Medhue Simoni

Ssmiles wrote: Awesome, thanks for making this! I learned a lot that I could use for other projects as well. I have a question though. When you are scaling the wet suit along the X and then the Y axis at 16:20, are you scaling it up or down? (I am assuming up) Yep, scaling up, or maybe scaling OUT is a better word. Just remember that you can't go very far on the x axis, as it will also throw off the legs and arms. You can scale more on the Y axis and that wil take care of most of suit that affect the front and back. Ssmiles wrote: Just another thought. It might be really nice if you made the wetsuit available for download. Not that it looks terribly hard to make (again, thanks for showing folks how to do it) but it would be a really nice starting point for folks using Avastar. I have thought about this, and selling the wetsuit, for a small price, with my weights. I didn't know all the ins and outs of Blender at that time. Now, I understand how I could do this, but I hesitate because of Fitted mesh. I don't see the point in just selling or giving away a classic weighted wetsuit, as Avastar gets you 90% there. Fitted mesh is far too strange and imperfect to actually sell weights for it. I'd have to charge something for it, if it was downloaded from my website, as I pay a fee for every download from my site. I do use some free sites, but I'd rather not make people sign up for memberships on other sites. We'll see tho. I'm working on a boxing outfit and MMA outfit, that I want to be fitted mesh for a number of reasons. If I get those working well, then I might sell the wetsuits and weights for it all with detailed instructions.

Gaia Clary wrote: Hi, Medhue, excellent ! So i can now relax even more :matte-motes-sunglasses-3: However i would like to add a quick 1 minute tool tip here as well which applies to Avastar-1.1. (Could save you a lot of cleaning up time): (Improved freeze Tool in Avastar-1.1) cheers, Gaia Very nice! I'll definitely be using that now. I'm going to post the video here so that people don't have to leave the page to see it. Plus, the videos are very much related.

I've never actually used the "Alter to rest pose" feature or even tried rigging in a different pose, but I don't understand how it can end in bad results, other than that being because of user error or skill. Are you trying to rigged it for fitted mesh in something other than a Tpose? I would think that what you would need to do is first rig the avatar with classic weights, then move the avatar to a Tpose, and then rig it for Fitted mesh.

Ssmiles wrote: I think most folks who know a bit about weighting would get that and if they don't, I'm sure they will ask. I have a slight request. How about a tutorial on exactly how you made the wet suit? I bet it would be REALLY helpful for people new to this. I know I would appreciate it. Here is the link to the thread with the tutorial on how to create a bodysuit. http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Tutorial-Create-a-Bodysuit-with-Avastar/m-p/2772856#U2772856

Just a quick video on how to create a full bodysuit using Avastar and their avatar. Of course, this will work for any kind of skin tight clothing.

This is not something that I have ever done, but in theory, you don't need to make weird animations for your avatar to look the way you want. When you import the custom avatar, the bone lengths and size are embedded in the avatar. You should be able to play any animation on that avatar, reguardless of the bone lengths. The only thing you might have to do to the animation is adjust it height position in relation to the first and second frames. Of course, I know that many avatars before mesh used bone deformers to alter the skeleton, but with mesh you really don't need to do that. Like I said tho, I don't do this kind of stuff or make characters that need massive body adjustments, so I'm just talking about my own experiences.

Gaia Clary wrote: Hi, Medhue; I just wanted to mention that i have added a link to your video on our "Avastar, start here..." page. Thanks for this nice contribution Thank you, Gaia! I'm always happy to help promote such a well made product.

Ssmiles wrote: I think most folks who know a bit about weighting would get that and if they don't, I'm sure they will ask. I have a slight request. How about a tutorial on exactly how you made the wet suit? I bet it would be REALLY helpful for people new to this. I know I would appreciate it. Sure, that is an easy enough tutorial, and it is not obvious to do, although it might seem to be. I gotta finish some dang bird flying animation in Unity, and I've been putting it off for days now. It's a contract job for a game, so I can't procrastinate any longer. I just hate having to animate directly in Unity. I'll try to find some time to do the tutorial this week.

Ssmiles wrote: Thanks Medhue! Nice tutorial! Very helpful. Thanks Ssmiles! I hope so! I'm always afraid that I left out something major, like in this 1 I shoudl have talked about the red to blue nature of weighting, but I think people understand that right away.

Oh, another thing I want to mention is that this vidoe was recorded using ShadowPlay by Nvidia. It is totally awesome to use to record your desktop, and it doesn't slow down your frame rate much, if any. I know the pulse in the video is not from ShadowPlay, as the video was perfect before I dropped it into the video editor. I will say tho, that I could not drop the video from ShadowPlay into my Sony Vegas video editor, although I could probably find the codex for it. This is why I tried editing the video in Blender, which was not all that enjoyable compared to Sony Vegas. If you have a newish Nvidia card, you should definitely give the Nvidia GeForce Experience a try, which includes ShadowPlay.

Thanks Nalates! 1 thing that I noticed after I uploaded the video was that few other people have SL tutorials on the subject. Many of them are linked to this video on the side where suggestions are, or at the end of the video where it shows other videos. The few related to SL are not in english. So, my point is, that I would love to see more people doing tutorials. To anyone interested, I will confess that, although I do these video to help people, I also make a little money every month from Youtube/Google. It's not alot, depending on the subject matter, but it is a good incentive to make tutorials. I would especially encourage creators that work in Maya or 3Ds Max to make tutorials, as there aren't many for those.

Stefanosje Sellers wrote: Great tutorial. I followed Gaia's videos although they were a little hard to follow sometimes due to the text-to-speech explanations. Thanks Stefanosje! It's kind of a tough 1, as there are so many things I could show or talk about. The key thing I don't want to do is confuse people tho. That said, I always have a hard time with names and labels, lol. I actually prefer Gaia's videos, just because of the technical nature of them. Plus, I use text to speech all the time, so it's not strange to me.

Just a quick video on how to rig clothing or avatars using Blender with the Avastar addon. I actually used Blender's video editing to put together this video, which is why the sound is off in the intro. There is also this weird kind of pulsing slight blur, but it's not that annoying and I didn't have time to figure out why and then rerender.

Yippie!!!!!! Hopefully, I will never have to animate stuff inside of Unity anymore, cause that is just a pain in the butt.

Undo recently got some changes. I don't know it in detail, as it is all kind of strange, and I've never much had a problem with it. The change had something to do with what mode you are in. Like they are all indepedent or something. Like I said, I read about it but I didn't investigate it deeply as It has never been an issue for me. You should get Blender 2.71 anyways. It's just out and I like it.

Well, I just did some searches. See, people who do this love to brag about it. You know what I found? NOTHING! There was 1 interesting hit that I got, but considering there were no others, I don't think it is a problem. Yes, it is easy enough to pass LL's IP test, but it still keeps most cheaters out of the process. If they get caught uploading someone else's mesh, their ability to upload mesh could be revoked. Youtube is crazy tho. That is kind of how you know when these things are going on, cause people love to brag, and the creators of these tools know that Youtube is great for marketing their cheater tools. It's actually much harder to copybot a mesh than any other asset in SL, as it doesn't work the same way.

LaskyaClaren wrote: I think the main difference between your perspective and mine is that you are a "professional" creator who expects to make money from his creations. Even when I had a store in which I "sold" books I'd made, I never expected to do that. There could, potentially, be different levels of tools made available: one sophisticated set for creators such as yourself, and another simple, primitive-based set (even if prims are only the starting point) for "amateur" or casual builders. The key point is that I'd hate to see building in the new VW become so technically complicated that "ordinary" residents lose the opportunity to become creative as well. That sense of "ANYONE can build!" was part of the magic of early SL, and very much in keeping with "Your World, Your Imagination." I pretty much agree with you, for the most part. What I would like to stress tho, is that building a complex item in SL, is almost exactly the same as building a complex thing in Blender. You are doing the same thing, but now you can manipulate every single vertices. It's just 1 step up. This is why I showed the bicycle, as it is just a bunch of cylinders, torus, and cubes, with a little bit of manipulation. I've made a bicycle with prims, and now with mesh. It was basically the same, just with mesh being more detailed. I might be considered a professional creator by some, and I might even fit that definition, but I started mostly in SL just like everyone else here. I have no credentials. In my eyes, I'm still a baby, and have much more to learn. I got most of the mesh and animation stuff down, but I still need to learn more on video, effects, lighting, and compositing in Blender.

phaedra Exonar wrote: I'd personally would rather master a simple tool then try to learn a complex one that's going to be out dated every couple of years and have to start over again with ever being a master of it. I think this is a misconception. Mesh hasn't actually changed since it was first used. Yes, there are always new ways to do it, but those are good to learn because it makes you faster, hence more productive. Animation is basically the same, but now we have more easier to use motion capture systems. When talking about how 3ds Max, Maya, and even Blender are constantly updated, these are usually new ways to do hard things in those programs, like fracturing/breaking items, or better water simulations. When something like mesh is changed, we are talking about modifiers and things like that. No relearning going on hear. Even when Blender changed it's UI, it was all about making the program better, and faster. It's literally a weekends learning how things got moved around, and now you can do things faster and better. I started out in 3DS Max 8, and I never actually bought any other version. Even today, I can still use it if I want to. Blender is just a much better option for me, at least I think so. I always stay up to date with it, and always read the release notes, but I rarely get tripped up by any differences.

Drongle McMahon wrote: " If the new world uses FBX with morphs included..." Sadly, it seems it will use FBX, but that is not a condition for morphs, as Collada includes them too. Yeah, but the reason I want FBX, is because Unity3D uses FBX. You can also import DAE, but I'm not sure all the funtions are unlocked. It would be nice just to create in 1 format and use it across multiple platforms. Hopefully, the Blender team will work on the FBX importing, as I just had to animate a whole set of birds inside of Unity3D, because I could not import them into Blender. What a pain in the butt.

irihapeti wrote: a avatar that has less options in determing shape than we get in SL now. Less options so that fitted mesh clothes fit perfectly automagically every time for the greatest number of users. This being better for the users (the automagic fitting without tweak and hacks like alphas) and better for the creators who have a fixed range of shapes they have to design/create for like SL but simpler Why? The problem with clothing was that LL never implemented morphs. Because of this, LL had to find a way to make things kind of work. If the new world uses FBX with morphs included, then a clothing creator would just make morphs to fit any shape possible. With morphs, every Avatar, even custom Avatars, would be able to be even more customizable than the SL avatar could ever be. Heck, you could make a morph that turns some1 into a frog. Better tech brings even more wonderous possibilities.

phaedra Exonar wrote: "on your mark, get set, go AFK, and be back in half an hour with your finished item" good luck getting any thing even slightly complex uvmapped and textured in that amount of time. Actually, most models that I make are done in about an hour or so. 2 hours max. Unwrapping could take up to 20 min if you want to get real fussy. It's 1 click to bake in shadows. You can also just go from there and paint right on the model with any number of texture patterns or even project a real like image onto the mesh. I use Blender now, but I started in 3Ds Max. In Blender, yeah it takes time to learn, but once you do, it can almost be like your moving clay with your hands. When you learn all the tools and shortcut combos, you can fly. Let's remember that I'm not even really a modeler. Even today, when I get contract jobs for real life game companies. If they want need models made also, I'll contact a buddy or 2 to do that work instead. Although, I did make this bamboo stick for my last contract. They wanted an animation for a zen master holding a stick, but they never made a stick for him yet. It was literally a 5 minute job, and very detailed. I actually talked with the CEO on skype, while he watched me make it. Maybe LL should implement screen share in the New World. lol This bike took me a whole day, but it is pretty detailed and I had to learn more about curves and svg files. The UV map and separate materials was a pain tho.

LaskyaClaren wrote: DeMarco Galthie wrote: Sorry to say but today I see stores dictating standards for glasses, hands, legs, breasts, etc.. There's some danger that this thread will become yet another redundant discussion of the pros-and-cons of LL's announcement about the forthcoming new VW that they are developing. However, this statement struck me as particularly interesting. When the internet got its start in the 90s, one of the things that made it so successful, I'd argue, is that the basic code to build a web page so simple and easy to create that anyone -- even the proverbial teen working on her basement computer -- could build one. Before mesh was introduced into Second Life, much the same could be said fo this virtual world: the basic tools for building and creation were, for the most part, in-world, and were (mostly) pretty intuitive and easy to learn. One might need to use Photoshop or GIMP, and to create avatar animations, one needed external software, but generally speaking pretty much anyone could learn the rudiments of building with a few hours of work. Sculpties were about as complicated as it got, and there were even in-world tools available for creating those. Mesh, however, changed all that. There's a lot of crappy mesh out there of course, but mesh has, overall, undoubtedly improved the appearance of Second Life. It has done so, however, at the cost of making state-of-the-in-world-art of creation inaccessible to most casual users. I think SL has become a little impoverished, and a great deal more commercial, because of this. I'll readily concede that builds by enthusiastic amateurs (such as myself) are not up to the standards of those created by more tech-savvy and engaged professional or quasi-professional creators, but it's still true, I think, that SL's capacity to make creation available to anyone was a really vital part of the early success of Second Life. A new virtual world that does not also extend that capacity to all of its users will be a less creative, less interesting world. SL 2.0 needs to include easy-to-use in-world building tools for all of its users, or it will be a much diminished place, in my view. Well, being an animator first, I see things much differently. 1 of the major reasons I got into animation was that it is somewhat easily convertable across platforms. When I heard mesh was coming, I knew exactly what it meant for the creators of SL. I tried to encourage creators to learn mesh, and talked about how it would open up alot of doors for creators. I was thoroughly demonized for being so enthusiastic. People refused to see what was obvious. They learned how to create in SL, which means, they could easily learn how to create in Blender, Maya, or 3Ds Max. There are many others too. I believed in their ablilities, even more than they did. If you haven't tried Blender, you should, or any of the dozens of 3D creation programs. I agree that LL should institute some kind of primitive system. Every 3D program does the exact same thing. You get a set of primitives to start off your creation as. Heck, ask any 3D artist and they will tell you that 90% of all 3D objects started with a cube or cylinder. Plus, much like in Blender, things like a cube are used as containors for effects or what nots, and the same is true for SL. What the OP is talking about, with creators forcing customers into standard shapes, is not a result of mesh, but of LL's refusal to address the problem of fitting clothing. The new world should not have these issues, as the solution is actually pretty simple. 1 word. MORPHS!

Innula Zenovka wrote: Phoebe Avro wrote: In typical LL style they will hide hoping it will go away but the damage is done and if LL don't act soon the economy will dive, it already is but it will gain momentum in the coming months What's the basis for saying the SL economy is already diving? I mean, you know how your business is doing, I know how mine is doing (pretty much as expected for this time of year, as it happens), but neither of us has access to any figures that would let us say with any confidence if the SL economy as a whole is diving, rising, staying much the same or anything else. I saw a dip the week after, and this past week was slightly below normal. The last few days have been above average.

madjim wrote: Oh, and I am also a Cambridge educated economist - taught by the Governor of the Bank of England whose belatedly-followed advice rescued the UK *and* the USA following the crisis - so please don't start trying to tell me about market behaviour; Keynes would have agreed with you about the confidence factor being critical, and I can understand your desperate but unavailing attempts to reassure anybody who might be listening that everything will be alright in the end, but I am afraid that Mr Altberg's PR disaster has fatally undermined the market as well as his standing with his customers and Board. The official silence is resounding. Father "And I have a feeling the next major announcement may not be what you are hoping for" Jim Well, you just proved you know nothing about economics, as nobody needed saving, besides the people that caused the problem. Looks like Cambridge scammed you out of thousands of dollars. The average guy, would not have been affected at all by the crisis. Only the people that made irrational deals would have been hurt, which is exactly who should have be hurt by it. What the central banks did was save all the criminals and gave the public the bill. The average guy would have benefited from the crisis, because housing prices should had fallen greatly after the crisis. Housing prices did not because of all the money that was printed. So, again, the whole point was to save all the rich people and screw all the poor. Where did I say that confidence means anything at all? That only applies to fake products, not real 1's. Real products aren't affected by confidence at all. Why would they be? People either need or want the product or they don't. The company's owners could all be known criminals, and it would not make even the slightest difference. It's all about the product. In a virtual world, it might have some affect, but not over and above the product.

Why can't i just have an opinion and that is it? I apologize for taking this subject this far in this thread.