Rigging, Vertex Keys, Deformations

[Ryozu Kojima]

So, I've been looking around, experimenting, testing, and what I've gathered so far is that, with mesh avatars, they will deform with the body based on only some of the settings (Leg length, shoulder width, height) but not with all of the sliders. (Bow legg, breast adjustments and butt size.)  I know in the avatar.blend file that's around that the morphs are in vertex keys, but I've yet to figure out how to get the mesh to actually deform once it's in world.

 

Is this really the case, is it  not implemented?  Is there a way and I'm just not doing it right?  If it's not implemented, is it planned?

[Vivienne Daguerre]

At present there is no way to get weighted mesh to move with the morph sliders, so you are pretty much limited. However, bone length, shoulder width and hip width sliders do work on your mesh and that is a good thing.

You can make an alpha texture to be worn with your mesh which makes the body parts it covers invisible. That way you will not have feet sticking outside of boots and shoes, or a butt or breasts sticking out of your mesh.

This gets tricky when you don't want all of the avatar hidden, as in mesh clothing, but I have had some success with that. You have to consider it in your design, so that sleeves stick out a bit around your arms to leave room for variations in muscularity settings for example. Low cut designs around the breasts can also be tricky.

Because of this, there will still always be times when it is better to use clothing items that are textures on the avatar mesh. Skin tight things will be best done that way.

[Ryozu Kojima]

Just have to use most of the same tricks people have used for prim clothing.  Maybe in the future they'll let us rig for morphs, but I guess until then, no frilly bikinis.