Astrid Kaufmat

If you want some help with rigging multiple piece mesh, in maya I use as lil more help ngskin tool that you can see here. It should really give you some help for pieces like eyebrows or other parts that must stay close to the face when rigged. After all this would not be different from rigging lower body made of pants and boots where the pants don't go fully inside of the boot but just on their edges more and less. For a more much more precise job, if by cutting edge in more piece you mean splitting your face in upper and lower part like mouth and the other nose and eyes and brow then It's not difficult either. do you know the sl avatar in 3 pieces? if you see those parts where the upper body for instance meets the lower body there are vertices say like snapped at same place in space and that also have same weight. This is how a mesh split in 3 part can look like one once rigged: snap vertices and give them the same weight right where are the seams. This can be done by any program you have . About the reason that moves you to do all this it's a bit weak point of view: the only way to keep your product safe is to keep making stuff, innovation. What in second life is named copybot in other online games takes the name of save game editors. Its full out there of such programs and many of them perfectly licit to be sold too. many people use them to transfer character or for development purpose (there is also an underground business for that look at all the skirim stuff). Do you think that if any of those person with those skills got your mesh would have mercy of you? If you go out for a walk, can you walk with the fear that a brick could fall on your head and rip your brain a part? Live today, cause you don't know what is tomorrow or if there is a tomorrow. Personally I made a mesh work for someone, it was a very complex structure, something like you say that should discourage them. Months later I discover that to use an euphemism they have improperly made a back up of it. Now you can see the reason what I told you the only way to be safe is innovation, keep making new things. *coughs* anyway if you like the job to be automated and not so friendly with longer steps, there is blender plugin that does it at least I read it should help for that automating some steps*coughs*

Cathy Foil wrote: There are relatively simple solutions that would be fairly easy to implement for Fitted Mesh that wouldn't break any existing content. Let's take the broken ankle problem. Unless people have an Knee Angle setting of 50 pants, long dresses, long skirts and boots rigged as fitted mesh look like they have broken ankles because while the upper and lower leg collision bones move in and out, like they should, they don't rotate to follow the avatar's leg mesh angle they stay straight up and down as they move in and out. The simple fix to this is to add four more leg bones. Two new upper leg bones and two new lower leg bones but this time beside moving them in and out have them rotate. It is a simple bit of code in the avatar_lad.xml file and of course adding the bones to the avatar_skeleton.xml. This would give mesh designer two options to rig to without breaking existing content. The second relatively simple solution would be to add custom sliders that just affect the Collision Bones. This the actually put forth by RedPolly the person who discovered it was possible to rig mesh to the Collision Bones. Here is a post I made quite a while ago where I made a few custom sliders and posted photos to show such an addition would indeed work. Custom Sliders for Fitted Mesh a Solution The biggest problem for rigging Fitted Mesh without a plug-in is you are adjusting the weights blindly. In order to see how your weights affect your Fitted Mesh one has to keep uploading mesh to either SL or the Beta Test Grid. This could easily mean uploading 40 or 50 times or maybe more. It is a bit like writing an email with no monitor to see what you are typing and having to print what you wrote in order to see it. Agreed. Got to thank Cathy at laest I may start think just a lil bit that I am not blond, mad like a played boxer: that's the feeling dealing with fitted mesh. Linden LAB did you hear it? I don't know who is the ceo responsible of such... choice that works so far worse than mesh deformers, and makes life so far harder to rig than it would be with mesh deformers or with a system like the one we have in IMVU. In my place such choice would make armchairs fly through the windows. Maybe lindesn, will hear you, Cathy, about the extra bones, I have the fear that as long as they are not friendly to add new user friendly code, they'd rather add more bones for face rig( a way like some template like those in rigfy for face work, which is lotsa time consuming for builder, and lotsa work and headaches for the ones who will be daring to make plugins for that). This could be the way they would allow to rig facial animations: a madness.It would be something like in the following video.

Thanks Natales I took a look at that page. Yeah firestorm I tried I think in open grid (can't remember now if it was the firestorm or the iw firestorm based viewer) what I got there, as I wrote in other posts was a full body (not 3 parts) avi a way like the one in zip from wiki sl not well oriented in space (each export had different orientation) and still with yes some oddity too. We're talking of the obj method. With the old phoenix I got the avatar better oriented in space easier to place in blender to use as referal (this is what I preferred in the first approach) to build the kit that I showed in the other post that should have worked as a speed up pipeline.The bad thing that I noticed with the obj exporter was the butt: I don't know why, how it gets exported always as 0 size butt in all theobj that I saved, from the shapes I made. In a first moment I thought ok I am taking them from open grid where some collision bones are missing, then I repeated the experiment in sl beta and yeah there too same wrong thing, so I guess that's something that has to do with the viewr. About wizdaxter plugin I was thinking too to use it because of the vertex groups that it already exports for the morphs( the not defrom vetex groups I mean) this can help somehow in the sculpting process to rebuild the shapekeys. Anyways using the obj that I saved from old phoenix , bringing in my file the avatar.blend file to check those obj and the morphs I got the meshes to blur(overlapping polygons, good sign).Gonna install again firestorm and cross fingers and see if that xml has more informations inside (I mean the sizeof the cbones for the minimum state of the sliders).The size that you showede about the xml from sl and firestoem surely means that it has more inside, after all an xml is just like a box inside there might be included a lot of stuff no more nor less like the movies that we make and even if with same file extension could have many different codecs. About the face rigging: for second life I haven't run that experience yet, without a plugin life is enough hard to make fitted mesh match( Rubik's cube is so far easier), I am not going to do it for now or all the saint would come down from paradise hearing my screams. If you want to have fun with that in open grid yes there is a way to make experiment with that using makehuman and its plugin for blender to export SL riged meshes. I think that Chaty Foil if you ask her can help you better she managed to do it also for maya. I am also trying the makehuman way lately with another project to add those cbones( if they support me) and hope to get the avatar with at least cbones scaling like in sl there(honestly I see after a few tries longer that way, but who knows, I am die hard).For now with face the only help I could give you in secondlife is with mbones for eyes using constrtaints to build up an handler to animate them ( I mean how the eyeballs move cause all the others around the eye would still be all morphs morphs and again morphs, that luckly domino already put in that old file),luckly for that I animated some toy characters in maya so understanding that in blender has been not that hard.

A week ago I used stuff riged from maya and no problems at all.After reading this I made a few tests with blender and the wiki second life avatar that you suggest. To me it's fine. The only adjustments that I did in blender to those avatar as they come from linden lab before uploading was apply location rotation scale hence they have some negative sign (without influence anyway) near some 0 values in N-panel. If you want to run a test also with blender I give you a pick with my settings. To export I have used both ways for transformation type translocrot and matrix:nothing changed. I can't get any iussue. I also tried from the uploader to tick and untick thebones position option, still no iussue for size, when I rezz the avatar, and when I wear it either.I don't know if it's the grid or itf it's max settings or the age... they say :"gaming, women and wine, while they laugh, they make men pine" (jk) Anyway you may want to try another test that I also did and do for other software when I try to get people in open grid to upload from other software, using blender as Rosetta Stone, just like an intermediate (in the past even for fitted mesh) I managed to get rigged mesh uploaded from softwares like cinema , modo, even if some genius say that it's not possible yet:B Here you can see my upload in second life (made today after your post with the standard viewer) from blender using the wiki second life avatar you talked about. It keeps proportion and I can wear it too. In open grid wearing meshes I've had odd behaviour till I cleaned my cache and made a full clean install of my viewers, but you say that you've already installed others (I guess you clean the pc well when you instal new ones, hence I am the blond here). More than this I couldn't help I am not a max user, for sure I wouldn't go t max fitted mesh is based on a stretched hack, max uploading is an hack itself. As max user you'd be surely luckier than ime in IMVU where max is the software with more support, while I have to stay with the kit made by katsbits to rig there.IMVU for max users is so far less madness than fittede mesh more logic way to do things.

Some possible ways to fix this that I have also written as proposal to linden lab could be: using the sliders fixes proposed by Cathy foil in this thread using a Medhue's idea (this is not my idea to fix fitted mesh so credits go where it's due). However to rig easy even if linden lab gave us this fix, it would still be needed a better avatar from wiki page, one made the way that I specified above,a simply blend file with a pose library to collect all the deformations of collision bones plus all the same shapekeys that rapresent exactly sl ones ( well I could remake sculpting those). Even file published on wiki second life giving us all the exact details about the collision bones deformations for maximum and minimum state of sliders that control collision bones is nice (hence the avatar_lad.xml is not giving me all that). Another way to fix ( this is a dream) having linden lab introducing also mesh deformers together with fitted mesh. this way they wouldn't bother merchants(as it happened when fitted mesh came out destroyingitems made for standard size), if they have already done clothes just for fitted mesh, plus new meshes can be done easier and adding some effects due to the collision bones just where you'd think that it's fancy to have it.

Body Fat CHEST, PELVIS, UPPER_BACK, LOWER_BACK, LEFT_HANDLE, RIGHT_HANDLE, LEFT_PEC, RIGHT_PEC, BELLY, L_CLAVICLE, L_UPPER_ARM, L_LOWER_ARM, R_CLAVICLE, R_UPPER_ARM, R_LOWER_ARM, NECK, HEAD Add here UPPER_LEG and LOWER_LEG not said in the wiki page, but that really get deformed when you watch them in world. Bodyfat (fat torso+ fat legs) fat head fat torso fat legs Head Stretch HEAD head_stretch Squash_Stretch_head Head Length HEAD head_lenght Elongate_Head Torso Muscles BELLY, UPPER_BACK, CHEST, L_CLAVICLE, L_UPPER_ARM, L_LOWER_ARM, R_CLAVICLE, R_UPPER_ARM, R_LOWER_ARM torso_muscles scrawny_torso_fem scrawny_torso_male Muscular_Torso Scrawny_Torso Scrawny_Torso_Male Breast Size female only: LEFT_PEC, RIGHT_PEC big_chest_fem small_chest_fem no_chest_fem Big_Chest Small_Chest No_Chest Breast Buoyancy female only: LEFT_PEC, RIGHT_PEC breast_buoyancy Breast_gravity Breast Cleavage female only: LEFT_PEC, RIGHT_PEC breast_cleavage Breast_Female_Cleavage Pectorals male only: LEFT_PEC, RIGHT_PEC pectorals Chest_Male_No_Pecs Love Handles BELLY, LOWER_BACK, LEFT_HANDLE, RIGHT_HANDLE love_handles Love_Handles Belly Size BELLY, PELVIS belly_size Big_Belly_Torso Big_Belly_Legs Leg Muscles L_UPPER_LEG,L_LOWER_LEG, R_UPPER_LEG, R_LOWER_LEG leg_muscles scrawny_legs Muscular_Legs Scrawny_Legs Butt Size PELVIS, BUTT big_butt_legs small_butt Big_Butt_Legs Small_Butt Saddle Bags PELVIS saddle_bags Saddlebags Knee Angle L_UPPER_LEG,L_LOWER_LEG, R_UPPER_LEG, R_LOWER_LEG bowed_legs Bowed_Legs Foot Size L_FOOT, R_FOOT foot_size Foot_Size This is just a simple way to make a relation between the sliders affecting collision bones and the names of deformers that you find in the avatar.blend file or avastar workbebch (whatever you have got to use) and the names given you in the avatar_lad.xml file ignore the column in the middle, those are names that I gave to my poses put in the pose library that I made in blender while I kept working on my new project (use just the first and the third columns to interpret properly avatar_lad.xml and the avatar.blend file shapekeys)

There follow the values used to deform collision bones according to what is written in avatar_lad.xml. I picked just the parts where it's written what we need, hopefully I think that I have discarded all the "wrong" and "useless" ones. Body Fat CHEST, PELVIS, UPPER_BACK, LOWER_BACK, LEFT_HANDLE, RIGHT_HANDLE, LEFT_PEC, RIGHT_PEC, BELLY,L_CLAVICLE, L_UPPER_ARM, L_LOWER_ARM, R_CLAVICLE, R_UPPER_ARM, R_LOWER_ARM, NECK, HEAD <param id="633" group="1" name="Fat_Head" label="Fat Head" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_body" label_min="Skinny" label_max="Fat" value_min="0" value_max="1" camera_elevation=".3"> <param_morph/> </param> <param id="634" group="1" name="Fat_Torso" label="Fat Torso" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_body" label_min="skinny" label_max="fat" value_min="0" value_max="1" camera_elevation=".3"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="CHEST" scale="0.02 0.03 0.03" pos="0 0 -0.03"/> <volume_morph name="PELVIS" scale="0.02 0.03 0.03" pos="0 0 -0.03"/> <volume_morph name="UPPER_BACK" scale="0.01 0.03 0.0" pos="-0.03 0 0"/> <volume_morph name="LOWER_BACK" scale="0.04 0.06 0.0" pos="-0.06 0 0"/> <volume_morph name="LEFT_HANDLE" pos="0.0 0.08 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="RIGHT_HANDLE" pos="0.0 -0.08 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="LEFT_PEC" scale="0.0367 0.0367 0.016" pos="0.00 -0.005 -0.013"/> <volume_morph name="RIGHT_PEC" scale="0.0367 0.0367 0.016" pos="0.00 0.005 -0.013"/> <volume_morph name="BELLY" scale="0.09 0.08 0.07" pos="0 0 -0.05"/> <volume_morph name="L_CLAVICLE" scale="0.0 0.0 0.015"/> <volume_morph name="L_UPPER_ARM" scale="0.02 0.0 0.02" pos="0.0 0.0 -0.02"/> <volume_morph name="L_LOWER_ARM" scale="0.01 0.0 0.01" pos="0.0 0.0 -0.01"/> <volume_morph name="R_CLAVICLE" scale="0.0 0.0 0.015"/> <volume_morph name="R_UPPER_ARM" scale="0.02 0.0 0.02" pos="0.0 0.0 -0.02"/> <volume_morph name="R_LOWER_ARM" scale="0.01 0.0 0.01" pos="0.0 0.0 -0.01"/> <volume_morph name="NECK" scale="0.015 0.01 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="HEAD" scale="0.0 0.0 0.01" pos="0 0 -0.01"/> </param_morph> </param> <param id="635" group="1" name="Fat_Legs" label="Fat Torso" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_body" label_min="skinny" label_max="fat" value_min="0" value_max="1"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="PELVIS" scale="0.03 0.06 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="R_UPPER_LEG" scale="0.02 0.02 0.0" pos="0.0 -0.02 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="R_LOWER_LEG" scale="0.01 0.01 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="L_UPPER_LEG" scale="0.02 0.02 0.0" pos="0.0 0.02 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="L_LOWER_LEG" scale="0.01 0.01 0.0"/> </param_morph> </param> Head Stretch HEAD <param id="187" group="1" name="Squash_Stretch_Head" label="Squash/Stretch Head" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_head" label_min="Squash Head" label_max="Stretch Head" value_min="-.5" value_max="1" camera_elevation=".1" camera_distance=".5" camera_angle="20"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="HEAD" scale="-0.008 -0.006 0.015"/> </param_morph> </param> Head Length HEAD <param id="770" group="1" name="Elongate_Head" wearable="shape" label="Shear Face" edit_group="shape_head" label_min="Flat Head" label_max="Long Head" value_min="-1" value_max="1" value_default="0" camera_distance=".5" camera_elevation=".04"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="HEAD" scale="0.02 0.0 0.0"/> </param_morph> </param> Torso Muscles BELLY, UPPER_BACK, CHEST, L_CLAVICLE, L_UPPER_ARM, L_LOWER_ARM, R_CLAVICLE, R_UPPER_ARM, R_LOWER_ARM group="1" name="Muscular_Torso" label="Torso Muscles" show_simple="true" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_torso" label_min="Regular" label_max="Muscular" value_min="0" value_max="1.4" camera_elevation=".3" camera_distance="1.2"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="L_CLAVICLE" scale="0.02 0.0 0.005" pos="0.0 0 0.005"/> <volume_morph name="L_UPPER_ARM" scale="0.015 0.0 0.005" pos="0.015 0 0"/> <volume_morph name="L_LOWER_ARM" scale="0.005 0.0 0.005" pos="0.005 0 0"/> <volume_morph name="R_CLAVICLE" scale="0.02 0.0 0.005" pos="0.0 0 0.005"/> <volume_morph name="R_UPPER_ARM" scale="0.015 0.0 0.005" pos="0.015 0 0"/> <volume_morph name="R_LOWER_ARM" scale="0.005 0.0 0.005" pos="0.005 0 0"/> </param_morph> <param id="648" group="1" sex="female" name="Scrawny_Torso" label="Torso Muscles" show_simple="true" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_torso" label_min="Regular" label_max="Scrawny" value_min="0" value_max="1.3" camera_elevation=".3" camera_distance="1.2"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="BELLY" scale="0.0 -0.01 0.0" pos="0.0 0.0 0"/> <volume_morph name="UPPER_BACK" scale="-0.01 -0.01 0.0" pos="0.0 0.0 0"/> <volume_morph name="CHEST" scale="-0.01 -0.01 0.0" pos="0.01 0.0 0"/> <volume_morph name="L_CLAVICLE" scale="0.0 -0.03 -0.005" pos="0.0 0 -0.005"/> <volume_morph name="L_UPPER_ARM" scale="-0.01 -0.01 -0.02" pos="0 0 0"/> <volume_morph name="L_LOWER_ARM" scale="-0.005 0.0 -0.01" pos="-0.005 0 0"/> <volume_morph name="R_CLAVICLE" scale="0.0 -0.03 -0.005" pos="0.0 0 -0.005"/> <volume_morph name="R_UPPER_ARM" scale="-0.01 -0.01 -0.02" pos="0 0 0"/> <volume_morph name="R_LOWER_ARM" scale="-0.005 0.0 -0.01" pos="-0.005 0 0"/> </param_morph> </param> <param id="677" group="1" sex="male" name="Scrawny_Torso_Male" label="Torso Scrawny" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_torso" label_min="Regular" label_max="Scrawny" value_min="0" value_max="1.3" camera_elevation=".3" camera_distance="1.2"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="BELLY" scale="-0.01 -0.01 0.0" pos="0.01 0.0 0"/> <volume_morph name="UPPER_BACK" scale="-0.01 -0.01 0.0" pos="0.0 0.0 0"/> <volume_morph name="CHEST" scale="-0.02 -0.02 0.0" pos="0.01 0.0 0"/> <volume_morph name="L_CLAVICLE" scale="0.0 -0.03 -0.005" pos="0.0 0 -0.005"/> <volume_morph name="L_UPPER_ARM" scale="-0.01 -0.01 -0.02" pos="0 0 0"/> <volume_morph name="L_LOWER_ARM" scale="-0.005 0.0 -0.01" pos="-0.005 0 0"/> <volume_morph name="R_CLAVICLE" scale="0.0 -0.03 -0.005" pos="0.0 0 -0.005"/> <volume_morph name="R_UPPER_ARM" scale="-0.01 -0.01 -0.02" pos="0 0 0"/> <volume_morph name="R_LOWER_ARM" scale="-0.005 0.0 -0.01" pos="-0.005 0 0"/> </param_morph> </param> Breast Size female only: LEFT_PEC, RIGHT_PEC <param id="626" sex="female" group="1" name="Big_Chest" label="Chest Size" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_torso" label_min="Small" label_max="Large" value_min="0" value_max="1" camera_elevation=".1" camera_distance="1" camera_angle="15"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="LEFT_PEC" scale="0.0273 0.0273 0.0273" pos="0.038 0.024 -0.016"/> <volume_morph name="RIGHT_PEC" scale="0.0273 0.0273 0.0273" pos="0.038 -0.024 -0.016"/> </param_morph> </param> <param id="627" sex="female" group="1" name="Small_Chest" label="Chest Size" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_torso" label_min="Large" label_max="Small" value_min="0" value_max="1" camera_elevation="0" camera_distance=".28"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="LEFT_PEC" scale="-0.05 0.0 0.0" pos="-0.01 -0.01 -0.02"/> <volume_morph name="RIGHT_PEC" scale="-0.05 0.0 0.0" pos="-0.01 -0.01 -0.02"/> </param_morph> </param> <param id="843" sex="female" group="1" name="No_Chest" label="Chest Size" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_torso" label_min="Some" label_max="None" value_min="0" value_max="1" camera_elevation="0" camera_distance=".28"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="LEFT_PEC" scale="-0.051 0.0 0.0" pos="-0.02 -0.01 -0.03"/> <volume_morph name="RIGHT_PEC" scale="-0.051 0.0 0.0" pos="-0.02 -0.01 -0.03"/> </param_morph> </param> Breast Buoyancy female only: LEFT_PEC, RIGHT_PEC <param id="507" group="0" sex="female" name="Breast_Gravity" label="Breast Buoyancy" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_torso" edit_group_order="7" label_min="Less Gravity" label_max="More Gravity" value_default="0" value_min="-1.5" value_max="2" camera_elevation=".3" camera_distance=".8"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="LEFT_PEC" scale="0.0 0.0 0.0" pos="0.004 0.0 -0.01"/> <volume_morph name="RIGHT_PEC" scale="0.0 0.0 0.0" pos="0.004 0.0 -0.01"/> </param_morph> </param> Breast Cleavage female only: LEFT_PEC, RIGHT_PEC <param id="684" group="0" sex="female" name="Breast_Female_Cleavage" label="Breast Cleavage" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_torso" edit_group_order="8" label_min="Separate" label_max="Join" value_default="0" value_min="-.3" value_max="1.3" camera_elevation=".3" camera_distance=".8"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="LEFT_PEC" scale="0.0 0.0 0.0" pos="0.0 -0.026 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="RIGHT_PEC" scale="0.0 0.0 0.0" pos="0.0 0.026 0.0"/> </param_morph> </param> Pectorals male only: LEFT_PEC, RIGHT_PEC <param id="685" group="0" sex="male" name="Chest_Male_No_Pecs" label="Pectorals" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_torso" edit_group_order="5" label_min="Big Pectorals" label_max="Sunken Chest" value_default="0" value_min="-0.5" value_max="1.1" camera_elevation=".3" camera_distance="1.2"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="LEFT_PEC" scale="0.0 0.0 0.0" pos="-0.03 -0.024 -0.01"/> <volume_morph name="RIGHT_PEC" scale="0.0 0.0 0.0" pos="-0.03 0.024 -0.01"/> </param_morph> </param> Love Handles BELLY, LOWER_BACK, LEFT_HANDLE, RIGHT_HANDLE <param id="855" group="1" name="Love_Handles" wearable="shape" edit_group="driven" value_default="0" value_min="-1" value_max="2"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="BELLY" scale="0.0 0.02 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="LOWER_BACK" scale="0.0 0.02 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="LEFT_HANDLE" pos="0.0 0.025 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="RIGHT_HANDLE" pos="0.0 -0.025 0.0"/> </param_morph> </param> Belly Size BELLY, PELVIS <param id="104" group="1" name="Big_Belly_Torso" wearable="shape" edit_group="driven" value_min="0" value_max="1"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="BELLY" scale="0.075 0.04 0.03" pos="0.07 0 -0.07"/> <volume_morph name="PELVIS" scale="0.075 0.04 0.03" pos="0.07 0 -0.02"/> </param_morph> </param> <param id="156" group="1" name="Big_Belly_Legs" wearable="shape" edit_group="driven" value_min="0" value_max="1"> <param_morph /> </param> Legs Muscles L_UPPER_LEG, L_LOWER_LEG, R_UPPER_LEG, R_LOWER_LEG <param id="152" group="1" name="Muscular_Legs" label="Leg Muscles" show_simple="true" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_legs" label_min="Regular Muscles" label_max="More Muscles" value_min="0" value_max="1.5" camera_distance="1.3" camera_elevation="-.5"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="L_UPPER_LEG" scale="0.015 0.015 0.0" pos="0.0 0 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="L_LOWER_LEG" scale="0.01 0.01 0.0" pos="0.0 0 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="R_UPPER_LEG" scale="0.015 0.015 0.0" pos="0.0 0 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="R_LOWER_LEG" scale="0.01 0.01 0.0" pos="0.0 0 0.0"/> </param_morph> </param> <param id="651" group="1" name="Scrawny_Legs" label="Scrawny Leg" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_legs" label_min="Regular Muscles" label_max="Less Muscles" value_min="0" value_max="1.5" camera_distance="1.3" camera_elevation="-.5"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="L_UPPER_LEG" scale="-0.03 -0.03 0.0" pos="0.0 0 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="L_LOWER_LEG" scale="-0.015 -0.015 0.0" pos="0.0 0 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="R_UPPER_LEG" scale="-0.03 -0.03 0.0" pos="0.0 0 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="R_LOWER_LEG" scale="-0.015 -0.015 0.0" pos="0.0 0 0.0"/> </param_morph> </param> Butt Size PELVIS, BUTT <param id="151" group="1" name="Big_Butt_Legs" label="Butt Size" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_legs" label_min="Regular" label_max="Large" value_min="0" value_max="1"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="PELVIS" scale="0.03 0.0 0.02" pos="-0.03 0 -0.025"/> </param_morph> </param> <param id="794" group="1" name="Small_Butt" label="Butt Size" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_legs" label_min="Regular" label_max="Small" value_min="0" value_max="1"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="PELVIS" scale="-0.01 0.0 0.0" pos="0.01 0 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="BUTT" scale="0.0 0.0886 0.0" pos="0.03 0 0.0"/> </param_morph> </param> Saddle Bags PELVIS <param id="854" group="1" name="Saddlebags" wearable="shape" edit_group="driven" value_min="-.5" value_max="3"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="PELVIS" scale="0.0 0.025 0.0"/> </param_morph> </param> Knee Angle L_UPPER_LEG, L_LOWER_LEG, R_UPPER_LEG, R_LOWER_LEG <param id="853" group="1" name="Bowed_Legs" label="Knee Angle" wearable="shape" value_min="-1" value_max="1"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="L_UPPER_LEG" pos="0.0 0.03 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="L_LOWER_LEG" pos="0.0 0.03 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="R_UPPER_LEG" pos="0.0 -0.03 0.0"/> <volume_morph name="R_LOWER_LEG" pos="0.0 -0.03 0.0"/> </param_morph> </param> Foot Size L_FOOT, R_FOOT <param id="515" group="0" name="Foot_Size" label="Foot Size" wearable="shape" edit_group="shape_legs" edit_group_order="6" label_min="Small" label_max="Big" value_min="-1" value_max="3" camera_angle="45" camera_distance="1.1" camera_elevation="-1"> <param_morph> <volume_morph name="L_FOOT" scale="0.02 0.01 0.0" pos="0.01 0 0"/> <volume_morph name="R_FOOT" scale="0.02 0.01 0.0" pos="0.01 0 0"/> </param_morph>

For those who had missed it I tried to make a kit to make life easier for those who want to be plugin free like me to rig with freedom. You can check the old pose here and here. Since then I've been doing some experiments to test how good that could be, even if it was away from the logic of getting an avatar that deforms like in secondlife, because in that experiment using the weight given on wiki I just tried to reproduce somehow the bones movements very very approximately, after all it was a ptototype an experiment that would lead other tests and other experiments.My test has been run on boots this to make it simplier to observe and reproduce, hence in lower leg we have to deal just with one collision bone, that after all in my prototype is the one that for sure moves more alike to SL ( yes cause for boots, to be realistic you may want to use only LOWER_LEG as collision bones, avoiding to get squashing/melting feet if they play with sliders related to collision bones).I thought that cause my kit was just a first prototype, like a prototype car or engine it could give no results at all, instead in betagrid I was glad to see that at least for boots I got some results, the boots somehow were fitting several shapes that I had in my inventory. It was too early, anyway, before yelling hurray. I made my own stress test shapes. In particoular for boots I used bodyfat= 100% and legs muscles 100%. Using this stress test shape I noticed that I would get the mesh not properly following my avatar's leg, because somehow the avatar leg became wider than my boot and it was screwed. The fiirst thing you might think : ok let's fix it trying to add more weight on the upper edge of the boot where this happens. Wrong by doing this I gotthe upper edge getting pushed down away from lower leg ( cause of a blindfolded rigging just adding more weight). This already lets you understand how much esssential and important is having in your 3d software an avatar that deforms like in second life if you want a good quality fitted mesh. I am a beach... (love to swim) so I did more, opening my big list of sites and blogs I picked those who openly declare in their blog to use this or that plugin for fitted mesh to rig, then I picked from their stores on marketplaces all the demo boots that I could have got ( boots rigged for fitted mesh specified also in the marketplace page). The surprise is that even wearing their alpha correctly even using anything given in the box, when I worn my bugger shape ( 100% Leg muscles and 100% body fat) the lower leg went through their boots. I was like wtf then it's not only matter of my kit that its far away from being perfect. there seems to be still something with fitted mesh not working. Well the whole fitted mesh thing is based on a forced hack then become standard, but still a stretched, forced hack. Why am I saying this? if you check the wiki page where linden lab has posted the list of all the bones affected by deformers yo can see that for body fat Lower_LEGs are not mentioned, while if you open your secondlife viewer and watch how those bones are modified and scaled while you switch body fat slider to 100% you can see that. That's not all if you check the knee angle slider. Tweaking the weights of the lower body to react properly when the UPPER_LEG and LOWER_LEG are rotated to reproduce better what happens when yo move the knee angle slider can bring at least can potentially bring you to an unwanted thing on your knee when your legs get scrawny What could this lead to? For long pants and long gowns, anyway anything rigged mesh that covers your whole lower body hidden with an alpha layer, no troubles, but for shorts or pants that would be long enough to cover your knees this can "potentially bring to some unwated results" for some shape sizes. In fact in my old mesh kit prototype,to make the avatar deform like in secondlife when the legs get scrawny I had to use a morph to reproduce those spheric knees and at same time keep good weights to make the mesh deform and follow properly the UPPER_LEG and LOWER_LEG bones during the use of knee angle slider. If you think that I am the only mad saying this, then check this video at the end of it, where Cathy Foil is explaining such a bad iussue guessing the rotation of the UPPER_LEG and LOWER_LEG because they're not even definied in the avatar_lad.xml ( they can't be defined there cause those physic bones don't rotate if you watch them in second life). Once again to make fitted mesh you should make hack over hacks: how rational and scientific way to do things. Here folllow some picks of the boots that I ussed for these tests. This last photo is from inworldz with meshdeformers wearing a shape made by me bodyfat100% and leg muscles 100%. In these experiments I preferred to see rather than the effect with a checkbox texture how also a simply texture even if not fullyfinished would react. Now let's focus on a couple more things: The following photo shows you what you'd get if you add weights blindly to the top edge of the boots without having a good referal. The more not needed weight you ad the more it's not balanced the more unwanted resutls you get. we are just talking to give some air to their mouths Indeed you can rig without having a plugin or an avatar that deforms like in secondlife, but only if you plan to use a whole body avatar made by you,where you would use the collision bones just to give your avatar physics where it's needed and some deformations where and how much you want.For ganments that have to stay above the second life buggy avatar with this hacky fitted mesh way to rig you need a good referal to properly balance weights, if you want very good results (and you'd still get some bug after all as said above because fitted mesh is far away from fitting). If you're still confused and still belive that you can rig without a proper referal or plugin to get good results for fitted mesh whach this video that I showed few hitmen who rather than giving me help wanted by para-psychologist methods tried to convince me that I shouldn't make fitted mesh that I shouldn't be in secondlife,that I should just be in real world and bla bla bla (ok we're on the good way!).Some of them came out trying to convince me that they are able to rig free hand and showed also this video (used then by me as standard to teach others hat to avoid to get proper fitted mesh), a clamorous autogol, where you can see at 1:01:00 that even if the breast zone would mopre or less fit almost right cause also in the wiki avatar we have high weight there, the belly is totally messed up, guessing the weights blindly is the worst thing you could ever do. After all this madness you may still think that a solution, especially referred to the boots case, is to use more sizes a way like making more sizes like we did for standard size. yah but fitted mesh is something beyong standard size. For standard size you'd just save your weights, use a lattice to reshape your mesh around the fatter body then import the weights ad it's good to go. for fitted mesh you can't use same weights on a deformer larger gpart of your mesh: iyt works a way like a proportion for X size and x weight when you you scale the collision bones by sliders you get X deformation, but if the mesh is wider itself and you use that same amount of weight on its wider shape when the collison bone scales it could be too much weight (in some cases if you're lucky like with the breast below, just luck, you can go and get something working).We love how much extra job gives fitted mesh to get something rigged lol. Now what can Lindenlab do to help us who want to stay free of plugins and still keep rigging easy and good? Easy we need an avatar made a way like the old avata.blend file that some years ago domino marama has done. Can we use that avatar now? 1)No, not as it is, because it has only morphs for the 100% size of most of the sliders that control collision bones 2)Because that avatar has not got with it collision bones, doing some web surfing I realized that the avastar workbench was realized using that avatar made by domino it has also got the fixes of custom properties( like those in the sl avatar from wiki) that you'd need to add by yourself to that old avatar, but it's stil a lack of something: avatar workbench lacks of collison bones deformations I've been working with the avatar_lad.xml file to try to reproduce and avatar that has same bones deformations like in second life, just focusing my attention as it should be for a good kit on the collision bones. I made something good, but I have encountered a big, huge, mega iussue.The avatar_lad.xml almost gives me only informations about the biggest status of those bones not the smallest one, only for few of them (apparently).You can find the avatar_lad.xml in your second life folder it's in character folder. If I could get the a file where it's written properly and with precision the sizes of all those collision bones also for 0% states of the sliders that control collision bones, then that'd be it. 1) I could just make a list poses and give you a file to let you learn what pose morp play together with a selected pose, while you rig (the fastest thing to make). A simple blend file even for blender with a pose library with all the deformations of second life collision bones stored as poses plus all the shapekeys of the various state of the second life avatar is enough to work in blender,to build plugins for it, also to use as Rosetta Stone to rebuild similar kits for any other program. 2) use drivers that can combine many things in blender as in any other software to use just a custom property slider to control together the bone deformations and the shapekey/pose morph slider. I'll try to copy paste also the list of those values that you need from avatar_lad.xml to modify your collision bones and how to relate them to the morphs. Here follows a picture that I forgot to drag from my betagrid achive of photos,where I store my notes. It clearly shows you where is my bug on the boots and the same bug that you can find in boots from marketplace even if rigged by plugins when you wear a buggy shape leg muscles 100 body fat 100 This most likely happens also with plugins,I doubt that they could have got influenced by the wiki page where it's not written that also LOWER LEG and UPPER LEG scale for body fat as you can see from the avatar_lad.xml lines that I have added below.There must be something wrong with the whole fitted mesh, hence the second life avatar is not rigged on collision bones, but it deforms mostly through morphs. Consider that in this quick example I've been working with only LOWER_LEG collision bones to allow others to see, to make similar easy to reproduce experiments. Who knows how many other bugs could be pulled out, using other regions of the body and more bones. Fitted mesh sadly has two big false myths: that it really surpasses mesh deformersthat you could get good rig without a referal avatar that deforms mostly like in second life to weight paint your garnments(I say garnments not just mesh, because saying that fitted mesh works rigging a full body avatar with few collision bones for physics fun, is all another talk,because with a full body avatar you'd set SL avatar default to zero hence you're wearing full body alphas).

Do you remember this thread? http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Blender-Retopo/m-p/2850550#M29584 We've talked about how to workaround to get nice retopo voiding to spend money for blender,or there would be no reason to join the open source community.By then I showed you a few workarounds to avoid that script. Today I show you something that could kill maya retopo tools, cinema 4d retopo tools and probably also zbrush.It's a totally free addon for blender that makes retopo easy like in that plugin showed above,just FREEEEEEEEE!!!!! It works, for those who know it, like topogun just retoping that way Download it from here It's still an alpha but fully working. You can download and get it too and see how nice it is. For more details about how to use it you can see the short tutorial page here Thanks to pitiwazou for sharing!

Gaia Clary wrote: I also do not say that you MUST get Avastar to make fitted Mesh.It is just a huge time saver. I also do not say your tool is bad or whatever. And for sure i am all positive about supporting Blender and the Blender Community. Ergo seria A and serie B riggers. One who can build the pose-Breakpose pipeline in few minutes and other who can just hope to make it properly.

Gaia Clary wrote: The Avastar free Avatar 270 ... is one of our Avatar workbench downloads. Your document is a bit unclear about how this relates to Avastar. So here is clarification: The Avatar Workbench is not directly comparable to Avastar. The only similarity is that both tools use the same Skeleton, namely the Skeleton provided by Linden Lab. "Unclear?" well I take as reference what I get for free now on the machinamatrix blog it was called avastar avatar. At least now thanks my "unclearness &/or mistake" its well known that there are seria A kits and serie B kits. Blah sl start getting similar to the American Hospitals where if you pay insurance then you have right to be healed or you can just go to the voodoo wizard and hope to heal. Gaia Clary wrote: The weights ... Avastar uses the exact same weights as the Second Life Avatar. Indeed we use the Avatar definition files from the SL Viewer as reference. These weights have never been meant to be useful for fitted mesh. Indeed we do not (yet) provide any weights for fitted mesh because there are no such weights defined. Actually these "fitted mesh weights" depend highly on the users mesh creations. Using weight copy tools can only provide some "starting point" which needs more or less tweeking and the final weight maps must always be optimized for the particular mesh attachment. Although I am sure that I've read on machinamatrix that new versions of avastar have been fixed in the weight. So it's not a weight paint fix but a coding fix to interpret the xml files a way like wizdaxter tool does!? Ergo do you mean that this or any other tool that has been built in this way will never allow tus to rig the same way that avastar allows its users? But if the avastar weights and avatars from wiki are so different how can a common user hope to use them,,having the same chance to rig with same weapons that avastar users use? We should all code first a program like SLAV plugin. Geez haha Fitted mesh becomes always more a scientific thing. observe phenomonous, study it in a lab, write down a law to describe it and allow anybody to reproduce it. It's so easy to reproduce by us all common N0obs, if I interpret well what is written above. I can't check maya and mayastar for now. Say I am Tesla's and Majorana's fan and I love free energy, but taking free energy makes electrical wiring risky so the old powerful pc is boom kaboom haha. As consequence since last may/june I am hooked with a pc made cannibalizing other old ones and I'll stay sticking with it until intel stops a_ssling us pretending to sell a-ss-well processors & co ( still few months of patience). A good chance to be in xubuntu and get more into blender but Switching is not that hard thing using maya settings for blender,just memory task focusing on the new gui and some different tools and of course different way they work. Gaia Clary wrote: . Relation between the Avatar appearance sliders and mesh. This is complex, however it can be broken down to this: The SL Avatar uses 130 appearance sliders About 100 of these sliders control "Blend Shapes" (Shape keys in Blender) about 30 of these sliders control the Skeletal animation. The SL Avatar uses all 130 sliders for appearrance settings Mesh items can only use about 30 of these sliders Fitted Mesh tries to simulate the 100 blend shape sliders which can never be precise. Note that Avastar handles all of this exactly as it is handled in the SL Viewer. Hence we can provide a true What you see is what you get tool. However, it can still be very easy to break things because of the sheer complexity of the system. Well not that to rig I'd need all the avastar sliders. I don't need to rebuild also the morphs for elf ears and stuff. just the few poses that are controlled by the sliders that in sl affect collision bones. If this and all the other things above are as you say. Then my work or anybody's work with this kit or any other kit is just wasted time if made in this way. Then rigging with logic rebuilding a pose/break-pose system using the avatar given to us from wiki or even the avastar free avatar 270 is impossible to use a prosopopoeia, not so easy to use litotes, very hard to be optimist. Astrid Kaufmat Mason has no more questions. At this point if I interpret well, it's better that I go back to the f... hell of open grid and stay in there and RIP

Question: How can I deform collision bones,without doing it just randomly? Turn on in second life the collision bones from advanced menu and watch with big attention. To help you I leave here a little note that I wrote down by then for myself (I’ll keep editing it to make it as much understandable as possible for you). To interpret better my scratches here look at this imagine: Head Stretch: HEAD for 0% smaller sagittal plane z bigger trasversal plane y & coronal x but less on coronal plane,for 100% the opposite. Head Lenght: HEAD modify along the frontal axes only (saggital axe) 0% & 100% Torso Muscles (BELLY, UPPER_BACK, CHEST, L_CLAVICLE, L_UPPER_ARM, L_LOWER_ARM, R_CLAVICLE, R_UPPER_ARM, R_LOWER_ARM) : -BELLY is scaled along coronal plane but few -CHEST coronal & sagittal plane -UPPER_BACK coronal plane and saggital plane -CLAVICLE(L&R) coronal plane and saggital (coronal more); the transverse plane seems not modified -UPPER_ARM saggital plane & transversal plane (the most) minimum coronal plane -LOWER_ARM saggital plane (transversal maybe but minimum) For upper arm and lower arm the shape in the middle changes from romboidal to quadrate Breast Size : LEFT_PECK & RIGHT_PECK from 50% (ruth’s size) to 100% scale all axes; from 50% to 0% just scale the transversal plane (move the bone a bit backward too). Breast Buoyancy: Move the LEFT_PECK & RIGHT_PECK bones up and down without scaling.The effect is similar to an oject moved within a lattice cage Breast Cleavage: LEFT_PECK & RIGHT PECK move along the coronal plane without scale Pectorals : No scale for LEFT_PECK & RIGHT_PECK at 100% they meet in the middle at 0% they move to sides on saggital plane Love handles: LEFT_HANDLE & RIGHT_HANDLE are not scaled they just move along the coronal plane BELLY is scaled in the coronal plane onlyfollowing the movement of the L&RHandle. Leg Muscles: LEFT_UPPER_LEG, LEFT_LOWER_LEG, RIGHT_UPPER_LEG, RIGHT_LOWER_LEG are just scaled in the trasversal and coronal plane not saggital ( no vertical scale) Butt Size: PELVIS & BUTT are scaled with an inverse proportionality. BUTT is scaled only in the coronal plane , when butt size is 0% it gets the biggest size, when butt size is 100% it gets the smallest size PELVIS is scaled in the saggital plane (vertical) mostly and also in the transversal plane back to forward less Saddle Bags: PELVIS is scaled in the coronal plane only Knee Angle: LEFT_UPPER_LEG,lEFT_LOWER_LEG, RIGHT_UPPER_LEG, RIGHT_LOWER_LEG are not scaled but just moved in the coronal plane.At 100% theyìre moved to sides and in the middle at 0% Foot Size: L_FOOT & R_FOOT are scaled on the coronal plane ( side to side) and in the transversal plane back to forward Body Fat: – CHEST all the 3 planes – PELVIS 3 planes – UPPER_BACK 3 planes – LOWER_BACK 3 planes -LEFT_HANDLE & RIGHT_HANDLE don’t scale but just move in the coronal plane following belly -LEFT_PECK & RIGHT_PECK scale in 3 planes -BELLY 3 planes – L_CLAVIVLE, R_CLAVIVLE are scaled only in saggital (vertical) plane, – L_UPPER_ARM,L_LOWER_ARM,R_UPPER_ARM,R_LOWER_ARM are scaled only in trasversal and sagittal plane (no vertical/lenght scale). – HEAD is scaled only in saggital plane ( vertical only) – NECK is scaled only horizontal ( transversal & coronal plane). And remember that, even if it’s not said in the wiki (see here), when you make your body fat poses the R_UPPER_LEG, R_LOWER_LEG, L_UPPER_LEG and L_LOWER_LEG are scaled as well just into saggital and coronal plane. You can see this watching what heppens to those bones in world, when you move the body fat slider. Remember also that scaling on a single axe is smilar to grab the bone and move it along that axe, make your tests in blender or your 3d program of choice and see. Ergo careful when or if you move the bones along axes.

Few months ago I talked about the Free EXPERIMENTAL fbx addon for blender that finally was a big step to let different 3d programs work together. The plugin has been finally upgraded and it has got some bug fixed, as I showed to the bug report that there were some iussue with importing leaf bones. Now Blender has got also a new collada exporter that allows people to automatically convert blender bones to joints when you jump from a program to another using collada dae.After all the positive thing about blender is just this: It's not a complete but you may hope that they dd new features from more complete softwares. But, but, but this is not the reason of this new thread. I have been working in my spare time on a rigging kit for making things faster for all. Free and open source for everybody who wants to try and keep developing it. You can also see and download it from the blog that I opened for this project. https://astridkaufmathq.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/liquid-democracy-prototype/ In this post I’ll try to show you how to use a prototype of rigging kit for blender for fitted mesh (aka liquid mesh, the previous name) that should also help you to use blender as a converter to rig in your own program of choice and then upload things in second life or if you prefer just use it in blender to rig there.This because now thanks to improvements in the EXPERIMENTAL fbx exporter that is now official and into the dae expoter you can easier bring into blender rigged avatars from other softwares and viceversa. Read here for more details about blender 2.73 addons. Download liquid democracy prototype from here.Download Liquid democracy developing kit from here Before we move on let’s spend a few words about riggging and then about the logic that I followed to make this kit, with the hope that this will make everybody able to modify this kit or build kits like this. This is just a conceptual guide, maybe I’ll write more detailed ones, it’s just meant to show the method to those who are already familiar with rigging and stuff. However I’ll try to talk easy and make concepts understandable for everyone. When I rig with classic mbones (the standard deform bones, the way that blender would call them) I use to follow a pipeline that I call pose/break-pose. I’ll make an example to let you understand better. Imagine that you’re rigging a leg, the most sensible part is the one where the joint is or said into blender language where the tip of a bone meet the head of the next bone. This happens because those vertices in that area are driven by two bones and you must balance well the weight to make the mesh deform properly when the avatar moves. Here comes the big help that pose/break-pose pipeline gives. You make a serie o poses one for leg extension and one for leg flexion in other words a pose and its opposite trying to stress the mesh and see how the vertices behave. In this way you can easy find out where are vertices whose weight needs to be better balanced. Above you can see an example of what I mean when I talk about pose/break-pose:it’s all about making a serie of poses and their opposite like this on timeline that will help you finding out where the vertices could have wrong weight. The following image shows you what could happen when there is wrong weignt on a vertex and you use to play poses to rig. Ok so to rig it’s a good thing using poses, this makes things easier and much more logic. Now your question would be: what have poses to do with fitted mesh? I’ll answer to this question with an experiment that you can easy do in second life. Go to your advanced menu and turn on the display collision bones, then edit your apparenceand try to watch how those bones get deformed when you move the slider related with collision bones.You can see that they scale, move rotate, but mostly they scale.Scaling a collision bone is a pose in blender as in any other 3d program. Rigging without poses and doing it randomly is like weight painting blindfolded, it’s like a black night when all the cows are black (as Hegel would say).That’s why it’s important to have an avatar with right weight, that can deform properly with the right poses.So when you balance weight on vertices moving the mesh between a fat and a thin opposite pose you can do it with logic and properly. Keeping going on I’ll show you the reasons what I don’t like secondlife avatars that you find on that silly wiki page that says all and nothing, let’s say it better it just says nothing that can really help you. Now, how can I scale properly the collision bones using the avatar downloaded from second life wiki, to make my serie of “pose/break-pose” poses to rig my clothes for fitted mesh with logic? This is not an easy thing to do for several reasons that we’re going to see together. Attenton, please, I said not easy I didn’t say impossible. First of all for each edit apparence slider of second life you need to create a couple of obj avatars one at 0% of the slider and one at 100% of the slider.you will do this for male and female avatar, creating your achive of obj size of second life avatar. To do this you needphoenix 1.5 or inworldz viewer (second life keeps disabling things that are so far useful for makers). When you have created that collection of obj referal meshes you can start creating in blender your pose library, scaling only the collision bones controlled by second life sliders linked to collision bones (you find the list here), eventually moving or rotating them too, where it’s needed. See here to understand better the pose library, if you’re not familiar with its concept. The avatar will needs also weight painting editing to allow the mesh to deform approximately like in secondlife, scaling collision bones to match the obj that you imported in blender as referal. The weight painting is needed to make the avatar in the blend file deform like in secondlife, because those weights are the most crazy things ever. An emblematic example of all this is when you try to scale BELLY bone and PELVIS bone,you’d get that the butt is pushed out too or if you try to scale LEFT_PECand RIGT_PEC to change the breast size you could see a strange behaviour of the belly area. I won’t hide either that those avatar that you download from second life wiki page if uploaded would somehow work good with inworld sliders. This is not the only thing that I’ve been testing: if you use those weight moved from those avatar to your cothes using some tools like the excelent V.A.M.P built in cinema 4d or the weight transfer tool built in blender you can get that almost the clothes work fine. However rigging clothes in this way, even if you could get quite nicely working results, is dumb, the most stupid thing to do; you may want to properly balance weights, and customize them good to work with the shape of your clothes. What I said above about BELLY, PELVIS and PEC bones is also the big difference between those avatars that you get on second life wiki page and other addons/plugins/tools meant to let you rig for fitted mesh like avastar. Let’s analize avastar you could watch any video about it and see that when they use the sliders to deform the the belly you can see that the butt is not oddly distorced like it happens when you scale BELLY and PELVIS bone in the second life fitted mesh avatars from wiki. As simple deduction avastar avatar has been re-weighted. Of course a logical objection to all this could be someone popping up from the bunch and saying ” yes but on avastar blog you can download the free avastar avatar”. Have you analized and compared that avastar free avatar with secondlife free avatar for fitted mesh from wiki? Ok let’s see it. Download it from here version 270 (in case after this blogging they have fixed it :P). Avastar free avatar and the secondlife avatar from second life wiki are just the same thing. What avastar free avatar has got is is the male and female shape merged together and bound to the same bone. You can obtain the same result by opening the secondlife avatar female from wiki (or the male if you prefer) then go to file append and select from the folder secondlife male, you’ll see in blender now a menu with a list of folder, pick the one named objects and from it select base male, then “append from library” in the upper right corner; then go in the outliner and delete the armature.001. Now in object mode select the base male mesh, then the armature then by the shortcut ctrl p you get the binding menu, select from it “armature deform“. Now if you want you create two bones group and assign your mbones to a group and your collision bones to another (just to help yourself with selecting them or hiding one group and showing another) and you’ve got avastar free avatar re-built or saying it better made by you. This is not the only analogy that shows you that avastar free avatar is just the same thing like secondlife avatars from wiki but merged together. The second evidence is a bad bone roll of some bones that you can find in secondlife avatar as in avastar free avatar 270. But hey wait in some videos of avastar you see that they use a feature that we all know and that is available in blender too, which is copy paste flipped pose. Well that thing works only if the bones are well oriented with a right bone roll in blender and fail as it fails in second life avatars and in avastar free avatar if the bone roll is not well done (this is well evident when you try to do the paste flipped pose on legs bones). Below you can see the proof that avastar free avatar and second life free avatar are the same thing, with same “bugginess”: I have applied the same scale values to BELLY and PELVIS bone and you can see that butt gets oddly distorced. Well now after I have said this you might ask: “why hasn’t second life given us the avatar with the weights that they use in the game and maybe also with some nice pose library to help us?” My guess (it is more than a guess) is that in second life the avatars are not rigged on collision bones as you might think after seeing those avatar on second life wiki. This is a deduction that I got studing SLAV plugin made by Georgy Angelov (get it here) and using it to bring into blender my secondlife avatar xml saved from secondlife. Opening that avatar that you can download from here (I made one for you) you can see some interesting things. First thing you can see that each vertex is associated to more groupsand for each group you find as value “1” (because there seems to be no normalizing). This is not the only oddity that you can see: you can also see that there are more groups than the bones in that file and many of them are not named like the bones but like the area that they’re going to control. So when you click those groups you can see that they show you several area that match more and less those areas involved by deformations that you get using sliders in second life. This brings you to an interesting guess/deduction: probably secondlife to make the avatar deform uses some complicated shapekey system or morph system and the collision bones work like a sort of driver, the way that you’d build also in blender a sort of deforming system working in that way. Here you can see some picks of what I mean. Below you can see a snapshot of my second life avatar saved as xml and converted into a blend file using slav plugin. Look at the vertex groups panel see how each second life deformation of the avatar is driven by a group that will paint the deformed area when you select it. In this case I used muscular torso. You can do the same with love handles and all the others. All this can tell you that rigging on fitted mesh is not an easy task at all and that there will never be any addon, plugin, tool that can fully satisfy you. Of course some can do it better than others. This is what I’ve been doing to build the liquid democracy kit. Now what is the difference between a kit built in this way and an addon with sliders to deform meshes. Pratically nothing. An addon will just make things easier grouping a bunch of buttons and sliders in one panel to allow people that are few familiar with blender to keep everything handy. Liquid democracy is meant to get that scripted panel too and to work as addon as soon as I have finished to find out what is bugging it. you can get more news about this here and if you want send me your feedback about how it could be fixed. To build your sliders and the fk/ik buttons it’s the easiest thing you could ever imagine. Any plugin/addon that they could make for you is built in this way more or less. When you’ve created your poses then you’ll use datasheet to create your animations (stored with fake user) to use later in your action constraint, then make your custom property slider that will help you to create your sliders for your ui panel if you want, using few lines of python. If you don’t know enough python to build your own sliders and buttons to put in the gui panel you can help yourself using a program made by BLanvis VisualBPY that you can download from here, see also the video tutorials here. This program will turn the “blondest” python coder into a pro allowing you to build any panel you want for blender ui. After all if you’re familiar with the purpose of using scripts to rig, you might know that scripts can be easilymade in maya as in blender as in cinema 4d as in any other program to bunch together a serie of repetitive actions, to speed up your workflow. What else do you need? Ah ah a script to make you import a scene right from blender rather than opening clicking on the file but fom the blender file menu. Well you have that too now, thanks to the help given by blender community I wrote it. :B and now the blender addons are dissected for you. Download the import scene python script from here. This script allows you to open your blender scene the way that avastar scene works: after all if you watch their videos they let you go in file menu then click on avastar then make you click on the new importede shene from the blender outliner; which is what this script does. This is not all. If you want to have more fun you can download from here a script that turns any ofyour rigs where you’ve applied custom property sliders ( the same custom property that we also need to make a panel with sliders) into floating sliders, so when you click the fk handlers for istance you can make appear floating sliders related to that area of the body. Now let’s see the known iussues with liquid democracy prototype. It’s a prototype so try it at your risk,using betagrid or opengrid: it might be a total flop.there are iussues reproducing the exact body fat shape, for now as general advice that will help you for tests with every other pose stay lose and try to balance weight not betasurfacing your mesh but making bridges between ridges. What I mean is try to add weights not making the dress following the surface of the avatar, but like when you sculpt for a realistic effect and like it happens in real life make the dress behave like a bridge between ridge (look at how your tight shirt would stay on **bleep** right on your cleavage to understand what I mean:P)The knees using the leg muscles pose 0% are not deformed like in SL. This because to make them appear like in second life in the knee area where the joint is (in maya or other 3d programs) or where the tip and the head of the bones meet in blender you should assign an high % of weight of those vertices in that area to mbones, but this would screw then the knee angle poses. You can test and see yourself. After all also the avatar from second life wiki have that kind of behaviour in blender and once in world the area match the leg muscles slider extreme values. Just to be complete for those who need it for a modeling purpose, for instance in case even for fitted mesh you might want to make more sizes.I have had to make for torso muscles two poses for male versions and two for female version, hence the female really has a lil bit scale of the arms ,while the man becomes hulk,this has been my work around.I am trying to figure out what is making action constraint in blender to complete the work and give you it working with a python panel and buttons for ik/fk switch and sliders like in second life.Rather than those for now I don’t know other “iussues” and as said above it might work good as long as you follow the general rule “stay lose on the avatar and make bridges between the avatar ridges avoiding to betasurface it”:P Fixes I have been rotating in edit mode the clavicles and the arms collision bones, this in blender 2.72 bypasses the “bug” in the EXPERIMENTAL fbx addon”.By the way this is no more an iussue with blender 2.73 because luckly the community after I pointed that out has fixed it, it seems.Plus they have added now a very nice feature in the collada dae exporter that now allows you to convert automatically blender bones into a joint system when you make a dae file to bring in maya or any other 3d software.re-weighting process for male and female mesh,to let it fit as much as possible the secondlife deformations.Let’s hope that it works in blender for now it seems so, but I haven’t had time for enough tests in world in second life due to my real life “bugginess”Given better rotation to some “extra”mbones like skull and toes.This should help especially when rigging stuff around head to avoid to get skull bugging you,giving you unwanted mskull weight on face.If you find any iussue or find out any possible fix just send me in world a notecard (it’s better, hence being offline a lot I always get “message capped” error when I login). Or if you think that it’s better either way just take all this like a methodic talk and propose your own kit made from scratch. This kit is free and it’s meant to be free. You can modify it, redistribute it, credits would be apreciated. Even if it was the most perfect thing of the world I would set it free. As activist of the Zeitgeist movement I care to share culture, that belongs to mankind. Now let me write a very few lines that will guide you through the file ( liquid democracy prototype) once that you’ve opened it by double click. Here you can see on the lower menu bar several layers.You can activate each layer by Shift Rmb click on it, holding down Shift you can activate more layers just keeping Rmb clicking on them.For instance turn on base female mesh,then turn on the armature layer to display the armature (all the bones).Then go to the armature property panel on the right and there you have two other layers that you can use to turn on only mbones or only collision bones or both kind of bones by shift click and Rmb clicking those layers. Next picture is shows you how to use the pose library and the poses that I put inside to help you with rigging process. Always in armature tab see also the picture above, enable just collision bones.Now scrolling down the side bar in armature tab you can see the pose library that I created, which is named "fitted mesh”.There from the list select one fo the poses you want( I suggest you to follow a precise pattern selecting which one to put on timeline). Notice that I have enabled fake user: this is very important thing in many things also for materials for instance in blender to avoid that you lose what you’ve been creating when you close the program.Move the mouse cursor in 3d space and hit A from keyboard to select all the bones.Then click on the button with the magnifying glass icon as showed in the picture.This will apply to the bones the selected pose from pose library.Show where to place your keyframe on your timeline:I suggest you to use a precise ordr setting keyframes: for istance 0, 10, 20… By this way you can not only jump from a pose to another using up and down arrow from keyboard, but if needed using the mouse or left and right arrow also gradually change the body state from the minimum value pose to the maximum one.Be sure to have enabled LocRotScale That will allow you to store location rotation scale for each bone.Hit from keyboard I key or the button insert keyframe as showed in the picture.This is all I can do for now in my little. I’ll keep working on the project and once figured out what is making the action constraint misbehave I’ll upgrade this also with a python scripted panel with sliders.You can see what is bugging me here and if you want get on the piraten ship and work with me to complete the project. Of course the project is open source and we’ll work for free. To contact me telling me about bugs that you find or propose fixes drop me a notecard in second life, because I always get messages capped.

I was wondering how to use some retopo utilities when I am in my office and couldn't use my own programs, so I found this other method for blender. Again another totally FREE adon to emulate Zbrush retopo process in blender. http://blendersushi.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/technique-retopology-using-sverchok.html this site shows yo how to use svershock addon for blender to create a new retopoed mesh that will be like zbrush zremesher. Here is the script http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Nodes/Sverchok Free of course The result is similar to Zbrush the difference is that with blender you have to get hands dirty much much more,while in zbrush 1 click and it's done. Not the best workflow.My opinion is that like in math the more math you know the fastest you complete your equation, same it should be in 3d art workflow, but in this case like in many others blender likes to make you use more steps. Anyway it works even if you need a bit more patience than Zbrush

De gustibus... I prefer these kind of addons This is a big help to have during the sculptpainting process allowing you to handle the layers http://blendersensei.com/zero-brush/ Of course the dev to keeps the blender spirit left its free imagine if I'd pay for all the stuff that I install on my linux machines: It would cost more than windows. Internet explorer the worst piece of software ever developed and it keeps being a beeep, many other nice softwares and thousands of useful plugins for them are FREE. let's not kill the opensource in name of ZEITGEIST, knowledge belongs to mainkind.

I am still with 2014 version and never had iussue exporting the rigged dae. With previous versions there were a problem due to the fact that if you used more than one material to your mesh then the upload could have failed due to exporter problems so the workaround was to use the free maya fbx export tool to make the dae ( this was a valid help for versions previous 2014). You talked about "right bones" did you use the secondlife skeleton zip or at least if you made your own did you follow its names? http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Rigging_Fitted_Mesh That I know max has a "buggy dae" that must be fixed manually editing the text; maya has always been fine. Something that you may want to try is ( if you own still 2014 try its export,hoping that this isn't a bug for 2015 versionthat I'ven't tried yet so couldn't give more specific help) Another test that I'd do is using the blender import-export Experimental Fbx format addon ,transferring your fbx from maya to blender and from blender to SL to see if it's an exporter or settings iussues (maybe they changed some settings in 2015). If there is some new option in 2015 that Idk, lacking this version ,see if it would allow different ways to store weights: SL wants weights to be stored in skin if they'd be stored in bones of course the dae fails ( though this has never happen till maya 2014 my version).

It's been long time since I made my experiments with sketchup. Download another free softweare and start seeing if it could be some dae exporter iussue. For instance ge blender import your dae in blender then use its exporter ( that for sure works) to see if then your mesh is recognized by SL. If it keeps failing analize its structure in a wireframe mode in blender or any other software see if there are polygons sharing more than 2 edges or if there are degenerated unwanted useless vertices that you might cleanup from blender in edit mode, mesh menu -> clean up -> delete lose Probably its not your case but also know that if you're trying to upload in SL one of those models made with sketchup available on google ,they're not optimized for SL and you'd need a lot of cleanup and remodeling work to make them good to go.Those models could give bad errors if you try to upload.

That's a nice tool, however some peple say that it might fail on comlex surfaces and that "manual" or semi-manual editing is always above that. Blender after all is an open source software and this tool costs 30 dollars if I have to choose an open source software then install least two addons to run it for my sl sage I would rather buy a cheap software for mac like cheetah 3d that costs just 60 dollar. there are other free alternatives that I might suggest.After all the nice thing of GNU gpl and opensource universe is just this getting stuff and getting it for free. http://cgcookie.com/blender/lessons/1-retopology-method-1-surface-snapping/ http://cgcookie.com/blender/lessons/2-retopology-method-2-shrinkwrap-modifier/ http://cgcookie.com/blender/lessons/3-retopology-method-3-bsurfaces-add-on/ Oh and don't forget to install the new alternative addon F2 Mesh that has some good usage also for retopoing. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Modeling/F2 And now the "little boy bomb" If you like something smoother with a nice ui to use for retopoing ee at what this guy has developed. The guide is in French but the video that he made are quite easy too. https://github.com/pitiwazou/Scripts-Blender/blob/master/Retopology_Tools_B http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?344060-Retopology-Tools/page2&s=41436458f19792f77463bf4b7d23800c Enjoy your free retopo tool Anyway blender is still behind topogun, Zbrush ,maya and the new cinema 4d retopo tool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpzjFTSPMV4

Addedum I was forgetting to say that all this madness is just for fitted aka liquid mesh For standard size rigging, and for other grids where deformers sliders would still work it's just enough to use the blender "importer-exporter EXPERIMENTAL fbx format" plugin as it is to get your work good in world Bypassing in this way the uncompatibility of some dae files from some softwares with SL. It does the same hack that I did using maya as exporter of ciinema rigged mesh as shown in the old post (see the link above).

Gaia Clary wrote: hi; In your first post in this thread you mentioned: The big bet was now allowing anybody who used a software that was not Maya to bring in sl their riggged meshes. This confuses me a bit, because haven't there be many tools around since a long time which where able to create SL compatible rigged mesh Collada exports ? You also mention: Now it's possible to rig by your software of choice and then use blender just to obtain the dae file compatible with SL as maya already did before.I'll startr my tests later ( I've just got the news of the blender plugin). Why wasn't this possible before ? I must admit that i am very focused on the Blender universe and i did not keep track on how other software would work or not work for SL. So is Blender a tool that makes it easier to get rigged mesh to SL than other tools do ? Is that the reason why the new FBX Importer is so exciting ? Is the good news that you now can import from more tools to Blender and from blender create the final export files for SL ? I'll tell you before this Blender, maya and max were the used software to make mesh. Maya thanks to Chaty has got its tool to make fittted/liquid mesh Blender has avastar, 3ds max even if its exporter is compatible with SL lacks a tool but oh well ( they can fix manually the dae before exporting). The big iussue is for softwares like Modo, cheeta, cinema4d,rhino..and so on, where the exporter woud not allow SL to read properly your dae. Take for istance cinema4d..light years easier than blender workflow to use but its exporter least up to R15 sucks and would not allow them to import it in SL.. if you read about blog fashions you would see that a famous brand of SL does this thing.. she uses cinema to build and blender to rig, regretting in her blog to not be able to do all in c4d. The idea is just as simple use those obj files taken editing the sliders for SL collision bones ( the same mentioned in the list) as model to modify the collisopn deform bones in your 3d program this to build shape keys to use then in a graph editor with Drivers to build for any software the SL sliders to use while rigging, get the mesh riged in the software that anybody likes rather than blende rather than maya or max. I've already made athing that should work this way in blender gonna complete the stuff and try to give it buttons for the UI so it's easier tool to use, then make a tutorial that can be followed by anyne to make a similar thing for their fave software using blender like Rosetta Stone to share the workflow and the knowledge( of course it all opensource and free) :=] Personally I wouldn't get maya 2015 nor max hence there are other nicer suites like modo and others cheaper and with a nice workflow, cause speeding up the job is important too. If you scroll down the blender fora , maybe you've already done you could see how many of them are also cinema 4d users, not for nothing many parts of the new blender 2.6 interface were "copied by cinema 4d architecture" because they liked the better workflow, but it stil lacks many many things to call it easier.. let's call it cheap and working.

Here are the settings that for now I've found best working to import your rigged mesh from any other 3d application of your choice to Secondlife. Maybe there are some better manual settings I am still sperimenting and testing them all but so far this new version of the fixed "experimental fbx importer exporter" for blender works enough good to do the hack for now. Once I have imported my mesh in blender I can use from tool shelf the weight transfer tool to transfer weight to the new clothes. There is a problem with axis orientation but I think that this could be fixed by blender dae exporter thicking the secondlife box. The second problem That I've noticed is that the clavicle bones are imported wrong, but this would take few clicks to adjust them. As said in the 2.72 release notes now blender should import also shape keys and animations. Either way it's a good new cause to develope my almost universal opensource toolI could use keyframes animating deform bones to bring those deforms from an application to blender( in case the shape keys import wouldn't do the job) . Still a lot to test butthis seems doing a better job than the previous total failure importer that chained immagination and creativity to the blender tyranny (especially for those who couldn't afford a 3000 $ software like maya,there are many others cheapers and some also f..cheaper).

I have already done that set of shapes anyway.I forgot to tell you that the basic male shape is compatible with the ones rigged that you find on wiki. yeah it's a mess, at least it seems so because you have to do the madness above for ruth and all its deformations you get and also for the male one, but also exciting. Not that hard work anyway after positioned your shapes properly the rest is just fun playing with shape keys or morphs and those bones using the scale tool to make the rigged shape fit the model mesh avi for that specific bones that you're considering to make the slider for. Another memento if you're using inworldz viewer it would allow to import your avatar as well, but the orientation would be more messy than the one got with the old phoenix ( even if you get the referal shape as one piece instead of three( so less work to do later with empty objects to positionate them properly according to the riggged SL mesh avatars that you can get from the wiki page). Another thing: if you are planning to get those referal obj shapes from inworldz another trick is to get a T pose made with your animation program of choice (class 4) to play while you save the obj The trick I used to bring Ruth with me in open grid and in inworldz was just to save on a notecard the name of the sliders of the editing panel and the relative values.

Some of you ( the four or five cats) who have ever read my blurbing in this forum can remind my hack to allow c4d users to rig their characters in cinema 4d and then use maya to export it to Secondlife in a compatible dae. The big bet was now allowing anybody who used a software that was not maya to bring in sl their riggged meshes. By then I tried this hack with blender wondering how to help people using modo too or the 3ds max . Now it seems that blender community has found a workaround to the propietary fbx,allowing MAYA, 3dsMax, Cinema4d,MODOcheetah 3d,carara,unity 3d & others to share import export fbx files with their animations. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Import-Export/Autodesk_FBX This llink shows you details. After this all you need is to use an old version of any viewer that allowed to import on your pc the SL obj files of your avatars such as phoenix 2.5 to make your set of shapes according to the bonbes that should deform your avatar with fitted mesh http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Appearance_Editor_and_affected_bones Here is the list of the bones. To make those shapes I used this way I edited to maximum and to minimum value each slider that would control only the bones that affect the fitted mesh. for istance: Head stretch slider controls the HEAD bone Go on by this way for all the other sliders that affect the collision bones only. you can make two meshes starting from base ruth one with 0% and another with 100% You will have by this way a set of shapes to use once properly rotated in your 3d viewer to build your shape keys or deformers sliders.Tadà nothing more cheap easy simple. For those who have already got plugins all this madness could be avoided (enjoy your plugin and forget all this)!! For communists idealists like me, oh well, time to get hands dirty to start finally work properly with liquid/fitted mesh. Now it's possible to rig by your software of choice and then use blender just to obtain the dae file compatible with SL as maya already did before.I'll startr my tests later ( I've just got the news of the blender plugin). Ah by the way as you can read on the wiki that fbx addon is not installed by default you'll have to enable it manually .

I just got out from my achive another avatar that a friend gave me to convert in maya. The Dress as I told also in other posts ( maybe cause of the way they ent me their avatar or settings on their softwares that I know few) are getting huge when I bring them in maya so If I'd bring it out of maya as they are without the weight map saving workaround I'd get something like a superhugeavatar. This is just the base ruth shape coming from the FBX that they sent me and it is rigged with collision bones. To see it be sure to cam far far far and to have camera constraints disabled ( which I always do) To upload it tick the option keep joint position. Hence this is just a test avatar and it is 6x bigger than the one I posted above, look at it floating because such huge avatar big almost like 1/8 of the whole sim couldn't ground properly without scripted hud for that. however even with this extreme size I can't reproduce distorsions when an avi is rigged on collision bones here the link to download it http://www.fileconvoy.com/dfl.php?id=g8c6cbc2a9d0bd8fe999494182996a2bcf8ee0c621

With picture it seems much more clear. I also saw in world some tails made this way or in a way somehow similar to this. What they used to make a rough effect of fur was some spikes come out from the base mesh ( using extrusion It's my guess) then rigged it on neck probably or head , hence it was moving according to avatar movements. With proper amount of time messing with that project maybe you get an interesting look, but still if it's rigged that would be light years far from furry flexy tails. Say a bubblegum tail that will be the perfect pair for bubble gum mesh hair . However woth a try good luck with that.