Materials Information

Everyone seems to be playing with materials. For those interested there are changes and new pages appearing in the SL Wiki. Second Life’s Light Model For Materials Case Study – Katana Using Normal And Specular Maps Case Study – Sequined Bear Using Materials Case Study – Example Wood Crate Using Materials  

Moving Your Avatar

Strawberry Singh is well known for her personality and gorgeous pictures. She has a talent for posing an avatar and composing a great image. In the blog post Moving your own Avatar! she explains how to position your avatar. I mean to actually move the avatar. One of the ways to move an avatar into just … Read more

Second Life Script Sources

I recently needed to see how some things are scripted in Second Life™. I went looking for an existing script similar to what I need. I came up with these sources for free Second Life scripts.

Free LSL Scripts
Free LSL Scripts
Waving Girl
Waving Girl

Free LSL Scripts – This site’s domain was obviously selected for search placement: Free-SL-Scripts.com. The blog style site, once you get to the free scripts page, shows popular, recent, and after scrolling down categories of scripts. This is a great site for beginning scripters, IMO.

The site includes a great collection of tutorials on all sorts of things related to SL.

They have an in-world shop too: Phaze Demesnes.

SL Wiki Script Library – This is the script library maintained by users on the SL Wiki. It is a good collection of scripts. Some are old. A few are new. 

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Second Life Hover

If you have played with the new avatar Appearance Setting HOVER you may have noticed it is less than ideal. The slider ranges from 0 to 100. At 0 the avatar is lowered 2m. At 50 the avatar is neither lowered nor raised. At 100 the avatar is raised 2m.

Since the sliders are integer settings each setting increment of 1 moves the avatar 4cm (1.6 inches) up or down. If you watch the change from 50 to 49, it looks like it moves more than 4cm to me. (see image below – click to enlarge images)

New Appearance Setting: HOVER
New Appearance Setting: HOVER

I’ve used third party viewers (TPV) to adjust my height and found much better control. But, with the release of SSA (Sever Side Appearance – baking) those adjustments in TPV’s will stop working.

SO… how do we get our height adjusted now? Well, the choice for now is Appearance HOVER. But, what if you only need to adjust 1 or 2 cm?

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Resetting the Origin of an Armature in Blender

The default Second Life animations have odd pivot points in the animations. If you are using them for import to SL then that is a good thing. If you are trying to use the animations for other purposes, like I am to pose the avatar for weighting clothes, it is a problem.

If you import the default SL animation into Blender, the feet are at the Blender 0,0,0 position. If you change to EDIT mode the hip is at the 0,0,0 position. In POSE more, again the feet are at the 0,0,0 position. See the image.

The problem with Default Sl Animations
The problem with Default SL Animations

That does not really matter for our use for making Second Life clothes. But the T-pose only being available in EDIT mode makes it hard to position the imported animation with our clothing avatar.

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Second Life Shape Export

I recently decided to buy Avastar-1 (RC2-782) and see if it could solve some problems I’ve run into with posing the avatar for weight painting. I’ve also had some problems getting custom mesh to fit my avatar. Tight skirts require everything be precise. Things weren’t as precise as I hoped. I was getting frustrated.

Comparing In-world with Avastar and OBJ Export
Comparing In-world with Avastar and OBJ Export

Avastar is an add-on for Blender sold by Machinimatrix.org for US$22. ($27 4/2017) I resisted purchasing it because I wanted to provide tutorials that provide a free path to accomplishing the same things. I’m in the process of updating my tutorial: Second Life Mesh Clothes Blender 2.6 Setup 2012 Tutorial. It’s almost a year old and a few things have changed. 

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