Blender Tricks & Developer Notes

5 Little Known Tricks in Blender’s Outliner This is an interesting tutorial on using the Blender outliner. See 5 Tricks for the original post. Blender Developer Notes Blender developers meet to discuss which directions to take Blender and which features to prioritize and schedule for release with the next version. For us we get a glimpse … Read more

nPose Sit Pose/Animation Tool – Tutorial

nPose is an open source tool for placing and controlling animations in furniture, or other prims which avatars can sit on. The tool has been around since at least 2010. (reference) I need such a tool for a sofa I am making. In my search I found nPose and thought it might be the answer. This tutorial is the outcome of my research. I am writing it in the early stages of my use of nPose, so expect this tutorial to get updates as I learn more. But, it should get you started.

Initial Note Card
Initial Note Card

The older nPose v0.028, also labeled as version 1.27, can be found here: User:Nandana Singh/nPose. nPose has had considerable work done on it since then. So, I do not recommend using this version, but it works.

A newer version is discussed here: User:Rev Eponym/nPose. The page does not include a download link. You can get the latest version of nPose at Builder’s Brewery. This SURL should pop you right in front of the vendor for nPose (free), at least as of October 2014.

The in world SL Group for nPose is named: nPose. There seem to be more people online in the SL morning than afternoon. I had better luck getting answers in the morning than afternoon. But, I haven’t been in the group long, so that may not be accurate.

Several people have been involved in advancing nPose. The latest work I found was done in June 2014. So, this is a script I consider under active development.

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Blender Texturing Tips

Indigo Mertel has a Plurk on an article on Blender Nation: 5 Texturing Tips for Technical Artists. Tis is well worth you time to check out. The tips are for rendering in Blender. For us in Second Life™ this means they are good for baking textures.  

Blender-AvaStar Animation IK/FK Tip

I am getting deeper into making animations I’ll use in Second Life™. I am a novice animator/modeler, so I probably don’t know the best way to accomplish any given task nor do I understand Blender cooncepts all that well. But, I wasn’t seeing any tutorials and I haven’t been in any classes that helped me with using both IK (Inverse Kinematics) and FK (Forward Kinematics) in a single animation. (See What is IK/FK for more information on IK/FK.)

Animating w/AvaStar
Animating w/AvaStar

Since I’ve had to figure out how to do this, I thought I’d make a short tutorial.

I used Blender 2.71 and AvaStar 1.1 RC3 while experimenting and writing this. 

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