Question for those with some experience in creating Mesh Avatars.

[Cyrule Adder]

I'm looking to creating a mesh avatar body. It's main intention is for use with Roleplay sims, as a more monsterous humanoid creature. If it gets used as a regular day to day avatar, so be it. So obviously it's not intended to compete with the name brand avatars. That being said, it'd be incredibly unlikely for it to get wide spread mod support unless it just soars with disproportionate popularity. 
 

My hopes is that the avatar would be able to fit some of the standard sizing clothing options, along with specifically tailored options. The proportions of the avatar would be roughly the same, but it's intended max height would be 4.6ft and below (1.53333), as it is a goblinoid creature (Skaven, Kobold (DnD modern and Dogbold equivalent), Goblin, . So most likely those clothing options would be XXS,XS,S. There is a few reasons why I don't try making a mod kit. This is mostly because shrinking down the average size avatars does not produce a proportional effect, unless and I guess... you design with the intent for them to be that small. The bodies that can reach those proportions in an aesthetically pleasing way, are typically  universally banned on roleplaying sims (the intended target).

 

Anyone know a good way to approach this, or should I just drop trying to be compatible with clothing options? My initial thought was to open avastar and match the settings. Then try to shrink the avatar down as much as possible and see what the changes in proportions would look like. And try to keep the joint positions for major areas like shoulders, chest, arms,  and waist. Try to make some changes that will allow it to continue to fit certain parts. Then Faff about with a dummy on the beta-grid to see if I can get something servicable. But if I can save weeks of tinkering, instead of making, that would be good.

Edited August 14, 2020 by Cyrule Adder

[OptimoMaximo]

3 hours ago, Cyrule Adder said:

Anyone know a good way to approach this, or should I just drop trying to be compatible with clothing options?

What you're looking to achieve requires custom joints position. Unfortunately, shape sliders work offsetting position and scale of the collision volume bones using a direct connection between slider value and the connected joints position and scale. So while the scale values can definitely work, the position offset is the part you should be careful of, trying to keep the collision volume bones in their local positions (relative to the parent) unchanged from the originals. This whole process is not impossible, but it's difficult to get it done right as it's VERY much prone to error, unless you can script your way through the process within your 3d app (and still be able to make the shape sliders work for testing purposes). 

[Cyrule Adder]

20 hours ago, OptimoMaximo said:

What you're looking to achieve requires custom joints position. Unfortunately, shape sliders work offsetting position and scale of the collision volume bones using a direct connection between slider value and the connected joints position and scale. So while the scale values can definitely work, the position offset is the part you should be careful of, trying to keep the collision volume bones in their local positions (relative to the parent) unchanged from the originals. This whole process is not impossible, but it's difficult to get it done right as it's VERY much prone to error, unless you can script your way through the process within your 3d app (and still be able to make the shape sliders work for testing purposes). 

So If I am understanding this correctly. You can manipulate the joint positions (effectively changing the length of the bones), and still fit some standard clothing options as long as the Collision bones are rotated in a fashion relative to the parent bones that they maintain the same positioning?

Like... if I stick my hand out, and called that 1. Then bed over 90 degrees and turned left twenty without moving my hand. It's still 1?

If that's the case, I think Avastar does something like that. If not, I it's not terribly hard to script it, as it's mostly math at that point.

 

And can the Collision bones be resized to match the body?

Edited August 15, 2020 by Cyrule Adder

[Quarrel Kukulcan]

2 hours ago, Cyrule Adder said:

So If I am understanding this correctly. You can manipulate the joint positions (effectively changing the length of the bones), and still fit some standard clothing options as long as the Collision bones are rotated in a fashion relative to the parent bones that they maintain the same positioning?

Changing some body shape sliders causes collision bones to relocate and scale (but not rotate -- rotating is actually irrelevant to this issue). If your custom skeleton also contains location changes on the collision bones, SL's shifts could interfere with yours, or override yours, or cause disproportionate child movement, or...

[OptimoMaximo]

2 hours ago, Cyrule Adder said:

Like... if I stick my hand out, and called that 1. Then bed over 90 degrees and turned left twenty without moving my hand. It's still 1?

If that's the case, I think Avastar does something like that. If not, I it's not terribly hard to script it, as it's mostly math at that point

This is called a bind pose, something that avastar is supposed to deliver although Blender doesn't support this feature, natively. 

2 hours ago, Cyrule Adder said:

You can manipulate the joint positions (effectively changing the length of the bones), and still fit some standard clothing options as long as the Collision bones are rotated in a fashion relative to the parent bones that they maintain the same positioning?

Careful with this. As mentioned above, Blender doesn't support bindposes and avastar does the tricks under the hood to make it compatible with SL. because most if not all joints have some properties that make them custom posed. Whether that be their scale or some sort of rotation, and many collision bones start with some rotations. 

Standard clothing would fit, yes, but again the new joint positions would deform the mesh clothing to follow, therefore a slight repositioning can work, but the farther away from the default positions, the more severe those deformations will be... Which limits your reshaping freedom. 

In my opinion, it's just better to avoid trying to have compatibility and make clothing for your custom avatar. If that takes off, just make a devkit. The results will be not just better, but easier to make clothing work.