Tag Archives: Fitted Mesh

Blender Fitted Mesh #SecondLife Alert

by

0

I see that Gaia has posted in the SL Forum that a new nightly build of Blender is out. This is important as the 2/19 builds still lacked the Collada fix needed for Fitted Mesh export. I covered that problem yesterday.

Get the new builds from these two locations:

I’ve downloaded the test build and will be playing with it later.

There is also another test build of AvaStar out: avastar-1-1-979_blender-2-65.

WARNING: 979 seems to be broken. It refuses to install. Others in the Blender Avastar group are having the same problem.

Notice: the 979 file has been replaced (2/21). This file installs as expected.

More Fitted Mesh News

by

1

Obviously I am messing with Fitted Mesh. Since it has been released lots more people are attempting to work with it. The result is things are changing quickly because a larger number of people are attempting to work with it. That increase in interest tends to reveal more problems as more users do more things and find the problems not discovered during development, which is what is happening.

Current Blender Problem (up to 2.69.10-6466454-win64)

Current Blender Problem (up to 2.69.10-6466454-win64)

Today I found out Gaia has published: Fitted Mesh Kit. The key piece of information is that Blender and Fitted Mesh are only compatible starting with Blender 2.70, which has yet to be released. You will probably be able to get a current build of the planned Blender 2.7 from GraphicsAll.org. But, as of today I don’t see one.

However, the nightly builds are available. Download at Blender.org. Gaia provided the link in the Kit article. But, I don’t see a 2.7 build. The RC builds may not appear until March.

The current plan from Blender.org is to release 2.7 in early March. The RC is to be frozen March 2nd, according to December plans. We may not have a usable plain Blender, meaning without Avastar, until we see that RC release.  Continue reading →

Pages: 1 2

Avastar 1-1 Release Candidate

by

0

Gaia Clary has an update of Avastar out: RC 1-1. This version has files dated 2/10/2014.

There is also a test version out: avastar-1-1-973_blender-2-65. The files in this release are dated 2/14/2014. So, the test file is a bit newer than the RC release. There is no information on what has changed.

There is also a preview video out (updated 2 weeks ago) showing the rigging of a quadruped, horse in this case. See:

Remember. In regard to Fitted Mesh the Blender Collada export for Second Life is broken. For now only the Avastar Collada export is working for Fitted Mesh. If you are rigging to only the mbones, Blender’s Collada export works.

 

Fitted Mesh Blender Problem 2014-7

by

0

Listening in the Avastar User Group tonight I found out there is a problem with both Blender and the SL Viewer when working with Collision Bone exports.

The viewer does not preview the weighted mesh you are uploading correctly. That means you will have to upload the mesh item and try it on to see whether it is working or not. This seems to be a problem in the SL Viewer code and apparently is reported as happening in Singularity too. I expect we’ll hear of the problem in other third party viewers too.  Continue reading →

Breaking #SecondLife News

by

2

There is a post up on the Second Life™ BLog: Fitted Mesh Is Here!

What this means is the avatar and viewer have been finalized for the Fitted Mesh Project. The Release Candidate Viewer has rolled out and is now the main SL Viewer.

Within a couple of days the majority of those using the SL Viewer will be running the new viewer and capable of seeing Fitted Mesh clothes correctly.

I suspect Jessica was hinting that the Firestorm viewer with Fitted Mesh is going to main release version. Other third party viewers support Fitted too. So, very quickly the majority of SL will be able to see Fitted Mesh clothes rendering correctly. I am certain 60% of SL users will be able to see Fitted Mesh. I am pretty sure the number is going to be between 80-90%. But, I have only my opinion to base that on.

Advanced Lighting (ALM) is not important to whether you can see Fitted Mesh. Enabled or Disabled the Fitted Mesh will have the same shape. ALM may affect how the material used on the clothes looks. If the designed used the new Materials feature to make the clothes they will look different depending on whether ALM is enabled or disabled.

Fitted Mesh Base Avatar Files

by

5

A couple of years ago we were sorting out just which files we could get that had a model of the Second Life™ avatar with a default shape. We were going to need that for use with the Mesh Deformer. A good ‘default shape’ file will still be needed on the OpenSim grids. I wrote a long article on which files were which and did a lot of testing of the files to find the differences and decide which file to base my work on. I am sort of in the same place now with Fitted mesh.

Linden SL Avatar - Wiki - Image #1

Linden SL Avatar – Wiki – Image #1

To see the older files, look in the menu above, The Stuff->Tutorials Index Clothes.

The Files

I’ll say that OFFICIALLY there are no files for Fitted Mesh… yet. The reason for that is Fitted Mesh is still in development. So, there is no FINAL version of the avatar. But, we do have two files that can be used by experimenters. I’ll explain what we have have now.

Linden Fitted Mesh Avatar

The Wiki has a ZIP file that has a number of files in various formats. The files appear to have been last updated 12/16/2013 4/2014. They are provided in a ZIP file and include the file I show below. The Mac folder has the same files with slightly different file names.

You can see there are Blender, Collada (dae), FBX, and Maya (ma). The last two are AutoDesk file formats. For compatibility consider:

Autodesk FBX technology helps to enable the interchange of 3D data between the following Autodesk products: Autodesk® 3ds Max®, Autodesk® Maya®, Autodesk® Softimage®, Autodesk® MotionBuilder®, Autodesk® Mudbox®, Autodesk® Smoke® and Autodesk® Flame® software.  Consult the compatibility charts below to learn about the level of support for these applications. Continue reading →

Fitted Mesh and Firestorm

by

0

When is the next Firestorm release? According to Ed Merryman: when it is ready.

The next Firestorm release is waiting on Linden code for the new Inventory API’s. These are changes that improve inventory loading speed and reliability. They are changes that are targeted at fixing the last of the avatar bake fail problems.

Fitted

If you use Firestorm, or any Second Life capable viewer not yet updated for Fitted Mesh (meaning most viewers), and come across someone wearing Fitted Mesh, depending on how it was made, you may see parts of the item stretching off toward the southwest corner of the region. 

Fitted Mesh in older viewers - image by Inara Pey

Fitted Mesh in older viewers – image by Inara Pey

It is thought there is a fix for the problem prior to the roll out of Fitted Mesh. The problem is caused because the avatar used by Fitted Mesh viewers is different than for non-Fitted Mesh viewers. There are additional bones in the skeleton. If your viewer doesn’t know about those bones, it does not know what to do with clothes that use the new bones. The result is vertices in the clothes are moved toward the 0,0,0 coordinate of the region (the southwest corner). Continue reading →

Avastar Fitted Mesh Tutorial

by

3

Gaia Clary released a new tutorial for using Avastar to make Fitted Mesh clothes. The video tutorial was published December 24th on YouTube.

This tutorial gives you a quick education on how Avastar is intended to be used. I think it also clearly shows that weighting is going to be a more complex task. Using the old bones, old as in pre-Fitted Mesh era, and weighting one could kind of get by using just the avatar’s skin weights and a rudimentary understanding of weighting. That meant for a short skirt one was focusing only on the mPelvis, mHipLeft, and mHipRight bones.

Now we will also be considering the Butt, Belly, Right_Handle, Left_Handle, and Lower_Back. That gives us a total of 8 additional bones to consider. Weighting was complicated enough with 3 bones.  Continue reading →