Beginner help?

[Tattorack]

Hey there!

I  finally got a computer powerful enough to run Second Life, so I thought, why not?

Then instantly got dissappointed by what is avaible for free to customise, or even just make, my character.

But why rely on others when you can do it yourself? Yes, I do, in fact, have plenty of knowledge of how to model 3D (characters and whatnot) and my preffered program is Blender 3D. The problem is, I'm not finding any really helpful getting started tutorials. I want to make my own character fromthe ground up and I need to know how Second Life works with these kinds of things.

Obviously what I need are the basic bones that SL uses to animate character, with which I can assign bone heat/weight paint the appropiat body parts to. But I'm also presuming that SL is not so easy as just doing a bit of weight painting > import > profit.

What I've noticed is that the head, hair, upper body, lower body (including legs), hands and feet are all seperate meshes. So I'm presuming I have to model all those seperately. Does this mean that equipping clothes/items works a little a-la Skyrim/TES games? (Where the armour/clothing item replaces the body part).

Also, what 3D format do I export my models to? How do I import models and textures to SL?

[arton Rotaru]

That's quite a few questions.

 

---

Tattorack wrote:

Obviously what I need are the basic bones that SL uses to animate character, with which I can assign bone heat/weight paint the appropiat body parts to.

But I'm also presuming that SL is not so easy as just doing a bit of weight painting > import > profit.

---

Well basically it is this easy. The skeleton with the currently required/supported bones can be downloaded here:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Rigging_Fitted_Mesh#Download_links

The only thing to take care of is that the final mesh file contains all the bones which are prefixed with a "m". Bone names like mTorso, mChest etc. pp.

The full list of mBones is this:

mHipRight mKneeRight mAnkleRight mFootRight mToeRight mHipLeft mKneeLeft mAnkleLeft mFootLeft mToeLeft mPelvis mTorso mChest mNeck mHead mSkull mEyeRight mEyeLeft mCollarLeft mShoulderLeft mElbowLeft mWristLeft mCollarRight mShoulderRight mElbowRight mWristRight

The file format for uploading mesh is Collada (.dae).

Unfortunately Second Life doesn't swap body parts. Any mesh uploaded will be just an attachment to the regular avatar mesh. You will have to hide the base mesh parts using alpha layers. Also, a custom full mesh body replacement can be one piece from head to toe. It doesn't have to be separate meshes.

Alot of useful information about around this topic can be found on the Machinimatrix website.
http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avastar/the-opensim-skeleton/

Also the Second Life Knowledge Base has quite some information available. As for how to upload a texture:

https://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Uploading-assets/ta-p/700165

Or mesh in general: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh

[Nalates Urriah]

There is a reason you aren't finding much new stuff... things are changing. See Project Bento.

For the existing avatar you can find the most complete information at Machinimatrix.org. Their videos are on YouTube, see https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gaia+clary Newer stuff is on Vimeo.

For old information on getting the avatar shapes from SL to Blender and some of the scaling problems see: http://blog.nalates.net/2013/04/23/second-life-shape-export/

 

[Tattorack]

Thanksfor the replies, guys!

Now I at least know where to start ^^

 EDIT: One thing though; Machinimatrix is trying to sell this "Avastar" blender addon for creating avatars in SL. That's just... nonsense (to use a milder word for it). Blender can obviously export in the format SL uses (that, or there'd already be a free plugin available), and if its for generating character meshes, Project Human and ManuelLab are both quite free.

[arton Rotaru]

Well, personally I don't use Avastar, because I don't use Blender in the first place. I just want to say though, don't make the mistake, and assume that Second Life content creators are dumb idiots, who wouldn't know that Blender can create and export Second Life compatible meshes without that add-on.

The majority of the people who bought, and still buy this addon are doing it, because they know exactly why they want it. There will be plenty of users who could (and probably will) tell you why they recommend getting it. (Since I don't use it, I can't obviously).

If you take a closer look onto the MAchanimatrix website, you will notice that they are the last who will force you into getting the add-on. They provide plenty of information which is not specific to the Avastar add-on as well.

[Gaia Clary]

---

Tattorack wrote:

Thanksfor the replies, guys!

Now I at least know where to start ^^

 EDIT: One thing though; Machinimatrix is trying to sell this "Avastar" blender addon for creating avatars in SL. That's just... nonsense (to use a milder word for it). Blender can obviously export in the format SL uses (that, or there'd already be a free plugin available).

---

Of course you can do almost everything just with pure Blender, but there are a few things you can't do easily (unless you program some functionality on your own which is of course doable as well).

Also i "officially" maintain the Blender Collada exporter especially to ensure that it always creates Collada files which can be imported to Second Life. And you can be pretty sure that i continue with this for another couple of years :matte-motes-nerdy:

So Blender is ready to be used out of the box for Second Life creations, even for fitted mesh to some extend. Although Fitted Mesh support is very basic and you need to know exactly how to do this and i can tell you its ugly, see:

    http://blog.machinimatrix.org/fitted_mesh_survival_kit/

Now to Avastar

We (Machinimatrix) created this Addon to help new users to step up quickly and advanced users to get their work done faster.There are actually a couple of features in this addon which you would not get by pure Blender unless you put a lot of work into it.

Here is a rather outdated (text only) comparison between what you can do with pure Blender and how you would do this with Avastar:

    http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avastar/compare-to-workbench/

And again, yes you can do whatever we have done by yourself. Its just so that we put about 10 person years of development into this Addon to create an almost perfect replica of the Second Life Environment in Blender.

Actually Avastar reads the Avatar definition files (avatar_lad.xml and avatar_skeleton.xml) to generate the Avastar rig, the Mesh dummies and an exact replica of the Appearance sliders in Blender...

---

Tattorack wrote:

and if its for generating character meshes, Project Human and ManuelLab are both quite free.

---

While you mention ManuelLab, i can not hold back and put this in front of your nose :matte-motes-evil:

But ...

Even with Avastar you can only create good stuff if you know about 3D Modelling and Animation. It is not a tool that allows to make stuff by 3 mouse clicks. Because of this i hesitate to sell this addon to newbies. Even if it helps to step up quickly. I always recommend to first learn Blender, then learn rigging for SL, then decide if you need Avastar or not.

To sum up: I got so much positive feedback from content creators, so that i believe what we did is not exactly Nonesense.