Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Gaia Clary, of Machinimatrix, has an excellent post in the Project Bento feedback thread. See: Gaia – Project Bento Feedback Thread. …OK, this is probably my shortest post…
This is a big deal. I’ll get into what it means and what some of the possibilities are.
For years Second Life™ users have been asking for more bones. That would let users make avatars with tails that are easily animated. Or with more than 4 arm-leg appendages. We will be able to have a centaur with 4 legs, two arms, and a tail, something that is way complicated now and pretty lame. Or a spider with 8 legs.
If you are an AvaStar user, you paid about US$22 for the program. It was supposed to come with lifetime updates. The developer had no idea what they were promising when they set that financial model. They are finding to stay in business they are going to have to make some changes. They announced those changes a couple of days ago.
See: Avastar new Product Definitions
We now have two products; Avastar-1 (Infinite support) & Avastar-2 (Annual renewal). Sounds like AvaStar-1 is the way to go. But, realize that AvaStar-1 is what people have purchased up to this point. It is this product that is sort of coming to an end.
Machinimatrix is offering ten prizes of L$5,000 for those helping improve the documentation for AvaStar 1.6. They seem to be taking a new tack with new documentation. Read the deals of the prize offer. AvaStar 1.6 Documentation Avastar Download Page – Look in ARCHIVE for 1.6 Create a Feedback Ticket Spelling mistakes and minor corrections … Read more
There are gotcha’s in this latest main SL Viewer 3.8.4, in the mesh upload. You can use more than 8 materials now. Gaia Clary has changed AvaStar to export more than 8 materials. But, the announcement of that change comes with a warning: don’t.
Also Drongle McMahon commented on the problem and what happens when we exceed the allowable polygon limit per material for mesh items. See: Second Life’s Limits.
Gaia Clary is working to release an improved AvaStar 1.6 in October of this year. (Reference) An ‘Alpha’ version has been available since June. (Ref) But, it is not recommended for production or new users. The change is Gaia trying to get a better work flow for fitted mesh creation.
People are becoming more interested in working with the various mesh bodies. I’m doubting Gaia can do much that is specific to any private brand of mesh body or would want to. I don’t see a necessity to try. We are building better polygon layouts than the classic avatar’s. So, our weighting will be better and likely unique. Plus we will have polygon layouts that vary from the various mesh bodies as the bodies use different layouts. But, if we have good layout and weights, our stuff is going to work well with most bodies mesh or classic.