Mesh Rigging Without Avastar

[Isaura Simons]

I made a mesh head, and want to use the Bento skeleton. I use Blender but do not use Avastar and have never had a problem rigging with the normal skeleton. My problem is that I parent the mesh to the bento skeleton and export, as I normally do, but when I upload to SL, under the Upload options tab, the boxes for "Include skin weight" and "Include joint positions" are not available to be checked. So if I upload the mesh is just a mesh, without a skeleton. I usually just parent the mesh to the skeleton, export, and upload. But that doesn't seem to be working and I do not know what I'm doing wrong. Every other tutorial is for Avastar, and I'm sorry, but I do not want to spend the money. (I did purchase it before it was a subscription and ended up doing the weights myself anyway.) So I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks!

[Aryn Gellner]

I'm not entirely sure what skeleton you're using, but there are two things to keep in mind from my findings:

1. You do not need all the vertex groups to be included anymore. Try deleting some and see if that helps.
2. If you're using a dev kit from a third-party (i.e. Slink) they may do something funny to the skeleton since they're assuming you have the Avastar plugin. I have tried using their templates directly and come across the same problem you describe.

I would suggest swapping the skeleton you currently have for the one provided by Machanimamatrix (http://blog.machinimatrix.org/fitted_mesh_survival_kit/). Currently I'm still working on finding a "vanilla" Bento skeleton similar to the one I linked above. I have discovered something on the same site (http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avatar-workbench/) but I have not gotten a chance to verify it.

Hopefully this helps. Please post any findings, as I'm sure others have similar questions.

 

EDIT:

I downloaded the Bento Female listed under "Bento Meshes (Without any warranty)" and replaced the armature from that file with the one in my existing WIP-rigged model. It seems to go in without trouble. I see the "Skin weights" checkbox enabled for me when I upload, as well. See if using that model/armature works for you. You may need to re-parent the model and/or add in the new bone groups.

Edited November 18, 2017 by Aryn Gellner

[Isaura Simons]

I completely forgot I had posted this. Yes, I found out I didn't have to use the whole skeleton. My problem was "too many bones" once I deleted the extra bones it loaded with no problem.

Thank you so much for the answer! I will go check out the links.

[WESTCAT]

3 hours ago, Aryn Gellner said:

I'm not entirely sure what skeleton you're using, but there are two things to keep in mind from my findings:

1. You do not need all the vertex groups to be included anymore. Try deleting some and see if that helps.
2. If you're using a dev kit from a third-party (i.e. Slink) they may do something funny to the skeleton since they're assuming you have the Avastar plugin. I have tried using their templates directly and come across the same problem you describe.

I would suggest swapping the skeleton you currently have for the one provided by Machanimamatrix (http://blog.machinimatrix.org/fitted_mesh_survival_kit/). Currently I'm still working on finding a "vanilla" Bento skeleton similar to the one I linked above. I have discovered something on the same site (http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avatar-workbench/) but I have not gotten a chance to verify it.

Hopefully this helps. Please post any findings, as I'm sure others have similar questions.

 

EDIT:

I downloaded the Bento Female listed under "Bento Meshes (Without any warranty)" and replaced the armature from that file with the one in my existing WIP-rigged model. It seems to go in without trouble. I see the "Skin weights" checkbox enabled for me when I upload, as well. See if using that model/armature works for you. You may need to re-parent the model and/or add in the new bone groups.

Can you make a mesh statue?  If so is/are there any simple step by step instructions or video?  thank you