Uploading rigged mesh objects via using Blender (solution)

[Neural Blankes]

NOTE: The following is not guaranteed to work, but if you are stuck with issues keeping you from uploading a rigged mesh, this is something to try.  It works for me to a usable extent, though I've not done any high detail meshes (i.e. hair) with it just yet)

After several hours of fiddling with a few of the different options in Blender 2.6, I decided to see if the distortion I was having with uploading rigged meshes was anything to do with the version of blender or collada.

I do not know what other versions are out there, however from what I can tell, it is possibly a problem with collada.

That being said, if you want to upload a rigged mesh and are just beginning, this is what I ended up needing to do in order to get it to work.  This is not the final answer to the problems, and hopefully newer versions of blender and/or the collada exporter will resolve some of the problems people may be experiencing.

All that being said, it's pretty basic.

I followed this tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JHWDdrIeD0

Exporting with Collada v. 1.4 is important, as this may be where the issue is.

In order to get things to work on the final upload, I needed to use the following software:

Blender 2.49b : found here: http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.49b/

and Python 2.6.7 found here: http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.6.7/

Please note that these are NOT the newest releases of the two programs.  Grabbing the latest and greatest is where I started to run into issues, even though the newest version of Blender is a decent improvement.

There are a few rigged avatar meshes around, however if you can't find one, I have successfully used the one someone else posted on the forum which can be found here: http://blog.machinimatrix.org/3d-creation/blender-meshes-trail/meshes-overview/

The tutorial video on youtube stresses a small point in regards to finalizing your mesh rig, but I think it is worth repeating: when you get to the point of clicking the "make real" button, don't do anything further than clicking it (ignore the small options that pop up after you click on it).  There is also a video associated with the link for the avatar.blend file, though I've not gone through that just yet.

This is far from the final solution, but it is one method that appears to work, you just have to use older software.

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[Maeve Balfour]

Thanks for that Neural - I've been looking to get into rigging my meshes for SL at some point, but have been a little befuddled about where to start exactly (in regards to Blender version issues, relevant tutorials etc). Your tips and links here will go a long way to getting me underway, once I get the time to get into it properly.

:matte-motes-smile: