HeatherD Tungsten

Taking up the conversation at "LeLutka head, SL Neck". I downloaded that kit (at least I'm pretty sure it was that one) last year, messed around with it for a while, to try to fix the neck issue of the body and head I created, but I found the Dev Kit useless. The big problem is that it was not rigged. It's one thing to manually move or copy vertex positions, but if you don't have standard weights, - or at least the same weights for the body and head you are trying to wear together, then there is no way they will line up as "Shape slider setting" change. Further, the Ruth example avatar body provided by the SL Wiki, and the newer Bento example body also from the SL Wiki, do not have the same starting mesh shapes, nor weights. When I first created my body mesh, I used the ruth, then when bento came along, I changed to the bento weights, but if someone takes OFF their mesh head, it's the old Ruth head that appears, or which some people still use every day - nothing lines up. The other point is that we are trying to achieve a model with a smoother look via higher detail in the mesh, when making a mesh body or head, than what the SL bodies have. But then using the neck vertexes and weights of those old bodies defeats the whole point. Further, if you have to include multiple necks in a body mesh to match dozens of heads, then the vertex count climbs defeating streamlined model making as we try to strike a balance between keeping vertex counts low but high enough to provide a nice looking model. In my case, I've just spent the last week reworking the mesh and weights of my models neck to match the SL Bento example. I got it working nicely, but then for curiosity, removed my mesh head, only to see the default neck sticking way into space outside of the body's portion of the neck. Back to the drawing board I guess. But what to do next? It's like LINDEN needs to take the leadership, toss out the old stuff, and provide an actual updated bento neck model we all can use to copy both the vertex positions and weights.

I have seen Voting Stations in a few places now - that are supposed to help raise awareness and traffic to locations in Second Life. But the versions in the Marketplace all seem to be old products and with a lot of bad reviews. So is this still a thing in Second Life, and is it worth setting one up on my land?

I want to make a sign that turns to face the viewer no matter where the person is viewing from. I've seen signs like this around SL but I'm not even sure what to call such a sign. Then I would like to cut and paste some script to make it work. But seeing that I don't even know the proper name for such a sign, the script search will have to wait. So.... for starters, what do you call such a sign? And if there are more than one person in the area, will that sign show flat on to everyone? I'll be using it in my store to direct shoppers.

There have not been a lot of sales yet, so it will be easy to include a note and redeliver the corrected mesh. That is the plan for this evening.

Wow Theresa. Thanks so much. I didn't know about that setting option. It was a simple fix.

It seems likely that this topic has already been addressed but I could not find it.... I recently completed totally remapping the Ultra Vixen mesh avatar (as well as other improvements), and then uploaded the new Ultra Vixen - BOM Bento Female Mesh Avatar body and head. So far so good. She still fits in all the previously made clothes. So still good; until I tried on some of my lingerie. Many of the lingerie items I made make use of partly transparent textures to give the look of lace. Many of those items then conflict with the BOM body surface under the clothing item, turning completely clear. Clearly an ALPHA problem, but how do I address this. Did I miss some setting or modeling or texturing step as I created this mesh? HeatherD

It's my favorite dress. Red is my color. This is a shot taken in my store where I'm arranging new clothes.

MrsSeren. Taking things off or putting them back on again is the job of the Appearance button (or Appearance in the menu). You should include a nude version (which includes the hair and makeup you like) just for situations like you talked about in your reply. When things go wrong with your avatar - and the will, then you can restore it in one click - well ok... two. Click the Appearance button, then click your saved nude outfit. Done. That removes everything and then puts on the saved body. Now that you are nude, it is a great starting point to then wear what ever outfit you like. But you should also have a few outfits save for those times you need a quick change.

Hey Mr.Volatile. I do not have all the answers but I had the same problem as you with the various attempts at rigging my hands. I found that I could move the parts of the armature to be placed inside the mesh. and then checking and adjusting the numbers to ensure that left and right were the same. Once you upload your avatar, it will not look like your model inside BLENDER because the setting of the shape file will resize things. That is where you then have to play with the sliders in the [Edit My Shape] window till you look like you. I am not sure about this but from looking at my results, I get the feeling that Second Life positions the bones to where it wants them even if you move them in BLENDER.

Hi Friday. Speaking of rigging or modeling a face.... A lot of heads and faces are inventions of the modeler - and that's cool - but it means a user's preexisting shape file, and the Classic face that they invested so much time into designing to be just right, then goes out the window. When they put on a mesh head, they never look like themselves again. I speak from first hand experience. When it came time to design my bento head, I used the Second Life Bento head example as a guide. I developed a head with much more detail and a much higher vertex count, but followed the same overall shape. I tried to hand paint a similar Weight Painting, so that when loaded into Second life, it takes on the same shape as the user already know. At least that was the goal. The bento armature does respond differently from the classic armature of the system heads, so I could not achieve the exact look, but it is close. Skin and Makeup textures then also have a great effect. The odd thing about this approach is that my head does not actually look very good when seen in BLENDER - while other heads are a study in Beauty when seen inside their modeling program. But those pretty heads get completely reshaped by the body shape file and will look totally different. sometimes to some really awful results. My ugly head also distorts. It however is similar to the ugly system head when seen in the modeling program. Once inside Second Life, it takes on all the loving care people have put into making their system head pretty. So with the exception of skin and makeup, at least the shape is recognizable. So back to your point of " neither a luscious-lipped Playmate nor a rock-jawed stud" - my head takes the shape you give it. If you would like to try it, contact me. Also your comments and help would be appreciate to refine my Ultra Vixen II head further.

The fit problem is in both the model being used and in what is called "Weight Painting". The process of weight painting is a system that determines how much each vertex is effected by animations and by the slider settings in the [Edit My Shape] window. Each vertex of an outfit needs to have the exact same weight as the adjacent vertex of the mesh avatar. It seems there are far too many clothing modelers who don't take the time to weight paint for each mesh brand they model for - resulting in problems such as in the first image above. In my case, I have the correct Weight information for my avatar mesh (since I am the creator), therefore most of my clothes have avoided the same problem, but even when getting to extremes or when modeling shapes that are not exactly the same as the underlying avatar - such as loose fitting clothes - the vertexes can get away from you. Believe me.... this stuff is hard! https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/167675

I have designed a custom female avatar and related clothes. I have set the properties for both the mesh items and all the textures to COPY and MODIFY. Yet once I've passed some of my mesh products to other people, some but not these items have the texture tab in the EDIT window locked. It also remains locked when rezzing these items to the ground in a sandbox. Likewise, the bottom of the General tab in the EDIT window also has check boxes to set permission for the next owner. Some of my items will not let me set the check boxes to Modify or Copy for the next owner. Is there anyone who can enlighten me as to why I am finding this inconsistency? HeatherD

Hey Kyrah, as I said " These new parts work well responding to all the sliders except "Body Fat" and "Torso Muscles". " It is the head and hands that I am taking about. The two sliders don't work for those parts, and that leads to a lack of ability to scale. I need to know if I missed weight painting some bones or if there is some other problem?

Hey Kyrah, I am not an expert, I am only learning BLENDER and only have a handful of the Second Life techniques figured out, but... you locate the Second Life sample avatars in the Second Life Wiki. Load those into Blender. Now I even forget the technical term, but you transfer your mesh Parent/child control to the Second Life Armature. I did NOT use the Second Life weights. I deleted the Second Life Mesh, and weight painted my own mesh to each of the individual bones so I could control how my mesh moved or deformed. Then did the upload, and everything is "fitted mesh". My avatar can take up quite an array of body shapes with little distortion.

I have been designing my own custom avatar mesh. I am using the classic armature for the body but have split up the head and hands into their own parts and converted them to the Bento Armature. These new parts work well responding to all the sliders except "Body Fat" and "Torso Muscles". That in turn leads to problems of alignment with the wrists and the neck not lining up, and with gaps depending on the viewing angle. I suspect that I may have missed weight painting particular bones of the Bento Armature, but as I look through the list or view the bones in BLENDER, I have not been able to determine which I missed. Any help would be appreciated.

I had this same problem after I let BLENDER upgrade. I had to go back to version 2.76. After that, I no longer had any problems.

I am a mesh body designer, and I do NOT use Avastar. I also make all my own clothes for my avatar body. You may have seen these around Second Life with the brand name Ultra Vixen. The process to upload into SL is actually fairly easy. But I am using BLENDER 2.76b. I let BLENDER upgrade to the next version at one point but that new version was no longer compatible. I had to go back to version 2.76. Further, I used the Second Life Demo avatars - both the Classic and the Bento - imported those into BLENDER, deleted their mesh but retained the armatures. I then modeled my own mesh, did custom weight painting, texture mapping, and either tiling or texture painting skin or fabric. The steps to upload an avatar or clothing model are: In BLENDER... 1, In Object Mode, select your mesh. 2, From the top menu - File - Export - Collada. 3, Blender changes the screen - look in the side panel for the Drop Down "Export COLLADA" The first selection shows "Operator Presets". Click the arrows to show the menu and select "SL+Open Sim Rigged". After you select that, the box will still read "Operator Presets" but the selection inside has been changed. 4. Now add a new file name, it will get a .dae suffix automatically. 5. Finally at the far right, Click the "Export COLLADA" button. The window reverts back to your 3D creation panel. And you will have a new *yourname*.dae file in the same folder as your project. Now to upload the *yourname*.dae into Second Life.... 1. Load Second Life and open your Inventory Window. 2. At the bottom of the Inventory, click the plus sign "+". That shows you a new menu. Select UPLOAD - and from the next menu MODEL. 3. A file upload window opens. Locate your *yourname*.dae file on your confuser's hard-drive. Click the OPEN button. 4. Second Life then shows an UPLOAD MODEL window. 5. There are a number of fields and check boxes here to look at. a) type a model name in the Model Name box. b) In the "This Model Represents" drop down, select your best type (in my case uploading body parts and clothing, I have been using the "Avatar Shape" selection). c) From the three tabs - select Upload Options. d) Check the following boxes - Include Textures - Include Skin Weight - Include Joint Positions (note, I have never actually had a texture upload. I don't know why, but I've added textures manually once I WEAR the model). 6, Click the "Calculate Weights & Fee" button. Second Life will take a few seconds to spit out a cost. When done, that same button changes to an "Upload" button. 7. Now click Upload and you will see your banked L drop by the previously worked out cost, and the Upload window closes. You are done. To see your work... Locate your new 3D mesh object in your inventory. You could rez it in a sand box, or wear it but don't just let SL put it anywhere. You will want to control which bone it attaches to. So, Right Click the object, and from the menu select Attach To > , from the next menu, select your preferred bone. Now that you are wearing the item, you can play with the texture properties. Right click it and enter Edit Mode - Texture Tab, and have fun.

Hey Aquila, Thanks for pointing that out to me. I have never noticed that before, but I have noticed that all my mesh is very big as it first is rezzed, and then I am guessing that the sl armature adjusts the size to the slider setting of my avatar. I am not sure how this works but I have not had any problems in world. I think Chic may be on to something as I did recently update the version of BLENDER. The weird thing also is that my problem is only with mesh using the classic armature. My head uses the Bento Armature and it uploads fine. ???

Hey Friday. There is a sample Bento head mesh and it's armature available on the SL wiki. You could use that as is. but I found that it is sized differently from the classic head in world once uploaded to second life. Also that mesh is just as crude as the classic head. I used that sample as a guide and completely modeled a new and more detailed head. It has been a ton of work. Also I used BLENDER to do the modeling, but the texture UNWRAP would not lay out the mapping even remotely close to the lay out of the standard face skin layout. I had to grab each vertex on the texture map and move them to where I wanted them one at a time. That took me a few months of on again - off again effort , and more than a few shots of Scotch. The next problem is that I have not been able to find Bento face animations of any quality that come independent of commercial heads. I have found a simple talk animation and one hud with a few facial expressions, so I know my head works, but I need more and better animations. I guess they will become available as the Bento community matures. Hope this helps.

Hi Rhian Milena. You ask about if anyone has a favorite mesh avatar brand... Why yes I do. This is my chance to shamelessly brag about my own avatar. I am currently modeling my own mesh avatar including a bento head, and have started bento hands. The body still uses the classic avatar since the bento armature I have found so far do not have the ability to move the breasts with physics in as nice a way as the classic. I actually find that odd, you would think that the bento armature should be better than the classic in every way, but the version I found is not. Anyway, I also have already made well over 40 clothing mesh items with lots of textures for each.

Starting yesterday, all the exports of my mesh object from Blender to Collada format files are not transferring the weight painting correctly. I am modeling my own female avatar and clothes. I have been trying to trouble shoot the problem. It turns out that if I do a test upload of one of my previous DAE files I created, the upload works perfectly. But since yesterday, any new rigged mesh or models that I have previously made (even my body that I have been using for months) and do a new export to a new DAE file, then take that file and upload it to blender, the weights are no longer valid. When I look at the model in the Second Life Upload Window preview panel, and click the check box for Skin Weights, the model collapses in on itself to a thin tangle. The models since yesterday turn into a mess within Second Life. I am using the same procedure to upload mesh items that I have been using for the last year. Note; I do not use AvaStar. I use a stock version of BLENDER 2.79 as it is loaded to my computer from Blender.org I do not think that I inadvertently reset something, but I can't be sure. I am currently trying to find a listing of all the settings, check boxes, and even units that I need to set within Bender in order to confirm that I have the right setting, in order to enable me to continue to export to Collada and on to Second Life. Right now, I am effectively dead in the water and can't move forward on my project. HELP! Any one who could point me to a list of setting or a tutorial would be a real help. The first image is my project so far, Bento head armature, Classic body armature. The next two show the Shorts I am trying to upload and how that mesh weight is messed up.

The situation is crazy, with designers spending too much time and effort to make custom versions of every design for each brand of mesh avatar. This make shopping next to impossible ( I personally can hardly find things that fit me). In adition, all this duplication must take up a ton of server space costing SL profit. I want to be able to adjust the shape of mesh clothes. We need a new tool in SL! A new tool designed into the veiwer would make life a lot easier and infact, allow more shopping since we would be able to adjust almost any mesh. The tool would be based on the same principle as the current Tera Forming tool used to change the topography of land. There would be a "Scaling" "Push" or "Pull" brushs. There would also need to be a reset button so people could start over if needed. Such changes would be saved as a morph file, and would also be able to be dropped into a new Morph tab in the item's profile or in the edit window. Deleting the morph file or script would also reset the clothes. The critical thing is that while a designer may set something to "No Modity", effecting textures, and mesh component or vertex counts, it would however be able to be morphed. Such morphs would be able to be sold for use by people wearing similar mesh types and or body shapes, to be applied to specific clothes. I see such a change in SL as badly needed. It would make life a lot easyer, streamling a lot of product. So Linden, what are the chances of a tool like this in the near future? HeatherD