Working with Blender 2.79 without Avastar

[evoludie]

Hello all,

I would like to know if Blender 3D have all the necessary tools for the exportation of clothing to second life. Nearly all tutorial have seen uses Avastar and as I do not have this plug-in, I would like to know if there are users who works without it and if yes could share a few tips. I use Blender 2.79 and I'm having a lot of issues with the export process.

Thanks in advance for the help you can bring me.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

You can indeed but it won't be easy.

[evoludie]

Hello Kyrah. Is there some documentations or tutorials you could point me to?

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Not really, unrigged is pretty straightforward, just make yourself a preset with SL/Opensim mode ticked and "selection only" and you're pretty much set.

For rigged you need a skeleton that matches the SL one closely enough, the older devkit for a body i use came with its own skeleton so i never had to reverse engineer that.

For fitmesh, you kinda want avastar because of the deforming bone behavior.

[Macrocosm Draegonne]

Once you try that manually a few times, then watch an Avastar video... lol, you will want avastar, it will save you tons of time, and time is extremely valuable, and you get Avastar for the price of one good dinner.

[HeatherD Tungsten]

I am a mesh body designer, and I do NOT use Avastar.  I also make all my own clothes for my avatar body.  You may have seen these around Second Life with the brand name Ultra Vixen.

The process to upload into SL is actually fairly easy.  But I am using BLENDER 2.76b.  I let BLENDER upgrade to the next version at one point but that new version was no longer compatible.  I had to go back to version 2.76.
Further, I used the Second Life Demo avatars - both the Classic and the Bento - imported those into BLENDER, deleted their mesh but retained the armatures.  I then modeled my own mesh, did custom weight painting, texture mapping, and either tiling or texture painting skin or fabric.

The steps to upload an avatar or clothing model are:
In BLENDER...
1,   In Object Mode, select your mesh.
2,    From the top menu - File - Export - Collada.
3,   Blender changes the screen - look in the side panel for the Drop Down "Export COLLADA"  The first selection shows "Operator Presets". Click the arrows to show the menu and select "SL+Open Sim Rigged".  After you select that, the box will still read "Operator Presets" but the selection inside has been changed.
4.  Now add a new file name, it will get a .dae suffix automatically.
5.  Finally at the far right, Click the "Export COLLADA" button.   The window reverts back to your 3D creation panel.   And you will have a new *yourname*.dae  file in the same folder as your project.
Now to upload the *yourname*.dae into Second Life....
1.   Load Second Life and open your Inventory Window.
2.   At the bottom of the Inventory, click the plus sign "+".  That shows you a new menu.  Select UPLOAD - and from the next menu MODEL.
3.  A file upload window opens.  Locate your *yourname*.dae file on your confuser's hard-drive.  Click the OPEN button.
4.  Second Life then shows an UPLOAD MODEL window.
5.  There are a number of fields and check boxes here to look at.   a) type a model name in the Model Name box.  b) In the "This Model Represents" drop down, select your best type (in my case uploading body parts and clothing, I have been using the "Avatar Shape" selection).  c) From the three tabs - select Upload Options.  d)  Check the following boxes - Include Textures - Include Skin Weight - Include Joint Positions (note, I have never actually had a texture upload.  I don't know why, but I've added textures manually once I WEAR the model).
6,   Click the "Calculate Weights & Fee"  button.   Second Life will take a few seconds to spit out a cost.  When done, that same button changes to an "Upload" button.
7.   Now click Upload and you will see your banked L drop by the previously worked out cost, and the Upload window closes.  You are done.

To see your work...
Locate your new 3D mesh object in your inventory.  You could rez it in a sand box, or wear it but don't just let SL put it anywhere.   You will want to control which bone it attaches to.  So, Right Click the object, and from the menu select Attach To > , from the next menu, select your preferred bone.   Now that you are wearing the item, you can play with the texture properties.  Right click it and enter Edit Mode - Texture Tab, and have fun.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

@HeatherD Tungsten Is that fitmesh? How do you do the fitmesh/non fitmesh bone blending without avastar tho?

[HeatherD Tungsten]

Hey Kyrah, I am not an expert, I am only learning BLENDER and only have a handful of the Second Life techniques figured out, but... you locate the Second Life sample avatars in the Second Life Wiki.  Load those into Blender.  Now I even forget the technical term, but you transfer your mesh Parent/child control to the Second Life Armature.  I did NOT use the Second Life weights.  I deleted the Second Life Mesh, and weight painted my own mesh to each of the individual bones so I could control how my mesh moved or deformed.   Then did the upload, and everything is "fitted mesh".  My avatar can take up quite an array of body shapes with little distortion.