UPLOADING THE RIG...AND NOTHING ELSE!

[ROMSEY Homewood]

A quick Q. for you today, is it possible to upload just the rigging of an avatar? I don't want any mesh parts as it for a robot with solid prims, I just want to up load the "shape" of it. If so what is the format, simply .dae?

 

Thank you in advance. :smileytongue:

[Chosen Few]

Your question doesn't quite make sense, as worded.  Rigging is the relationship between the skin (mesh) and the deformers (bones).  If there's no skin, there's no rig, just like how if there's no skeleton, there's no rig.  In order for rigging to happen, you need both.

If you're asking if you can upload just the skeleton, the answer is no.  The skeleton already exists in-world, so there's no need for that.  When you upload a rigged mesh, the data that SL looks at is the mesh itself, the skin weights, and optionally, the bone positions.  It does not import the bones themselves; it's already got those.

To make your robot, simply attach the prims in-world, and hide the real avatar skin with an alpha mask.

 

I'm also not sure what you meant by "shape", in the context you wrote it.  That word usually refers to the model's sculptural form, which would mean the mesh.  But you stated you did not want to upload the mesh.  I have to assume, therefore, that you were talking about the configuration of the skeleton.

If you're trying to ask if you can use a custom skeleton, different from the default avatar skeleton, the answer again is no.  At this time, SL only allows for the use of the one and only skeleton it already knows about.  Support for custom skeletons is still a long way off.

If you just meant that you've got the skeleton posed in an ususual manner, but not actually physically altered, that can certainly be replicated in-world.   Export the pose as a BVH animation, and upload it to SL.  Plug the pose into an animation override in-world, and use the override keep the avatar posed that same way.  Ditto for any movement animations, if it needs to move in any non-standard ways.

[ROMSEY Homewood]

Ty! you answered all my queries and MESH still has a long way to go but it's fun getting there, isnt it?.....wouldn't be fun if it was easy! :matte-motes-big-grin-wink:

 

Dang! i so want to fiddle with the skeleton.

 

Amplify your awesome

[freston]

The Collada file can have the bone locations and this info is used when "joint positions" is selected in the importer. Unfortunately you need a weighted mesh for "skin weights" option to become available, once you tick that then "joint positions" becomes available if the data is in the collada file. 

However, if you just want to create a deformer just create a mesh with a tiny single triangle weighted to mPelvis say and sitting at the origin of that bone so it will never be seen.

[Burtrum Forester]

Yes, it can be done, like freston said. Here's a tutorial I put up on youtube a while back, using an older version of Blender. I'm not sure how different it would be trying this on the newer version.

I call this a Mesh Hybrid, since you use the mesh/skeleton as your frame to put prims, sculpts, etc on.

 

Hope this helps you,

Burtrum

 

*added* There is a store that already sells a variety of different sized /mesh/skeletons, but right off-hand I can't recall the name.