Second Life and Virtual Worlds
We got a new Bento RC viewer this week. I was using it to video this meeting. In the first part of the meeting Vir Linden updates us on fixes to the viewer and its remaining problems.
00:00 – The first 40 seconds have no sound because no one was talking. So, I sped up the video and shrunk 3+ minutes down to 40 seconds. Later in the video you’ll see silent parts of the video speed up.
Some of us have been wondering what all is going on with AvaStar. We know they are adding support for the new Bento avatar. I had heard people ask for Developer Kit support. So, if you have wanted to make things that fit Slink, Belleza, Maitreya, and other mesh bodies you had to figure out how to integrated the kit to the AvaStar system. Looks like that is a problem that will go away.
Gaia Clary, Machinimatrix, has a promotional video out:
devkits from The Machinimatrix on Vimeo.
Gaia keeps doing this, restricting where the video can be embedded. For a promotional video it is silly. It sucks. But, you can click and jump to the video.
The current alpha, beta, whatever version of AvaStar is: avastar-2.0-23_blender-2-77. The main production version is: avastar-1.7-2_blender-2-77.
Have you seen AvaStar.online?
I found this to be an interesting meeting. As the final parts of Project Bento get nailed down and it nears release my excitement grows. I am starting to work on setting up my Blender-AvaStar for Bento style projects. Plus tutorials are starting to come out.
I’m writing an outline/index as I clean up the video, mostly speeding up the no-talking parts and smoothing out the audio. So, you’ll see parts of the video run at 200% to 500% faster than real time. Hopefully the pre-YouTube-in-Adobe-Premier time marks will match the final YouTube time marks. If they don’t… sorry. I’ll have learned.
The First part of the video (about 2:05 minutes) was recorded with the main Linden Viewer (4.0.2). You’ll notice the avatars using Bento weighting and animation look messed up. These strange looking beasts are loose on the main grid. So, if you are seeing these strangely twisted avatars in Second Life™, you are seeing Bento avatars without a Bento capable viewer. It’s not you, it’s the viewer. Close your eyes, they’ll eventually go away.
See: Project Bento and the pose making. Tamara Artis is a Qavimator user. She recognizes the program is not maintained and Bento is likely to kill it, at least for use in Second Life™. She is asking about advice on what to switch to and tips for animating for Bento.
Medhue Simoni, a Second Life animator of some note, provides several answers. So, if you are looking for tips and general information, this would be a good place to start. A notable point Medhue makes is Qavimator is still going to work after Project Bento releases.
Bento is closer to its gold release. Cathy Foil has made this video explaining the gotcha’s for those trying to animate for Second Life.
I’ve just been shown it, no time to watch. Have other things to do first. But, soon.
Most animators attending the Bento UG meeting have been working with animating mesh heads and wings. But, the bones in the hands finalized some time ago. So, it is a little odd that we haven’t seen anyone do something with the hands. Now we have:
Vista Animations has a demo of what they have done with the hands.
They say they are going to release a beta version of the hand-animations ‘soon’. Well, that was a week ago. It’s out now. Link below.
It is then we will see the complications of keeping classic, mesh, pre-Bento, and post-Bento animations straight.