what is "best" female avatar shape for a mesh clothing project?

[Rhys Goode]

I've been making some mesh necklaces, attachments, not rigged.   My necklaces never stray from the part of the torso 100% weighted to mChest, so they follow my body very closely.  I wear a tattoo made from the SL avatar UV template, so I can precisely align my necklace with respect to the SL mesh.  Both in Blender and in SL.  Thanks to Avastar, I can easily look at a small collection of SL shapes, and I see that even with the ability to scale x and y independently there are minor variations of the shape that you can’t tune out.  

The fit is better than I have ever been able to achieve with prims or sculpties, but not quite perfect, depending on the shape.  So, I use the default Avastar avatar shape, which turns out to be a reasonable compromise, at least for my shape collection. 

I was recently surprised to find out that the default Avastar avatar shape seems to be quite a bit different from the default SL avatar.  So I my simple minded guess of “use the default” was never doing what I thought it was

And I think I heard something about how starting from the default shape was important for fitted mesh.

All of which leads to the question on the subject line…

Any thoughts on what is the best “average” avatar shape to use? Is there a special shape that should be used as the starting point for rigged mesh?

[Gaia Clary]

Hi;

You sort of compare apples with pears here Actually the Avastar default mesh looks exactly the same in Blender and in SL. The reason for this is a bit complicated to explain in 2 sentences. Therefore i created (and just updated) an article on our Blog:

http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avastar-vs-workbench-skeleton/

There you find an explanation for why the "default skeleton" looks different from the Avastar skeleton. I also added an extract from a larger video about the SL skeleton. This video demonstrates the differences in shape when the default SL Skeleton is displayed in Blender and in the Viewer.

I hope this clarifies what is going on

[Rhys Goode]

Thanks for the references Gaia.  I am beginning to suspect that I do not understand what "default SL avatar" means.

I opened blender and inserted two instances of the defalt Avastar.  Then I went into SL, and used Advanced>Avatar>Character Test>>Test Female to set what I have always thought was the default SL avatar, fondly known as Ruth.  I exported her shape to XML, and loaded the shape onto one of the Avastar, and renamed her Ruth.

Avastar and Ruth are entirely different shapes.  Here are the slider readings for the torso:

 

slider	avastar default	"ruth"
torso muscles	50	36
neck thick	42	38
neck length	50	40
shoulders	41	23
breast size	50	59
breast buoyancy	43	21
Breast cleavage	19	36
Arm Length	80	44
hand size	50	27
torso lenght	50	29
love handles	33	14
belly size	0	0

 

Now I know that if I tightly fit some clothing to the XNL based torso in Blender, it seems to fit perfectly in SL for the same shape.  Avastar, Blender and SL line up perfectly for me.

So, I am still confused.

[Gaia Clary]

The default shape

Is what you get when you create a new shape in the SL Shape editor.

Avastar's defaut shape

Almost exactly the same shape as the SL Default Shape. I tested this dozens of times, currently there is only one visible deviation on the mouth and on the left foot.

The Restpose Shape(*)

Is the shape that is available from the Avatar workbench and avatar.blend. I believe there is also a Collada file for the restpose Shape in the Wiki (not the one for fitted mesh though!) this is what you want to use if you are a pure blender fan. It will work with acceptable quality for a range of character shapes, as long as the shape sliders (in SL) only change the bone length. When your shape uses one or more of the morph sliders (shape sliders which do not change bone length), then you may step into problems using the Restpose Shape.

(*) I originally named this the "anti shape" because i did not know better. Meanwhile i believe this is the restpose of the SL Avatar.

Advanced>Avatar>Character Test>>Test Female

This seems to be the "historical" default character as it was defined when Second Life came to Life (Ruth). But i believe that Ruth has nothing special and i believe it is not meant as reference shape. I have no idea what it may be good for, except maybe to serve as a historical document :matte-motes-wink-tongue:

[Rhys Goode]

Ahhhhhh! In many other places, I've seen "Ruth" refered to as the "default avatar", sometimes she is useful when you are stuck as a cloud. But that has always seemed a bit odd, she is so ill proportioned.  I'll have to be sure to call her "test avatar" in the future.

And Avastar works so well, I never even thought to look that carefully.

Thanks so much for the clear explanation! 

[ObviousAltIsObvious]

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Rhys Goode wrote:

Ahhhhhh! In many other places, I've seen "Ruth" refered to as the "default avatar", sometimes she is useful when you are stuck as a cloud. But that has always seemed a bit odd, she is so ill proportioned.  I'll have to be sure to call her "test avatar" in the future.

And Avastar works so well, I never even thought to look that carefully.

Thanks so much for the clear explanation!

 

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this is trivia but i like trivia.

Gaia's default is what you get when you create a new shape.

Ruth is a second default the viewer borrows parts from when it can't find out what an avatar's real shape, hair, etc. are supposed to be.

Test Female is not really a hard default, she comes from the inventory's "Library/Clothing/Female Shape & Outfit" folder. she used to look like http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4049/4298825609_597d8df673.jpg but was fired and exiled to a box in the Stillman Bazaar. her replacement looks like http://i.imgur.com/AFwfFE9.png and is played by the newer "Girl Next Door".

there is yet another default that is set with the DefaultFemaleAvatar debug setting. this can be any folder under "Library/Clothing".  this setting is used for new avatars that for some reason did not get an outfit assigned at registration time. normally this is set to be the same as the character tests.

[Iki Akiri]

Oh interesting, I always thought I was working on ruth but now that seems unlikely.

I used the SLAV avatar rig and now more recently an adjusted version of the fitted mesh rig provided on the wiki.

Anyone know if these come with the default shape? Or is it ruth?