[Mesh Import Open Beta Starts Today]

There is a problem with the attachments, and we are working on a fix.  Thanks for your patience.

[Mesh Open Beta Begins on October 13th]

Regarding some of the recent questions about rigging:

• the limit is that each vertex can be influenced by a maximum of 4 joints.  A mesh as a whole can be influenced by the entire skeleton, as long as each individual vertex does not exceeed that limit.
• yes, multiple meshes can be influenced by the same joints, so for example you could have a jacket mesh and an avatar mesh attached at the same time and moving in sync.

[Mesh Open Beta Begins on October 13th]

The length of the Open Beta period has not been determined yet.  We will keep you posted.

[Mesh Open Beta Begins on October 13th]

Spritely, yes, the NDA has been lifted - see the post announcing that at http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2010/09/14/next-steps-for-mesh-import.

Rigging is is attachment based; if you import a mesh with compatible bone weight information, you will be able to use it as an attachment that will animate along with your standard avatar.  If you wish, you can use an alpha mask to make your standard avatar invisible, giving a fully mesh-based appearance.  It is also possible to use multiple mesh attachments, so for example you could have a mesh jacket or mesh hair that animates along with your mesh body.  Specifying different mesh densities (LODs) for different distances is supported.

More documentation is coming soon.

[Mesh Open Beta Begins on October 13th]

Yes, mesh will be free during the testing on aditi.  Details of pricing once it goes live on agni have not been finalized yet.