Avastar

AvaStar RC4 Released

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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.

Norder Ney @ HeavenScent 2014
Norder Ney @ HeavenScent 2014

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.

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Blender-AvaStar Animation IK/FK Tip

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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.)

Animating w/AvaStar
Animating w/AvaStar

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. 

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AvaStar Changing

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AvaStar is Second Life’s handiest tool for animators and clothing designers. It comes as an add-in for Blender.

Loki's Experience - 2014
Loki’s Experience – 2014

The next release of AvaStar will have several changes in the menus. It is always a pain when a designers moves things and changes labels in a program we use. We users have to relearn the menus and adjust our work flow to deal with the changes. Ugh! 

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Machinimatrix – AvaStar Ticket System

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The makers of Avatar and other SL/OS related products have started a instituted a trouble ticket system for support. No other support is offered or provided. The time being consumed by answering questions was too much. They had to do something.

Tableau 2014
Tableau 2014

So, you can get most questions answered in-world in the Blender-Avastar group. It is free to join and enough users are around to answer questions most of the time. Plus various other groups like Builders Brewery and others answer questions and provide classes.

On the Machinimatrix.org site questions will only ne answered if you file a trouble ticket. No more impromptu help. See: New Ticket System available.

Current version: avastar-1.1-RC-2_blender-2-70.

New Second Life Tool for Blender

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Machinimatrix.org is releasing a new tool for use by Second Life™ creators. This one is called Sparkles Tool Box. The promotional video comes as a tutorial for merging UVMaps and shows people how to perform the task manually. Then goes on to show how much time can be saved by using the new tool.

[youtube HBU6f-AIXdI]

If you already have AvaStar, you may not need the new tool, depending on your workflow. I have Blender 2.71 and avastar-1.1-beta-4_blender-2-70 installed. When I copy the AvaStar model’s lower, upper, and head and combine them I get the UVMap result that Sparkles provides as shown in the video.

But, if you are working with anything other than the AvaStar model, Sparkles is going to be a time saver.