Ags Falconer

Don't avoid intimacy Lindal; yesterday's SPENT.

Did romance ever antagonize my ULCER?

However, altruistic plans never secure PEACE.

Small minds inherently resist knowing TRUTH.

Snockered noobs only regret excess LATER!

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@Scylla Rhiadra is very much onto something here. Strongly agree about a major source of innovation == residents. Curious what you kind folks think about an experiment with 3 grids: Grid 1. Strong oversight with well written guidance and fairly strict policy enforcement. Grid 2. Total laissez-faire style with a near anything goes invitational. Grid 3. A middle ground. Purely academic of course because LL would not sign up for it. But just interested in your views. Also, Scylla, 1 little spelling nit. Pretty sure it's spelled C L U S T E R. F 🤘 C K. 😉

Step 11b continued: Refining the mesh movement. - I don't understand what is causing the difference in size between the uploaded model. See pic. On the right is the model when I rez it on the ground. I scale it during upload to that size--roughly 1.6m tall. When I wear the model, it shows as shown on the left. I turned on Show Bones and you can see that the skeleton of the avatar is roughly the size of the rezzed model (right). Thoughts?

Results: looking into Blender's bone envelopes and head/tail radii, I learned that those are used within Blender to *generate* vertex group weights. Those are an alternative to Automatic Weights and other methods for setting weights. But they got nothing to do with exporting to Collada or uploading to SecondLife. So. Onward. Turns out the spike shown in this pic was caused by 2 bones (i.e., mFaceCheekUpperLeft & mFaceCheekLowerLeft) that had gotten unparented from the mFaceRoot bone during editing. Without being properly parented within the bone hierarchy, they don't act as desired as shown in the pic. Found that problem by looking through the skeleton hierarchy. Thanks to @Quarrel Kukulcan for your suggestions. They helped me work thru the issue. On to the next challenges!

Congrats @Lindal Kidd on the auction outcome. I love the look and will try to swing by next time I'm in world. 🙂

Step 11b. Refining the mesh movement. Feeling like I am making progress. But definitely not yet at my desired destination. I've worked out the model, the texture, the armature, the export to a Collada file, and the import into the SecondLife beta grid. And I'm still working through a few details. One new lesson learned: all vertices in the mesh should be included in at least one vertex group and given a weight to determine influence from the armature. Without good vertex weights, you get a seriously deformed avatar in SecondLife. Thanks again to @Quarrel Kukulcan for offering that knowledge. Still, even with all vertices grouped and weighted, something is not as desired which is causing the spike in the face as shown in this pic. - Doing a deep dive into Blender's bone envelopes and head and tail radii. After tweaking envelopes and radii for all the bones, I'll do another upload and check out the avatar.

Gotcha! Very helpful. And the difference between a static mesh and a rigged mesh helps clarify this. Thank you!

Stoic nodding imbues tempered, somber TONES.

Step 11a. Troubleshooting the mesh movement. - The mesh does not move and deform/transform as desired in SecondLife. This is not an uncommon problem and lots has been written on it. So, I've read all the SecondLife Community posts I can find on the topic. One consistent item stressed in posts is to double check the direction the model is facing in Blender. Should be facing +X direction which is not the default Blender starting point in its Viewport. But I made that change already and confirmed the model does face +X prior to being exported as Collada. - In Parenting the mesh to the armature, I used Parent (Ctrl P) > Armature Deform > With Automatic Weights. That process is described at https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/armatures/skinning/parenting.html Looking at the movement of the avatar in SecondLife beta grid, the worst portions appear to be the face, hands, and feet. Otherwise, the avatar mostly moves and reacts correctly. So I am suspecting that the weights for the vertex groups need to be refined. I'll start there.

She talks excessively about kegels. CEASE!

Lessons along the path: 1. When exporting the blender mesh to a Collada format, I don't believe blender actually bundles the texture image into the same *.dae file. Rather it includes the image file as a reference in the Collada file. So, you still have to upload the texture image into SecondLife and edit the avatar object to add the texture to it. Then, it seems to work fine. Picture of the result below. (If someone knows I am wrong on this, please set me straight!) 2. The rigging bones had an error. 1 bone was accidently added and its name did not conform to the SecondLife convention. With that accidental bone deleted, the upload and wearing the avatar worked as expected. Except .... something has caused the avatar mesh to deform incorrectly. So, troubleshooting of that will continue. Pic of the worn avatar also included below. Next steps: Of course, troubleshooting the mesh deforming, then retouching the texture image to fix areas and eliminate seams around neck, waist, shoulders, etc ...

Zeal ever shall test your WHUMP.

Step 11: Exporting the blender model to Collada format and uploading to the SecondLife beta grid - Happy enough with the texture, UV map, and how it renders to try it out on the beta grid. - Rigged the mesh with one of the SecondLife armatures. - And. Let the troubleshooting begin. -- The Collada export does not include the textures. Reading through posts about that and will troubleshoot simple cube models to verify export settings. -- The upload to the beta grid also has trouble. 1st, I'll inventory the names of the bones in the armature. -- Ah. Troubleshooting is a special hell....

Step 10. Art work on the textures - Happy enough now with the UV map layout - Exported the UV map from blender as a image. Imported the UV map image as a layer in Gimp. - Using Gimp 2.10 to work on the art of the textures

Save humanity and kill your SOULS.

Just like our avatars. 😋

Step 9: Working new textures and a new UV map - Reasonably happy with the mesh. Although I know I'll make at least a few more tweaks as I go. - Getting the UV map right has required some iteration on the mesh and a little guess work on how I might end up doing the fur. Still not 100% sure. - The texture is being done in Gimp 2.10. Lots of work to go there.

Another night's game excites reaction. EMOTE

That is a very nice and sly smile. I think I might recognize that smile. @Scylla Rhiadra, you're plotting a REVOLUTION!! Aren't you?

No other taxes escape such SCORN.