The Latest Word 6/1 Late
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The rest of the article below is mostly outdated now.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.
================================Original Below================
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.
So, I did a bunch of experiments thinking it might be an update problem in AvaStar. I ran into something like this before. See: AvaStar Tutorial: Adding the Slink Model to AvaStar (March 2017).
