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 … Read more
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.
[youtube I91MqgrbQyw]
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.
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 … Read more
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.
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 12/16/20134/2014. 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.
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
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).
Gaia Clary released a new tutorial for using Avastar to make Fitted Mesh clothes. The video tutorial was published December 24th on YouTube.
[youtube jzZbDqZ6fg4]
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.
