As of January 1, 2023, the Slink brand of bodies and clothes is closed. Short notice. Siddean Munro announced the closure January 1 effective immediately.
For many of us this is a big deal. I am a Slink fan girl. I love my Redux Original body. AKA the Physique body. It is my everyday body. And when I make clothes, I make them for Slink.
The reasons for Siddean deciding to close are given on her company’s blog: Slink is closing – 1-1-2023 (PDF version of the page).
Slink Closing
I appreciate Siddean and her contributions to the Second Life community. I believe her bodies have always been and are the technological leaders in the field. There is no technically better body.
I am saddened by the closing and to learn of the stresses in Siddean’s life. I wish her and her’s the best.
While I have not been paying a lot of attention to other bodies, I have from time to time looked at them and played with demos. The leader in the field is unquestionably Maitreya. I have Maitreya demos. I do not like the body because of how the shoulders are made and how the joints animate. Both are deal breakers for me.
So, now I will be looking at alternatives. While I had been thinking of a change to Cinn & Chai they are part of the Slink empire that is closing. That idea is out. But I am glad I purchased Cinn & Chai during the recent sale.
I suppose I may do reviews of the various bodies as I look at them. But there is no rush. The Slink bodies will continue to work for years to come. And there is a huge inventory of clothes for the Slink bodies. While few designers are designing for Slink these days, and the number is likely to decrease, there are numerous designers designing for Slink and lots of clothes for Slink. I know I bought over 150 new dresses and other clothes in 2022. So, no need for immediate change.
Every so often I stumble onto something in Second Life™ I didn’t know about. Slink’s Deluxe Feet Auto Switcher is one of those things… and I’m a Slink fan.
Slink has five foot-positions in their main body HUD, Slink Physique (F) Utilities HUD (Redux) V4.0.0.
Slink’s Hand & Feet Controls v4.1.0
I’ve been putting on the HUD every time I needed to change foot positions. It can take a minute for the HUD to fully render. But the way I dress that usually isn’t a problem. I’m a top to bottom girl. By the time my dressing routine that I am picking out shoes the HUD has had plenty of time to rez.
When I change between existing outfits, going from a club to the beach, it can force me to wait on the HUD. However, there is a solution for the existing Outfit problem, the Foot Switcher. Makes the wait go away.
In December Siddean Munro made a video of how to easily make
the various Slink sizes.
I think the video shows how easy and quick it is. So, I continue to be baffled at why so many provide only Hourglass sizes of their products. Especially when discussions in the SL Forum show growing support for the Slink Redux bodies.
If you are a Slink Original wearer, Physique or Redux, and your designer isn’t making the sizes you need, send them a link to this article.
I happen to like Slink, so I build what I can wear. For me that means using the Slink Developer Kit. Finishing some stuff up I decided it is time to update my AvaStar, Blender, and Slink Kit before moving on to new things. Also, I wanted to try out the AvaStar feature that adds Dev Kits.
The highest Blender I have is version 2.79c. This can get a bit confusing. The official release is 2.79b according to the Blender.org site. The main download provides an MSI file for use with Windows. This is a basic Windows install file. Not what I suspect most developers want. We want the ‘Archive’ file, the one that allows us to have multiple versions installed. You get that from the same download page just look in ‘other versions’ and grab the ZIP file. Continue reading →
AvaStar is at version 2.3-1 released 17 January 2018 according to announcements in the Blender-AvaStar group. In the products page where I download the file, it is labeled 2.3-2. The release is called a bug fix. It has 10 bug fixes and 4 improvements. See the changelog here. Notice the Dev Kit manager…
Blender is currently at version 2.79a. The Blender download is here. The Portable version is the version I use so I can have multiple versions installed. I’ll explain why later.
Blender Download March 2018
Today I see Slink released an update to their Dev Kit for AvaStar. I find the email got to me yesterday 3/19. It tells me, “The bodies in these kits have been reworked from the ground up, for better geometry, more accurate weighting and better fit!” (Emphasis is theirs.)
Also, Slink Development now has a Discord Server for developers. The link is in the email. Siddean is available 9 to 5 Eastern Australian Time… Australia has 13 time zones… O.O so… divide by 13 then 24 and multiply by… and turn the world around once… and that gives us 4pm to 12AM SLT/PT. Technically, they are 17 to 18 hours ahead of California, depending on Daylight Saving Time. If it is Monday here it is likely Tuesday there.
If it weren’t for the International Date Line they would be 5 to 6 hours behind California. Continue reading →
There is a Slink update out. I started seeing people talking about it in the Slink, Classy gear for classy babes group.
Slink Versions – It is hard to stay current unless you refer to this page: Slink Versions. It provides the version numbers for the latest versions of hands, feet, body, heads, and HUD’s.
As of late 3/6 or early 3/7, depending…, there is a new ALMOST release from Slink: Petite Augment Pack. The ‘almost’ means info has leaked, but the item is not yet in the Slink store. As of 3/7 @ 3PM SLT/PT.
New Slink Item – Petite Augment Pack
I suppose this is an enhancement for itty-bitty-titties… Is this a new trend or is Siddean Munro just swimming upstream? I don’t know. But, I’m not a fan of blimp size breasts. I think B and C cups are best. So, I think this is pretty neat. Continue reading →
The Slink people have come out with a new tool for those making Appliers for Slink bodies. Siddean Munro has made a video of the tool: Slink Texture Studio. The formal announcement from Slink is here: The Slink Texture Studio – for Creators!
A really interesting feature is the ability to use textures on your local computer without having to upload them. Instructions start at 04:50.
I know Firestorm has a feature to allow the use of local textures, those on your computer. I hadn’t realized the feature is also available in the Linden Viewer.
The Studio has a land impact cost of 71 prims. That pushes me over my main grid parcel’s limit. So, for me, this is a tool for the ADITI grid or AGNI sandboxes. Of course, while it can be used in either grid, if you do use it on ADITI the UUID’s used and generated will not work in the AGNI grid.
Talking with Eleanora Newell (AvaStar) and Siddean Munro (Slink) We have come to the conclusion the updater in AvaStar 2RC8 has a bug. It will supposedly be fixed in 2RC9. Fortunately, we don’t have to deal with the bug.
Siddean Munro has updated the May 2017 Slink Dev Kit. The May Kit updated to AvaStar 2.0.30. It is now a June 1 Kit updated to 2.0.46, the newest AvaStar.
So, just download the Kit again and get the latest version.
Also, if you are moving older projects to the new version, Append those objects to the new updated avatar. It is easier, faster, and presents fewer problems than trying to update the rig.
Talking with Siddean,
Heya, I’ve been chatting with Eleanora and Gaia [AvaStar peeps] about the update process. It’s not entirely unique to my kit.
There was some bug with the update process that Gaia says she’s fixed, will be released in the next version of the release candidate, and Eleanora says you need to have the little snowflake enabled on the update tool for the female body, and to uncheck “male” under the appearance sliders on the male body.
I found it just easier to add the new rig and attach the bodies to it, than mess around with their update tool. It’s always been problematic.
I will be advising anyone who asks to download the latest from my DropBox though, I will try and keep on top of Avastar updates as much as I can.
The thing you described with the bones all rotating from their individual origins – I asked about that in the Blender channel the other day, and someone responded she’d had the same issue as me, and locking and unlocking the bones did the trick. 🙂
I don’t really know why they lock the bone rotations. It’s like they have AvaStar all setup for animations, but we have to jump through so many hoops to get the rig ready for creating mesh with it. I’m going to send them a NC with some thoughts today so I will put in a suggestion for a rig setup toggle – animation to skinning maybe.
The best thing you can do with your older projects is append them into the new kit, rather than updating the old rig and risking errors from the old body meshes.
…
Eleanora just messaged me that the update tool is broken, the sliders don’t work. So appending to an updated rig might be better in the short term until they figure this out.
The rest of the article below is mostly outdated now. However, if you need to update a rig, you may find some help in it.
Having some problems with newly released Slink model? I did. Took me some time to figure out how to get it working. This is the ‘step-by-step’ to getting an integrated Slink-AvaStar working base.
PS: 6/1/2017 – Various people and myself are running into additional problems. Be sure to read the comments. BUT…
Siddean Munro has resolved the problem. A new Dev Kit was released 6/1/2017 that is updated to AvaStar 2.0.46. So, save yourself some heartache and get the new file. If you are updating one of your older files, the information in this article may help.
As it appears now, the fix is to replace the old rig with a new AvaStar generated rig and avoid trying to update.
The model released by Slink is made with AvaStar 2.0.30 (or 2.0-Beta-30). The latest release of AvaStar as I write this is 2RC8 (or 2.0.46). The original Slink file works just fine. Whether you are Skinning and Wight Painting or Animating.
Here is the problem I found.
The file as received works as I expected. In Blender Weight Paint and Pose Mode, the bones behave as I expect. Once I ran the AvaStar Rig Update, the bones were screwed.
