Ada Radius

Blender is not paid-for software. It's free and open source.

There is a bit more information at https://github.com/RuthAndRoth/Reference - some of us in the OpenSim community work on this too, with quite a bit of overlap among the grids. The RuthAndRoth project started in OpenSim communities, but is well represented in Second Life now as well. Not sure if this was made clear in earlier posts: Weighting to the movement bones e.g. mPelvis and to the collision volumes, e.g. PELVIS, affects the Appearance sliders. Bone hierarchy matters - we can weight to the collision bones so that mesh attachments will respond to some of the sliders (fat, boobs, butt, belly, muscles), which most artists called "fitted" mesh. If you weight a vertex to PELVIS, it will move with mPelvis, because mPelvis is the direct parent of PELVIS. It gets tricky in the torso, where more than one collision bone is the child of a parent bone, and we're only allowed 4 weights per vert. One important restriction: we can only import rigged mesh with 110 vertex groups or less to the viewers, exceeding that is a silent fail, though Firestorm has a nice log feature now that can point to the the problem. As there are 159 bones in all, it can mean some difficult choices, depending on what you're working on. I generally map it out ahead of time to make sure I don't get nailed.

any avatar will import to MD if it's set up OK - you'll need at least a dae file from the mesh body seller dev kit. I've had the best luck with Blender, exporting as OBJ, either A pose or T pose, depending on the clothing, importing to MD, then immediately saving as the MD format for avatars. Some fiddling to make sure Z axis is up, might be necessary. And more fiddling to get the skin offset at the right number and the MD avatar settings the way you want them so you won't go nuts fitting patterns.

The only way I've been happy with this kind of build is to make a highly detailed model with the wire or shoelace or whatever, and a low-poly build without the wire, and bake a normal map. Any bits of wire that stick out have to be in the final model, and can still kill the poly count but could work OK for this.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Uploading_and_wearing_a_rigged_mesh

@HarrisonMcKenzie I took the Maya values in avatar_skeleton.xml, converted them to Blender values in a spreadsheet (also in that github folder) as well as I could, then built the various armatures in Blender from those values. I blogged about it, about a year ago. My route to the male armature was more convoluted; I may go back some day and clean it up. But what's really needed is an overhaul of the armature - clean up the numbers, the hierarchy, the naming conventions. Heck, fix the topology while we're at it. A better Character folder and viewer coding.

The inworld armature was developed c2004 in Maya, with changes in 2012 and again in 2016 when they added the Bento bones and changed the height. The xml definitions are in the viewer folder Character, in avatar_skeleton.xml and, to morph to the male sized armature, avatar_lad.xml. I did the conversions to Blender earlier this year, best I could, and stashed them in GitHub/RuthAndRoth/References/AdaRadius. There are symmetry errors and bone length errors in the xml files, so I had to make some compromises - Blender defines bones differently than Maya. I am no programmer, this was best efforts when Avastar didn't upgrade well enough to Blender 2.8 and beyond. Bento Buddy is another Blender plugin I haven't checked out yet - I just bought it. For Max, I thought someone had done all this, but I don't know where it is. Good luck!

What helped me: Take courses in retopology. There's a good one by Medhue that's free, and many others. It's not just for avatar attachments, and really does bang the concepts into the brain. Lots of techniques, learn as many as you can. Short answer: even quads throughout your model, no unnecessary verts to make the shape, structure it in such a way that you could reduce topology to very very little and still keep the same UV map. The retopo concepts are the same in any 3D modeling software, so the courses could be for Blender, Max or Maya. I've used all three and like Blender better, but each of us have different brains. And if you want to move to the next level - bake the detail from the high poly version to the low poly version to make a normal map you can put in the bump slot in the Texture tab. A 512 for the diffuse texture and another 512 for the normal map gives you more apparent detail than a 1024, for half the viewer side cost. Clever UV mapping will allow you to use one of each for the entire chandelier.

I've managed to get a Weefolk body working in the OSgrids. It was better without Avastar - all those extra bones and teh materials in the plugin make me nuts. I used the armature I built from avatar_skeleton.xml - stashed here at the RuthAndRoth github if you want my more recent version: https://github.com/RuthAndRoth/Reference/tree/master/Ada Radius. I usually rotate Y forward to work on a 1/2 size rig and rigged mesh - symmetry works better along the x axis in Blender. This is what worked after that: Rotate mesh to face +X Apply all transforms for both the rig and the mesh in Object mode. Check it all a couple of times as Blender can interpret applying rotation to parented mesh unexpectedly. With the armature in edit mode, select all the bones and clear bone roll. Export using the SL-rigged preset, and also check the Global Orientation Apply box, and the Keep Bind Info box Importing can fail for quite a few reasons: materials with spaces or special characters unused materials on a mesh unpurged orphan data too many UV maps on a mesh extra armature modifiers if you unbound and rebound your mesh at any point too many vertex groups Custom Split Normals data not cleared and probably more things I haven't noticed yet but have cussed over. A Lot. Once I got it inworld OK, I was able to use Appearance sliders that only move the mBones, to do small adjustments to height, limb length and such. It's not actually good yet, but at least I can take a look at it inworld and see where I could have done things better.

The volume (fitted) bones are each clamped to an mBone. So any vert weighted to a volume bone will move with its clamped mBone. For the Ruth and Roth mesh bodies, to get around the 4 weights per vertex limitation, and the 110 vertex weights import limitation, I weighted almost entirely to the volume bones whenever possible. The Bento bones are different - those mBones also respond like volume bones in the sliders. There's a list of how the armature is structured here (the ods spreadsheet): https://github.com/RuthAndRoth/Reference/tree/master/Ada%20Radius. You can take a look at how the how the Ruth and Roth mesh bodies are weighted in the other files at that Github repository.

When I converted to 2.8 and again 2.9, I tried to replicate my 2.79 layout and workflows for a while. Now I just use the default layout, which is pretty terrific except: Edit: uncheck Lock Object Modes. Minor adjustment to Theme - color selections orange and scroll bars blue so I can see them better than the gray on gray. View Toolbars and Tool Settings (the checkboxes). Use F9 key to toggle "Adjust Last Operation" and the "n" hotkey to bring up the side panel. The great thing about 2.9 is that I can switch to different Workspace tabs without thinking about it - the defaults are set up thoughtfully. For SL/OS projects I'm usually switching between Modeling, Sculpting, UV Editing, Texture Paint and Shading. Each will stay set up the way I left them last. I'm in and out of Viewport Overlays constantly, to look at what I need to look at at that moment. The left toolbar is nice, though I usually hotkey all that. It's also easy to add and remove Editor types, so I close the panels I don't need at the moment, open new ones or rearrange them as is convenient. For example, if I'm rigging something I collapse the stack on the right and slide open a new panel so I can have full length on the Properties and the Outliner side by side, to see longer columns of bones and vertex groups. Next project, I might put them back to the default layout. Same with the Add-ons. I keep the ones I don't need at that moment turned off, turn stuff on only when I need it.

Do you have more than 110 vertex groups? Even though there are 159 bones and volumes, the viewers will silently fail if you have more than 110.

What Quarrel said. If you have added new verts, you can select them, select the verts of the area you want them in, more or less, and use the Smooth function. That plus painting with Blur might get you what you need without a lot of futzing. Be sure to re-normalize the weights (hit F9 to make sure the active group is getting normalized with the rest) - the Smooth tool doesn't seem to be normalizing after the smooth. It's awful on fingers. Pretty good otherwise.

I'm impressed you got the collision bones to work. If you used the Skeleton.Female.blend rig, you're getting the custom bone properties for the collision bones, which are necessary, if you're not using Avastar. Even with Avastar and its custom bone properties, the 2.8x versions are still in beta and can have unexpected results. But your 1. scenario has worked for me too, mostly, though not if I resized the rig, which I'm gonna try. I added the HANDLE bones that are missing and cribbed the custom settings from avatar_skeleton.xml (found in viewer > Character).

It also depends on what body you are putting the clothing on. If it's a mesh body, with the system body completely alpha'd, and you are copying weights from teh mesh body to your clothing, then you have a shot at getting it to fit without clipping. If you put the mesh clothing over a system body and use the Appearance sliders to adjust body parts, then it's less likely to match - the system body uses morphs to change size and attached mesh uses vertex weights. You'll usually need alpha textures on the body to hide the bits that clip.

It's not cheap nor free, but it can be done fast in Marvelous Designer. Make avatars (obj works better than dae) you can import, redrape with their excellent physics engine.

The SL armature was built in Maya, where the bone parameters are expressed differently than Blender. Converting the collision bones to Blender means writing custom bone properties for those bones. You can find the custom bone settings here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Rigging_Fitted_Mesh - in the armatures for BaseMale and BaseFemale, all except LEFT_HANDLE and RIGHT_HANDLE - the handle values can be found in any viewer Character folder in avatar_skeleton.xml. I've been collecting this information for a few months and it's stashed at https://github.com/RuthAndRoth in the References repo. I blogged about it (adaradius.com) without actually solving it - I am no programmer. Avastar (in beta for Blender 2.8x) does it with updated custom property settings and drivers and has, as far as I know, the only Blender dae exporter for vertex weights for collision bones that works.

It took me about a week to figure out where stuff moved, and about a month for my hands to get used to 2.8x, starting last fall. I love it now, except that I'm still not used to a very different weight painting routine and I keep hitting wrong buttons that bork the whole thing. That will get better. It's much easier, now to switch between Blender and other software. Suggestions: In every mode, go through every menu choice and option, in all of the tabs in all of the editors and workspaces, try out everything on Suzanne or whatever. Make a cheatsheet until you memorize the stuff you need and where to find it. You'll be going ooo ooo that's a cool new thing, in between all the cussing.

Yes, stuff goes wrong all the time while weighting and you might have to do some cleanup. There some choices. Find the setting for Clean (Sorry I'm in Blender 2.8 now and can't remember where it is in 2.79) Weights > Clean will clear out any vertices that have an assignment to that vertex group but no zero weights - you can set the threshold. Another is, in Weight Paint Mode, to go into Vertex mask mode (one of the buttons at the bottom of the 3D viewer). That will open more buttons under your vertex groups, including a Select button. You can select all the verts assigned to that group there as well as the method you discovered. Then use your Weight Paint brush on Subtract 100% to paint out the ones you don't want. Then do Weights > Clean again. Another way, (better once you get used to all your options, as it's easy to mess up), is to copy the weights from the opposite bone. There's an explanation here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/16504/is-there-any-way-to-copy-the-weight-of-one-bone-over-to-anotherforgot-to-use-x Another way, if you don't care about your UV maps because you're going to redo them anyway, is to select the weights for both L and R bones and (Edit Mode) hit Symmetrize, then select which side copies to which. +X to -X, probably, in your case. You'll see it better after you do Weights > Clean.

I love working with mesh, and was able to bring a nice little mask inworld, with low prim equivalency (texturing/UVW may take me a bit longer, lol) and at a reasonable price. It's so much easier than sculpty maps; can do more and looks better too. But Viewer 3 is so buggy it's nearly unusable. I never could get Talk (which works perfectly for me with Imprudence and Phoenix) working right. Search forced me to enable cookies and Java on my browser, then broke completely as soon as I tried to make a payment to someone not yet on my Friends list. Land transactions failed completely. And I can't import or export via xml, which I prefer to do, ironing out problems off grid, then bringing the finished av shape & layers or linked set back in, maybe tweaking inworld after testing it, then saving back to my hard drive. So I'm back in Phoenix and Imprudence, holding off on mesh until there's a better way to work, and until V3 is improved so that enough people are using it to make it worthwhile.

meh. gack on production values and depressingly negative viewpoint besides. All that stuff about SL sex relationships not working out in RL, DUH, and it's been done, stop beating the dead horse already. A film needs to be done about it, yes - maybe a thoughtful treatment of new kinds of erotic and emotional experience that VR has helped create. I was really interested in new information on the IP lawsuit, appalled at the filmmaker's attitude toward it. More emphasis on the value-destroying thieves, and calling them what they are, and more on the creative process of this fine graphics artist, would have made a more interesting story. One shot of her actual day online, which has to be spent far more in graphics software than logged into SL, would have been far more plausible. I did like the Vegas segment - two people whose online friendship also finds joy iRL. Shoddy research and depiction of the use of child avatars to help adult victims of early childhood abuse. There are several reputable people working in this area in VR. Minimal research and mention of them would have been nice. And ONE positive bio, would that have been too difficult? I know dozens of people whose lives have been transformed, for the better, by virtual creative and performing arts; charitable and educational projects. BORING alert: this filmmaker is obsessed with cigarettes and unmade beds. It makes him look like a recent film grad who watched a wee bit too much noir in his sophomore year.