Rigged Meshes: A Custom Avatar Checklist?!?

[TzunCet Xomotron]

I think I have caught up mostly on the news and ongoings of things, and now that I wanted to pick up where I left off I see that many new tools have been made available, not just related to SL, but 3D Graphics in general... Before my little vacation, I was able to do something of an "autorig" using Blender 2.49. It took a while to learn how to do that, and the installation and hunting of pythons and scripts and files was no fun at all. I had to learn to use Blender, and in all honesty, I guess deep down I just didn't want to incorporate it into any workflow of mines... I wouln't use it to model or texture, just for the rigging...

That said, I see that there are quite a few 3D aplications that handle weight map rigging and that also export Collada files... If these Collada files will work in SL is another issue.

What I want to know is if there is a "checklist" of sorts, do's and don'ts and practices that MUST be adhered to for a Collada/Mesh file to work properly in SL... Things such as the naming of joints, triangles or quads for the model, do models need to be uvmapped or not, do models need to be "closed" or not, overlapping polys... I'm just throwing random stuff, but I really haven't a clue (and I do know that some of the things I mention whouldn't be part of any "good" model, just listing some examples is all =P)

Blender, Max and Maya are all capable of producing working Collada files, but what if someone wants to use another program? I have no way to tell if it's a problem on my end or maybe something I am overlooking in my modeling process, the software, or if the export file just isn't compatible or not, so a checklist would be ideal for locking out problems. Were my previous issues model related, or rigging related?!?

If I missed this in a previous post or on the SL Wiki (a link would be awesome) please forgive me, but any advice, ideas, opinions, or past experiences you guys could elaborate on would be GREATLY appreciated, thank you =)

[TzunCet Xomotron]

No takers yet eh, thats ok =P

Hope I'm not coming off as a Blender hater. I don't hate it (that much =P), I would just prefer to use the programs I already have, know and am comfortable w/, I hope that's understandable...

Since I've only tried rigging for SL using Blender, I have no idea how the Max and Maya crew get theirs to work, so I'd like to know if using the rig from the Default SL avatar is a necessity, or can we make custom rigs?!?

Say for example, someone makes a t-rex kind of figure w/ short stumpy arms (maybe a tail?!?) that are seriously out of proportions. Is this doable or must all Avatars be humanoid bipeds based on the SL avatar rig? Do figures need to be rigged using weight-maps, meaning "regular" rigs won't work?

Just trying to get those custom design avatar parameters learned, to help avoid bad practice, thanks again...

[TzunCet Xomotron]

Ok, I see we can't do "custom" non-SL avatar based rigs, but can we at least make a rig of a biped based on the SL joint system to use w/ humanoid bipeds meant to mimic the actions the the SL avatars???