Part 2 of Journey to Fitted Mesh for Second Life is out. This video shows more of how to work with Fitted Mesh in AvaStar.
Avastar
Gaia Clary Explains Second Life Fitted Mesh
I am finding there is a wide variation in how well fitted mesh fits. Some brands work very well. Others only look good if you stand still. Others have noticed this too. I just saw someone on Fab Free comment that when trying demos you needed to walk around, sit down, and jump to test the demo fully. Good advice.
If you are thinking about fitted mesh, Gaia has one of better explanations of what it is here:
Gaia is working with the ideas of giving AvaStar away free and charging for the tutorials or charging more for AvaStar and giving the tutorials away for free. I have no idea what Gaia will decide. I wish Gaia a profitable business whatever is decided.
AvaStar 1.5 Released
Gaia has a post out today (5/13 – Wednesday) announcing a new release of AvaStar 1.5.6. See: Avastar-1.5 is Out.
There is an update tool in AvaStar Blender. I was thinking it is in the release I have, 1.4.5. But, I don’t see it. Seems it only arrived with version 1.4.8. If you have 1.4.8 the last part of the video shows how to use it. Otherwise, you will have to download 1.5 and manually update AvaStar as I did.
There are a number of small fixes in this release. The list of them is in the announcement. But, the most interesting ones are discussed in the video.
Second Life: How To Use AvaStar Shape Keys – Tutorials
Figuring out how to use the new shape keys isn’t too hard. Gaia Clary has provided free help, which I link to below. Figuring out what you will do with them is another challenge. It looks to me like using shape keys will be most useful to those making clothes for Standard Sizes and custom sizes.
I don’t see the shape keys being particularly helpful for those making fitted mesh clothes. But, I’m not making clothes right now, so I haven’t worked with the shape keys.
Second Life: Machinimatrix AvaStar 1.4-5 Released
April 9 – Machinimatrix updated AvaStar. The announcement is here: Avastar 1.4-5.
AvaStar now has the ability to use custom shape keys. This doesn’t mean the shape keys can be loaded into Second Life™. It does mean you can use them to speed your design while working in Blender.
As the video shows, (if you clicked through) you need both AvaStar and Sparkels installed to use the shape keys feature.
Gaia doesn’t really explain the work flow one would use with Shape keys. I expect there will eventually be a video explaining that process. However, training videos from Machinimatrix now tend to be in the form of retail training courses. The basic overall-this-what-this-does-videos are still free. But, the detailed how-to-videos are sold as training courses.
How To Easily Update to Blender 2.74
Blender released a new version 3/31. The short list of improvements is:
- Cycles got several precision, noise, speed, memory improvements, new Pointiness attribute.
- Viewport has new cool compositing features, outliner now manages orphan data-blocks better.
- Modeling now allows custom normals, and transferring data layers between meshes!
- Massive improvements to hair dynamics and editing tools: a big step forward with more to come…
- A new tool “Cavity Mask” was added to sculpting/painting, along with other improvements.
- Great memory consumption optimization in Freestyle NPR stroke rendering.
- Grease pencil and Game engine improvements, and more…