In-world with Avastar and OBJ Export

Avastar is an add-on for Blender sold by Machinimatrix.org for US$22. ($27 4/2017) I resisted purchasing it because I wanted to provide tutorials that provide a free path to accomplishing the same things. I’m in the process of updating my tutorial: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial. It’s almost a year old and a few things have changed. 

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Imprudence Viewer 1.4.0.3 Exp 0 Released

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OK, I’m surprised. There is a new experimental release of the Imprudence Viewer out. You can get more information here: Imprudence Blog.

I removed the viewer some time ago. At one time it was my preferred viewer for building in-world. For even longer it was my viewer for OpenSim grids. But, it was slow adopting mesh and AFAIK still does not support mesh.

As far as I can tell this viewer is not Sever Side Appearance baking compatible. So, it is good for from 2 to 8 weeks, until the Lab rolls out SSA.

Second Life Avatar Offset

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There has been some discussion for a time about how SSA (Server Side Appearance bakeing) has messed up avatar-offset. This is the offset most third party viewers provide that allows you to adjust the distance from your avatar to the ground or a chair when sitting.

Henri Beauchamp and a few others have been asking the Lindens to do something with the problem. It affects lots of pose balls and sit adjusted items in SL. As best I can tell the Lindens see this as a minor problem. So, there has not been a fix, at least not one that works for most people. The worst problems are being fixed, but…

The Firestorm Dev Team has removed the avatar-offset feature from the new 4.4.0 viewer just released. (At least I am told so in FS Support and I can’t find it) Watching the support channel this morning the top two question have to do with ATI users getting black screens (fix) and people asking where the avatar-offset feature was moved to… the answer: OUT.

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Firestorm Viewer 4.4.0 (33720) Released Review

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I got a couple of things wrong in the previous article. The idea it was only for the SL grid was not right. This release has a version for the OpenSim grids. You can see the highlights of that release on the announcement page: Firestorm Major Upgrade.

Another point on the announcement page is information about the effort that has been put into providing an upgrade path for Phoenix users.

[youtube sM3-yQVDEw]

This video runs a little less than 8 minutes.

The video warns that you will have a slow start because they have flushed all the caches.

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Singularity 1.8.0 w/SSA Released

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One of the viewers growing in popularity is the Singularity Viewer. As Phoenix nears the absolute end of its useful life a number of its users are switching to Singularity. Often those with older computers prefer to go with Singularity for faster frame rates. Plus it has the look and feel of the SL Viewer 1.23, the V1 user interface.

Build 4114 is the version with SSA, Server Side Appearance, the avatar baking change planned to fix bake fail. All versions before this one will soon stop working, well stop rendering avatars. They will appear gray. So, this is going to be a required upgrade for all Singularity users. That’s required in the sense of, if you want to see avatar clothes then you have to upgrade. If you don’t care about that, never mind. 

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Firestorm 4.4.0 On the Way

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Update: The viewer has been released as 4.4.0 (33720) today about 3 PM SLT or PDT. Download: Firestorm Major Update.

I’ve been hearing rumors that a new release of the Firestorm Viewer is imminent. Some expected it Sunday. Some are saying today. We will have to wait and see when it releases. I expect it soon, like today. But, that could be wishful thinking on several people’s part.

But, we do not have to wait to see what is in this release. As part of a release the development team builds release notes. The team tries to do things professionally and have everything ready for users, including the viewer’s release notes. It usually is not too hard to find those once one knows a release is imminent.

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