Codewarrior Congrejo

hm. the password should normally be the exact same. Make sure you don't have accidentally capslock on or something. But what u can do to try and force a refresh on your data is to change your password on your regular secondlife account. on secondlife.com This will refresh and update your beta profile as well to all recent data of your current avatar. NOte: it can take sometimes a while until it updates. (in worst case after next server restart after 24 hours, but mostly worked within a few minutes for me)

normally ou dont type in 'Aditi'. Unless you edit the Grids or have a viewer that supports manual insert of Grids. make sure you have the 'grid selection' dropdown showing up on your login screen (goes for firestorm, phoenix, as well as the regular viewer - with shortcut : CTRL+SHIFT+G) From the dropdownlist you choose Betagrid or Aditi (depending on what it's named in your viewer) and in Location you 'type' a location like PathTest1 (see former answer / post)

.. PS: Murray or Balance work too. http://aditi.coreqa.net/gridtool.php

Aditi is a testgrid so regions can be down, or even become unavailable. What you can do when it tells you the region is unavailable, is type in manually one of the most available region names into Location in your Login Screen: Try PathTest1 or PathTest2, PathTest3 Once you are in, open the map and do a search for sandboxes. that should help you find a location to go to. If everything fails you can also try to login to homeposition. But PathTest1 works mostly for me.

yes all the major bonegroups must be there. It's hard to tell what went wrong. maybe you accidentally deleted them or didn't copy them properly (in case you copied the weights from a default avatar) or other things. But if you only have 9 groups that means your Rig or model is only weighted towards 9 bones. As far as i can read from your former Post it's a dress you are attempting to make. So probably you only weighted it towards the bones that you thought should influence it. In this case you have to manually add the missing vertex groups, with the propper naming into the model. These are the needed groups mPelvis mTorso mChest mNeck mHead mSkull mEyeRight mEyeLeft Arms mCollarLeft mShoulderLeft mElbowLeft mWristLeft mCollarRight mShoulderRight mElbowRight mWristRight Legs mHipLeft mKneeLeft mAnkleLeft mFootLeft mToeLeft mHipRight mKneeRight mAnkleRight mFootRight mToeRight One of some possible solutions: What you can do then is to add a single vertex somewhere insides of your model and weight it with 1.000 towards all missing groups / groups that shouldnt influence your dress. make sure the vertex is unconnected or its something hidden, so that it doesn't build a polygon/face.

http://www.shapeways.com/tutorials/exporting-from-maya-with-collada-3dprinting or http://colladamaya.sourceforge.net/ http://collada.org/mediawiki/index.php/OpenCOLLADA https://code.google.com/p/opencollada/downloads/list In case you are using maya 2012 or above, the collada export became unsupported or in newer formats of DAE that SL or older versions of other 3D software couldnt read. In that case you can get the FBX 2011.3 standalone converter and convert from there to collada. http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=16126812 Another Solution - if you have a maya 2009 version at hand is to Make the file in maya 2012 and save it as .ma file, open it in 2009 and export to DAE from there. In case you don't need any scene Data (like lights etc) and only the models and their materials. a simple export to OBJ (wavefront) is the easiest compatible across all platforms. Cheers.

=) glad i could help. Cheers!

When the mesh only shows missing faces when worn, but not when rezzed then its most likely a weighting issue. Vertices that are not assigned to any weightgroups (non weighted) will dissapear / be de-rendered when worn. I also encountered that sometimes with some vertices when all their assigned weights had been zero in their sum. (weighted but all influences are on 0.000 or below 0.010 weight) The inconclusive weighting could be the issue for DAZ too. Even though normally is kinda ignorant about that. Check out the vertices in the area where the whole appears and correct their weighting.

i see and yeah i think that's the better layout. Also the edits now on the 'briefs' are giving better UV and texture space. Funny wise the multires bake allways gives me troubles. especially since they just removed now the possibility to bake from level Zero to the highest -.- with the expression: no one would need that anyways. well i do? lol But yeah allways getting artifacts with multires bakes. But then again i mostly bake from a heavily sculpted (as in changes on the whole height-depth etc, structures, and so on - and not just plain subdivided by multires allone) very highdetail to a low detail mesh and that is, evidentally , not blender's strong suit. So i mostly take it out into other 3D Suits which have far better renderers, or additional available renderers. But in your case i agree and think the multires bakes gave the best outcome. Blender is trying to become better regarding the whole baking methods and results. Which is visible with all the things they added in the baking procedures. I hope one day they keep up with the others in that matter. =) Keep on going! Already looking forward to the final model =) PS: for general shape bakes i usually just do a AO bake. its the fastest way to get bright/dark areas, and with being light / shadow casting independed (which is better for games - since the lightinfluence happens insides the engine).. and later on add specularity maps, so the material itself defines how and where light is broken when it encounters it insides an engine. (specular maps etc is not available yet for SL, but ive seen they work on normals and spec already)

yes, if you only exportet the avatar with its deformations what you have is the Mesh / Model itself and no Armature. You can either use WizDaxter's SLAV tool : http://wiz-bg.blogspot.dk/p/main.html But the purchaise version is the only one allowing for custom avatar export. Or you just do what most do and grab the avatar workbench file: http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avatar-workbench/ Make sure to get the correct version for your blender version. It includes default female, male models and male and female skeleton. And one make-human model. Basically all you need to work. And then just copy & paste the weights from the included avatars to your custom export. Detailed workflow descriptions are in various forms on this forum and the web / youtube. (until version 2.65a you can download the copy boneweight scripts also from the avatar workbench website, with 2.66 you possibly need to check their new inbuild transfer weight tools) Cheers, Code.

As Rolig said, you can't do this by only moving some sliders in the shape settings. You would need to make a full 3D model for it. If that was what you were planning to do, you should post questions in the Creation > Mesh Section of the forum. And post screenshots with explicit workstep descriptions of the problems you encounter or have questions about.

There also have been Server restarts announced on SL for around that time. In case you tried to log in while one of those was running your problem might be solved by now. The Restarts are done.

Heya, i never ran into this certain error. Tried to look it up on the web and even in the JIRA and couldn't find anything related. Then i did a check on the grid status and found that they have been doing Re-rolls over the whole Grid: [Resolved 11:40 AM PDT, 27 March 2013] Today’s rolling restarts have been completed. [update 6:50 am PDT, 27 March 2013] We are undergoing rolling restarts for the RC server channels. Please refrain from rezzing no copy objects, making inworld L$ transactions and remember to save all builds So if this has never happened before and maybe works now correctly it might have been just based on the daily maintenance that your upload failed. And since it said: server error in the message that would make the most sense =) If it still appears, you could look into the mentioned Logfile to find out what the exakt problem was. Possibly even paste it to us here in a reply to the thread. So we can try to help you. Cheers, Code.

Hey Rahkis, found the time to scout quick over your Thread. So far it looks good to me . Just a few things i could give as suggestion: I would personally prolly rather make the cuts (blue) on top of the shoulder line and vertically under the armpit) To get UV shapes like the blue example outlines i drawn onto it. This will result in less texture stretching as compared to being stretched from a condensed topview (so to say) UV over the chest and back. And also easier to logically paint it. I have drawn into the lower right some orange arrows. Meanwhiles i like the 'spin' of the arm, it might be tricky for texturing as well as i animation. As long as you don't have a certain need for it (armorpart ?) i would prolly relax the whole edgeflow there a bit. But that's up to you =) And you could relax / spreaten the behind area a bit more or the texture will be a lot stretched there at the end when being applied to the model and especially in poses. (doesn't need to be as much as in my scriddle - but i guess you get the idea) To separate it into some sort of 'briefs' is absolutely okay and nothing wrong with it Edit - (updated the pic now*): Ah and what i forgot to paint in* : if the lower part of the last image is supposed to be the 'whole' front of the crotch. you should also give that one more UV space. and possibly think about cutting the brief's side-loops vertically in the middle, so that there is a bit of sides attached on the front UV part as well as on the back UV part of it. (the general texture spread (as in distortions / pixelated) and painting will be easier. Cheers, Code.

I posted you (and for others too) a whole thread about what i did to fix the file. Please read here : http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Ways-to-fix-a-problematic-Avatar-Rig/td-p/1947773 in order to know what 'you' will have to do now to finish this file and to make it complete, and to see what actually has been wrong with this model and its rig. PS: i sent you the file back by mail, but you will need to download the blender version i have posted you in the above link, in order to open it and be able to edit it. Cheers, Code.

I am continuing here for the original Thread of WhiteShark Zadark from this link: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Major-mesh-problem/td-p/1944861 WhiteShark asked for help with his rig and sent me and Gaia the files. Gaia gave him already some good tips in the former thread about obvious problems with the whole armature. I have taken the time to check it out, after recieving his file, and fix it (to a certain usable extend - you gotta do something on your own too Sharky ^.- in order to learn it =) (and it can be pretty time intense) And decided to document here what i did. To help him understand what was wrong and maybe also show others how to fix some problems many might run into. - NOTE: no shaking heads allowed for none of you - it's his first attempt to rig something. So things can go wrong =) And we are here to learn ^^ Here the problems he had with his rig: Now to inspect the file and find what's wrong: 1. ) Rotation and Scale and Origin problems: - As Gaia already found by inspecting his file the rotation was on 90° X and needed to be applied by using CTRL + A > ApplyRotation for the Meshmodel / in Object mode - Also i found that the Scale was not on plain 1.000 so i applied this too with Ctrl+A > Apply Scale. To make this it's 100% size. (also in Object Mode) - Next to it the model's origin was not on Location Center (0,0,0) so i made sure the model's origin was moved to it. SHIFT+S > Snap cursor to Center, and then Object > Transform > Origin to cursor - Note: Allways make sure your object has the same origin as the armature has - which is exact at 'center' (0,0,0) 2. ) Problems with the whole Armature: - Even though when comparing his first screenie of the former rig with the file i got, the bones had been different in the former version (still out of place like the hands, or shoulders being used as upper arm etc) but in the final file it was worse. - I have marked in the above image all the problems i found on the bones already - The bones have been in wrong places, not conform with the anatomy of the model at all. And in some cases again just stretched over several body areas. - There also have been misnamed bones in the armature, weird bonerolls and much more. 2. ) Problems with the weights: - i checked through all bones and there was a lot wrong weighting going on: - Major issues: Some bones had influences only towards one side of the body, - lots vertices had influences from wrong bodyparts (i.e. Vertices on the tail being influenced by the foot and so on) - And many vertices with more then just 4 weight influences causing them to be pulled all over the place when posed. - And various other problems. 3.) Problems with the Topology and certain bodyparts: - Even though he already listened to my former advide and moved the model into more of a T-Pose fitting to the skeleton i found the hands still needed to be fixed. - The hand was modeled into a forwards position, this is generally not a good idea for a 'relaxed t-pose' and problematic when working with existing rig-systems that are rather made to be straight. - To keep it unproblematic and avoid the need for deformation animations i straightened the hand out and fixed the adjacent topology of the whole forearm to connect correctly to the new position. Note: the model has 14.000 tris, thats pretty intense. I can understand if you don't want to redo it on this model. But for future models try to keep it lower. (as reference: the default avatar has ca. 7.000 tris) There are defenitally areas that wouldn't need such a density and where you could have spared surely 3-5 k. - The topology of the fin on the backside of the ellebow was also problematic. - Around 6 Vertices had been sunken into the model. And with very extreme angles causing the faces / normals to stretch, faces to intersect, and cause troubles when animating, and for texturing purposes as well. - So i went on and fixed most of it, by merging vertices and keeping the 'quads' intact. - Corrected the surrounding topology, and the steep face angles and stretches too. PS: i don't know if you did it on purpose, if so you might want to change this again. But i found it needs to be fixed. - To not have to repeat those steps for both bodyparts and with keeping in mind i need to do the whole parenting and weighting new, i decided to delete the opposite half of the model and work with a mirror modifier in the Y axis. - I removed and deleted consequently all Vertrex Groups (thereby the weights), and also deleted the armature modifier to get a plain and fresh model again. - Since i figured in the former post and by talking with him that this is meant for a male avatar i grabbed a default male armature. - The old one was too messed up and i find it allways faster to start from scratch than going through tonns of wrong values, trying to fix them, with the risk of overseeing things and repeating it over and over. Plus the weights had to be redone too, so best here just all fresh from the beginning. And start right with a correct armature and new weights. - Then positioned the bones in editmode (in plain orthographic views: top, side, front to avoid fancy bone rolls) to fit the whole anatomy of the model. Personal Note: In general, never be afraid to start over on your models. Don't cling onto the weights you have created, or topology, even if it took you days. If it's too messy, just start over. And you will see the more often you do that the better you will become at it - 'practive' is the magic word =) - Now parented the Mesh with automatic weights to the armature. - I generally never copy / paste weights from the default avatar, i am used to make my own from my daily work. But that's up to all of you of course (and for beginners surely easier). But for this certain case and something that has such a different topology and anatomy it doesn't make sense to copy the weights at all. - Began to tweak weights roughly to get a working model. - The tail needed the most attention here the automatic weighting assigned it to many unwated bones. I removed those influences completely from it. - Now exported the Model along with the Armature, into a Collada DAE file. By using the operator preset for Second Life Rigged in Blender (2.65 and above) 4. ) Now on to see if all the fixes worked : - since i basically 'redid' the whole armature and the weighting from scratch it should èé lol - created a new 'default shape' - choose "edit shape" and switched it to male. (no further sliders or values touched) - The model has absolutely no LODs (thats something you will have to do later WhiteShark - it's gonna be in the afterwards following to-do-list) - So had to upload it with some of the generic options for the LOD levels. - Included Skin and weight / and Bonepositions and imported the model. - Then wearing the shape and the rigged model. And there you go ! your model worn, fixed and working. BUT - and here comes what 'you' have to do now on your own: - Get Blender 2.65 a ) so you can work with the file which i will send you back now. - You also need it to have the new inbuilt DAE Exporter with the Secondlife Operator Presets. To apply the mirror and other modifiers (except armature - but no worries the exporter skips this one) And to create a fitting export for SL purposes. - You will still have to refine the weights, the shark's face needs to be fixed: remove the eye influences and shoulder, and other unwanted influences. (set them to Weight Zero, so they are applied but have no influence) - Rule: Every vertex must have at least 1 influence and every main bonegroup must be apparent in the Collada file. - The tip of the fin of his back has a few vertices that respond to unwated influences, remove those too. - The upper legs and the behind need more tweaking too. - Tweak the rest of the weights to your likes until it behaves like you feel it's right. - Use Posemode in Blender to check how it behaves in certain poses. - Upload the model in between to the testgrid to see how it behaves and if it maybe has missing groups and thus invisible faces all of a sudden. Check as much with testuploads as you can. Note: do it on the betagrid - i had posted you a full how-to about the betagrid as answer in the former thread. - Create 3 further LOD levels of your Model once you are happy with the weights. And important : 'after' applying seams and UVs and Material faces. So faces amount and UV stay the same. - Possibly refine the UVs and weights on your 3 Lower LOD models to behave / look correctly. - Create a lowpoly physics shape for it. If it would be more humanoid you could skip that and rely on the collisionbones the avatar has, but with his long tail and way longer arms and the different head it needs a physic shape or it won't behave realistically when bumping into other avatars and objects and with physics in general. - Export all 4 LODs each along with the armature (and UVs, and Material- Groups) as single DAE files. - Export The lowpoly physics shape also as DAE. (make sure it has the same origin as the model and armature) - Create some custom Poses and Animations for him, to upload these to SL as well. He won't work good with most human animations, and thus needs a set of custom ones made exactly for him. And in best case stick those into a AO (animation overrider) - Now you can start testing your final uploads, and add the 3 additional LOD models and the Physics shape to the upload / import procedure. - Once it works good enough for your taste you can start creating the textures (based on the former created UVs) - And last but not least let us know how it works out for you ! : ) Cheers, Code.

Ok so here is another little something-something I thought I'd share with you - in hope to spark again more creativity =) (Users who are much in to materials etc might know generally how to achieve something like this, but this is for the rest of you ) Since Blender 2.66, we have now the good known so called 'matcaps' in blender. Those are - to break it down - light-independent texture methods where the highlights and looks are only pulled from the texture. Those allow even without complicated light-sets in a scene to create nice and really funky effects. Such as cavity darkness, Shiny highlighted borders and more. But even though Blender has Matcaps now, it's just as in ZBrush a plain 3D-Viewport feature and thus limited for preview and GLSL Renders and similar actions. And needs projection tools, etc. to be taken down to the colormaps. (Note: Right now you can't bring own matcap textures in - but they are working on it) But what if we want to actually 'use' such a look for baking materials, or rendered images and more, instead of painting something like this by hand? Well here is my old trick that I am using since years (when I first stumbled across tips how to achieve something like matcaps in other 3D programs and outsides of Zbrush) This tutorial will give insight on how to achieve this in Blender - since Blender appears to be the most used program here. (it works from 2.49 on and above - of course the UI is different in older versions. So users of those have to find those settings in their version's layout) 1.) The new inbuilt matcap feature in 2.66 - But as said it's limited due to being a viewport feature. 2.) The way to achieve Matcap Materials without 2.66 and also generally to create baked maps and much more: 2.1 ) Lets start with the matcap Texture: - 2.1.1) Create a selfmade Texture (256x256 px, or 512x512 px is really enough for this purpose) Make sure the sphere reaches fully to the image-borders. Give it whatever look and effects you want to achieve. - 2.1.2) If you want to grab a Matcap texture from your installed Matcap library in Zbrush, Open Zbrush, switch in Menu > Materials to the > Modifier Panel Hover your mouse over the preview image and Take a screenshot. Paste it into your image editor and crop the image to this preview area. Disadvantages: the resulting, cropped image will be mostly very small. - 2.1.3) Another way would be to apply a matcap to a sphere in Zbrush, subdivide it several times, and then export the document as image or similar methods. But as usual i suggest make your own images ;) - be creative! 3.) Back to Blender - Method 1 Material Node: PS: For the example I'm using a Blender's Susanne Model with 3 subdivision levels in a Subdivision-Modifier to get a smooth look and also for better results in the bakes later. And Blender default Materials (not Cycles). Note: This method is rather interesting when you plan on tweaking things further and / or add composition nodes for rendered Images (for an easier method just jump ahead to Point 4 ) - 3.1 ) Give your Object a Material - name it Matcap or something like this. Add A Texture (image or movie) to it. - 3.1.1) Load your previously made matcap-texture image into the image slot. - 3.2 ) Enable 'Textured" shading in your viewport (see image) - 3.3 ) In the Viewport Properties Panel - enable under > Display > GLSL shading - 3.4 ) Switch to, or open to the Node-Editor view - 3.5 ) Make sure 'use nodes' is enabled - 3.6 ) Select your newly created Material from the dropdown list - 3.7 ) Now you will see your Material Node and one Output Node - move them a bit away from another - 3.8 ) Select from the Node-Menu > Add > Vector > Mapping - 3.9 ) Connect the Normal from the Material-Node to the Vector input - 3.10) Change the > Scale Value in > Y to negative : -1.000 - 3.11 ) Now add a Texture-Node > Add > Input > Texture - 3.12 ) Connect Vector output from the Mapping-Node to Vector Input from the Texture-Node - 3.13 ) At last connect now the Color Output from the Texture-Node to the Color Input from the Output-Node - 3.14 ) Disable 'specular' from the Material Node if you don't want that additional specular effect. (can give unwanted and doubled highlights and generally be just 'too much') - 3.15 ) now you should be able to see your new and shiny model already in the viewport, as well as being able to fully render it with its matcap look. 4. ) The easier / faster Method : - 4.1 ) Create a New Material - 4.2 ) Name it matcap or something like this - 4.3 ) Create a New Texture (2) and set it to image or movie, and load your previously created Matcap Image into it (3). - 4.4 ) Make sure 'use alpha' is enabled (also in the texture Panel of your Material) - 4.5 ) Scroll down to Mapping (4) and do the magic trick by setting it to : Coordinates > Normal and Projection > Flat - 4.6 ) Now switch into the Material's Properties Panel and enable Shading > Shadeless (1) - 4.7 ) As in method 1, make again sure you are in 'textured" viewport mode, and enable GLSL shading for the viewport (see under Method 1 where to find these if you are not sure) - 4.8 ) That's it now you can see your model with it's new shiny matcap material. - Spin your model around and watch how the texture behaves from all sides even without light in the scene. - And it's ready to be 'rendered' with this look. (the other option : bake a texture follows in the next step) 5.) Now to the ways to make use of it aside from the nice look: Let's say we want to actually have our model to have a texture that contains exactly this look. Instead of trying to paint something like this by hand - by using the methods above - we are now actually able to 'bake' this out: - 5.1 ) Make sure to set seams and UV-Unwrap your model. (1) (quick and dirty example here) - 5.2 ) Create a > New Texture for your UVs in the UV editor (1) don't forget to assign it to your material again) - 5.3) Make sure your model is in a good and high subdivision level - 5.4 ) While still being in 'textured' viewport mode - switch to your 3D Viewport Panel (N) and scroll all the way down to > Bake - 5.5 ) Switch Bake Mode to > Textures - 5.6 ) Set > Margin to 5 - 5.7 ) press the > Bake button - 5.8 ) and voilà you have all of this baked into your texture map. - 5.9 ) Switch to Solid View in the viewport shading to inspect your object how it looks now (3): - Note: the applied bake is resulting from your camera view and normal's orientation and the object's orientation, and also from the Projection setting in the texture Mapping options. (Flat, Sphere, Cube etc). And thus might apply with a different angle then seen in your viewport. So experiment with those for the best outcome. Also the better the matcap image itself was made the better the outcome. Try to blurr the borders of the sphere or add a fitting background to avoid weird areas, or even work with an alphachannel instead of backgrounds. And keep in mind the texture might need a little clean up / fine tuning here and there. But these will be little compared to painting all this yourself. PS: you can also think of making 2 different bakes based on different settings and combine the textures in an image editor if a certain area gives you trouble. The possibilities are endless =) You can also try to use this with Blender's Quick Edit feature in the texture paint mode. To 'capture' the look and reapply it to the model's texture. But that method has some disadvantages in this certain case, due to the projectional angles and overlapping areas when being applied. (needs more image correction at the end, and more steps in order to cover the whole model etc) 6. ) Why do we have to do it with materials and nodes instead of using the 2.66 matcaps: - simple answer see the text in the next image.(and of course also works - as mentioned - version independent) 7. ) At the very last a few more examples: And the use of this becomes even more interesting when you actually 'sculpt' details into your model and give it certain characteristica, apply the matcap materials to it and bake this out to apply it to your low poly model. (they need to have the same UV layout of course) I guess that should be enough to spark some ideas for its usage. Little tip in addition: when you are trying to make different looks on one model. Like a skin-matcap and then maybe a leather matcap on another spot, try to create the matcap images with ' similar' light influences / highlights and shadowed areas. So it doesn't appear as if the different materials would be in different environment areas. And of course you can later on even put Ambient Map Bakes on top of the UV image with multiply and much more to add shadows at intersecting areas and general AO effects. Cheers! Code

Edit: i see you got your answer already. I'll leave it here for others running into that issue. Bit different problem, but appears sometimes as well. so might be still helpfull. Hey Rolig, I think you mean this step in Version 1 - point 4: If I understand you right the 'Edges themselves' remained after you deleted the faceloop on top? Normally all you need to do to remove the toploop is displayed on the left side. (just make sure to Alt+rightclick on one of the diagonal edges to select the whole top faceloop for removal) But: Maybe you ran into what I describe in the right side. Blender is sometimes a bit odd with Extrude, and creates duplicates of the extruded edges. In that case you just have to remove those independently. (happens especially often when extruding rather complicated face- or edge-loops on the topology of (i.e.) a human's face etc)

Heya sharky, Gaia gave you another good tip. If the whole thing was rotated it needs to have scale and rotation and possibly location also applied. And as we both said it will most likely still need a custom animation to look good even when those things are fixed. But i replied to your PM, so check there. Code

Applauds for Karen ; ) @ jstaggs1234 i know it's easier to be frustrated and point fingers at the bad company who banned for for a few days than actually facing you should have just stepped away. Griefing never touched me on a personal level. I deal with its outcome, remove what has to be removed, possibly file a report and remain calm. Not much fun for a griefer there. Simple psychologic rule: they simply will give up if you don't react wildly. Its no fun for them. And you gonna be the smiling one at the end when they are the only ones being banned. Just take it as a lesson and see it with a grine - it's the best you can do, and just don't repeat it the same way again in future.

haha yw, and thank you too =) and hey we all have been noobs at some point, no shame in that! And as i see it we all still are. Especially with this matter you can never finish to learn. Every year new technology, new software, new choices and options.. so yes I'll bravely say we are noobs forever ; )

yw =) and i wish you good luck, i am sure the creator can help you best ! enjoy your second life ^^

yw =) i've actually used a female skeleton for this one. but i guess you are having a male avatar so using the male version would make more sense. (and avoid a lot issues) You can get a file with everything you need for rigging here: http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avatar-workbench/ Make sure to grab the right version of the workbench for your blender version. (scroll a bit down there is a list with the workbench files) It contains (separated on the layers) a female avatar with female skeleton, a male avatar with male skeleton, and a make human avatar mesh. Make a copy of the workbench file, grab your avatar and get it in. and kick out what you don't need from it and save it along with your custom avatar. I tend also to duplicate the armature /skeleton once and put it on an own layer in case stuff goes wrong you have allways something in the same file to return to. And when your mesh is parented with automatic weights onto the male armature, make sure as described above to only move the bones and their joints on orthographic front and top view. That keeps nasty rolls off from happening. (to switch into orthographic view: CTRL+5 or only 5, and again to return to the perpective view just the same shortcut. 3 for frontview and 7 for top view) PS: i have seen on your screenshot you have obviously not been on the betagrid to test your mesh. Don't do that. Go to the betagrid and upload it there for free (you will have a given amount of linden dollars on the betagrid, which do not correspond with your real Linden Money = it's free. And do the upload to the maingrid first when everything works.) Same goes for textures etc. Especially with all the weight refining and testing.. this will safe you a lot money ! To get on the betagrid, make sure the 'grid choice' option is enabled in the login screen - press while in the login screen : Ctrl+Shift ⇧+G this will bring an additional dropdown menu next to your password etc. Choose there 'beta Grid' (or Aditi). As Location you can type in: Pathtest1. And once you are in just open the map and do a search for sandboxes. there are several mesh-sandboxes you can teleport to. Important note: even if you enabled meshupload in your main account, you will need to do this IP tutorial again for the betagrid under this link: Aditi IP Tutorial Start: | Second Life If you run into more problems feel free to post again. Happy creating !

haha you are welcome nancy, and i sure do hope some people will stumble upon it =) that's what i am doing it for. Regarding Rahkis video i made the exact same comment on the repetetive rotation in the other thread where he posted it first - quote: "...Cute lil video Rahkis. Made me chuckle (especially the repetetive rotations ) ..." It defenitally was fun to watch Thanks for reading it so intensively nancy, and i promise i will kepp adding more. At the moment that big guy named Earthwalker is holding me up >.> and he has huge fists i don't want to argue with him ! (my latest avatar project, lol - to avoid confusion) But i do have something prepared already about wrinkles in fabric with little changes to the topology instad of adding crazy amounts of edgeloops. Will post it as soon as it's wrapped up =) PS: And i know the feeling when things finally start to unfold and the fog dissapears - this is such an amazing moment! And i still do embrace it whenever it happens. Cheers to all of you - Stay Creative!

Heya you can do such 'offset placing' of the selekton on your model. I have done the same with my earthwalker: But there are some things that you really need to know about going this way: First off say good buy to most premade animations and embrace the news that these kind of characters need their own custom anims. While still a majority of animations made for humans will kind off work for them - many won't. Due to their completely different anatomy and body alignments. You also made something that causes lots troubles (you can do it but you really need to know what youre doing to make it work, just many things that can go wrong). You didnt make him fit to a straight T-Pose. try to stay as close as possible with this certain bodyshape and anatomy to the T-Pose of the origin Skeleton! You will make your life easier when you change the arm and leg positions of your model to rather fit a straight T-Pose, like this: and then delete all existing weights and vertex groups - and parent it fresh to the armature. Also forget about copy and pasting weights to such different shapes from the weights of a default avatar. In experience it's way less work to start with automatic weighting and clean that up, than fiddling with weights that have been made for a complete different anatomy and topology. But back to the bones. You can make it work even in T-Poses where you rather fit the skeleton to your mesh then the mesh to your skeleton. But in that case you have to pay closest attention to bonerolls and influences. So in case you are new to it, i'd rather suggest you to make your model fit to the straight T-Pose of the default skeleton at first. Especially the legs and arms. Or you will easily run into these kind of 'flipped' arms/legs problems. Also take care what skeleton you have used - if was a female skeleton that you modified, and you wear this rig on a male avatar you will have lots things flipped and wildly wrong. Once you created your mesh to fit better onto a straight T-pose and you still need to move bones in editmode a bit down/up, left/right to fit to your mesh.. do yourself a favor and do it 'only' on orthographic frontview or clean side or top view. To avoid funky boneroll values. Try to exclusively 'move them" (G) in editmode and orthographic views and do not 'rotate' them. Regarding your screenies i bet you have some fancy bonerolls going on. (and possibly the wrong skeleton, which is the second reason things could become so wild) And keep in mind you won't be 'easily' able to animate such a deformed rigg. You need either to make yourself a special animation rigg for this as well, or tweak the regular animations skeletons behaviour and offsets to fit this. I found it best in this case to work with .anim files opposed to .bhv since the anim files can store bone-offsets as well. And thus deformations like these will be possible. But your shark should still be able to be made fit to a regular skeleton layout since its head doesnt have such an extreme angle as i.e. my earthwalker. Just a few tips to keep in mind. And then even something like this can behave good in worn/ animated mode and in-worlds: Cheers!