Own Avatar Shape from SL to MAYA2013?

[koto Nizna]

Hi! First of all im very new in working with mesh so please bear with me ;) I have a noob question. How can you export your own avatar shape, skeleton and all the needed files to be able to work on creating rigged items to Maya? I've been searching for tutorials about this but unfortunately i can't find one.  I've heared about the new_architype.xml but i dont know the work around or how do you actually use the .xml file.  I hope someone could help me about this. Thanks in advance!

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

With the Firestorm / Phoenix Viewer it is very simple to get your current avatar mesh out of secondlife.

(Edit: ) get this Phoenix viewer version: Phoenix Viewer 1.5.2.1185 Windows

• Make sure you can see the “Advanced” menu at the top of your screen.(firestorm has it on by default)
• Select “Character” and then “Meshes and Morphs…”
• Under the ”Meshes and Morphs…” menu select ”lowerBodyMesh”
• Then select “lowerBodyMesh” again and then “Current Mesh”.
• Select “Save OBJ”.
• Repeat this process for your upperBodyMesh and your headMesh.

Now return to Maya and start a new scene, and import the 3 bodyparts. They should be placed in the right orientation and location to another in the scene.

• To get a working Armature (the Bone set / Rigging set) importer for Maya you can use Wiz's Maya Plugins http://wiz-bg.blogspot.dk/p/slav-maya.html (but the free version is limited to the default avatar) .
• Here is how it's being used : 

 

Wiz Daxter's plugin is making use of the archetype.xml file - which will answer this question too I hope.

 

• Or you use the pre-made Armature with a default Avatar Mesh which can be downloaded here: https://jira.secondlife.com/secure/attachment/59951/Default+Male+%26+Female+Rigged+Avatars.zip (it should include several file formats / inclusive Maya readable ones) 
• or from here: http://msstyle.host56.com/secondlife/_Default_Meshes/

 

It is in general not necessary to export the armature from your certain own avatar with all its morphs going on. To do rigged parts you should start with a clean default armature. So grabbing the file provided above is the easiest way. (and even wiz daxters can't - yet - export weights so this is something you need to copy for now from the default mesh coming with this file. (copy boneweights to your newly ex/and imported Avatar objs) and bind them to the default armature.

Since you couldn't find one - I dug you up a short youtube tutorial for SL mesh rigging in Maya:

And one for weightpainting in Maya:

But keep one thing in mind when you download your own avatar model and you are not using the default avatar mesh. When you would upload this back into SL then the existing weight / proprtions on the main bones will double their effect (since the mesh already had them applied when exported) so make sure to negate the bones values about this amount or try to balance it out insides of SL by lowering all shape values that correspond to these about the needed values.

Be also aware that a rigged mesh itself can not be influenced by all bones that are controlling the morphs (like breastsize, bellysize, foot-morphs, thighs etc) it can only be stretched and shaped by the main bones. (means the mesh can shrink and grow with you but you can not make it respond to the shapesliders for morphs)

The Machinimatrix Blog has a good entry explaining these matters:

• http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avastar/the-second-life-skeleton/

I still think the best way is to work with the default avatar mesh and depending on what you want to do. (clothes or full avatars etc ), to go on from there. 

When you make clothing you probably want to make it fit not only for you anyways, and have to keep all in middlevalues. (have a look around on the web for the common problems with mesh clothes and why these mostly require to change your morphs on the shape to get the clothes to fit correctly)

You said you are new to it, forgive me when I am interpreting this wrong, but I assume in this case you are generally new to the subject of modeling and rigging. And rigging and weights etc is already a bit more advanced. There is a lot to know.
Here is a general Workflow for meshexports from Maya to SL:

• http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Exporting_a_mesh_from_Maya

And if I was right, then you probably should grab some general modeling Maya tutorials first before jumping into this matter =)

Have fun creating, Cheers! Code

 

[koto Nizna]

Codewarrior thank you very much for this very detailed info! Thank you thank you!

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

awww.. you are very much welcome ! We can't learn if noone would be willing to share their knowledge  =)

[Coby Foden]

---

Codewarrior Congrejo wrote:

With the Firestorm / Phoenix Viewer it is very simple to get your current avatar mesh out of secondlife.

Get the latest Firestorm version: 

http://www.firestormviewer.org/

• Make sure you can see the “Advanced” menu at the top of your screen.(firestorm has it on by default)
• Select “Character” and then “Meshes and Morphs…”
• Under the ”Meshes and Morphs…” menu select ”lowerBodyMesh”
• Then select “lowerBodyMesh” again and then “Current Mesh”.
• Select “Save OBJ”.
• Repeat this process for your upperBodyMesh and your headMesh.

---

To be clear:

 

Latest Firestorm viewer does not have the current (=worn) avatar mesh OBJ export.

It might come available in some future - not yet released - version though.

Anyway, Phoenix viewer 1.5.2.1185 does have the OBJ export.  Works just like you described above.

(Note: Any newer versions of Phoenix viewer than the above do not have the OBJ export either.)

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

awesome thx for checking. Didn't notice they took that out at some point. (OP updated with link to this version)

[Nalates Urriah]

They didn't really take it OUT... they just have not gotten around to putting it in Firestorm.

There was some change in the SL system that created a problem for later versions of Phoenix. The FS Team never fixed it. They just dropped the feature for Phoenix.

Jessica has said a couple of times the shape to OBJ export is on the list of features to be added to Firestorm.

There are files available with the 'default' avatar and armature. The armature can be used with custom shapes you export with Phoenix 1185. You can read about the different files and shapes that are considered 'default' or base shapes in this article: http://blog.nalates.net/2012/05/20/second-life-mesh-clothes-blender-2-6-setup-2012-tutorial/2/ 

[neenabridhe]

As of Feb 2014 we finally have LL blessing for rigged mesh... could we please get some momentum on getting the ability to export mesh frameworks for avatars re-introduced?