Head full of Mesh

[Bongo Steampunk]

Hi folks :)

To give you an idea of where i'm at - i've been toying with various aspects of creating things in SL for a long time, albeit only in fits and starts as hobbyist.

i usually use Zbrush, Blender, Topogun, Photoshop and have stuggled up to the point where i can comfortably create and rig a textured mesh attachment or item of clothing. Have learned slowly and in small steps, and my brain isn't super heh.

i have created my own male mesh head from sctratch to play around with - the idea being that i can learn the art of mesh headmaking, do some nice variants/ethnicities and have fun learning.

Going to subdivide up from here, add details - bake out maps and bring it into SL. head basemesh is about 2k .. which is arguably high i know. My first ever retopology, used Topogun.

i have lined up the eyeholes to match position of standard SL avis eyeholes - the head is roughly same size as standard avi and located in same part of virtual space. This means my moving [inworld] eyes should be in the right place, so at least they move visibly behind my new mesh mask if i don't alpha them out.

Questions!!

Is it possible to rig the eyelids somehow with the standard SL avi so that it can blink like standard avi does ?

[have seen other mesh heads which blink - is it just animation, like random flickbook?]

I have heard about people making bodies and heads, but somehow using the same UV maps as standard avi so popular skins can fit. My next question is how can the SL uv's ever be made to suit a totally original different mesh?

is it that simply that head/body makers always use the standard avi head / body mesh and rework the mesh yet maintain the uvs?

Much Puzzlement.

Any help on these questions would be brilliant.

[grinz]

Bongo.

 

 

[AcidJuice]

Hello Bongo,

 

Very nice head !

 

For your questions, i am actually working on nearly the same subjects... so i dont have all responses but here is what i can say :

External head mesh parts (eyelids, mouth, ...) cannot be rigged. So, yes, you have to do some kind of animation : i guess, multiple mesh parts and showing/hidding them with a script.

 

Concerning the UV maps. Classic sl skins are very close from planar projections (front, back, sides). So, you may study a bit how avatar meshes are seamed to do the same cuts on your model, then adjust your UV maps to avatar skins UV maps... a bit challenging (avatar's mesh is a lot of tris... no quads), but i did not found any other approch or tool that could do the job...

 

Hope it helps...

 

 

[Bongo Steampunk]

Thanks for the reply

 

Hmm .. I can imagine that if I sort my head into polygroups which are as close as i can get to the SL seams and unwrap the head, I can then move the flat UV parts around manually until they fit over the SL uv's.

I wonder if the vertices have to line up at all - because I work in quads and my mesh is more dense than the SL standard. This means many vertices would not be lined up to the standard uv layout...

 

Thanks again - I'll play around with your suggestions

 

[Medhue Simoni]

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Bongo Steampunk wrote:

 

Questions!!

Is it possible to rig the eyelids somehow with the standard SL avi so that it can blink like standard avi does ?

 

---

What I do for blinking, is I create an eyelid over the eye, with 3 eyelashes. This is a separate mesh from the head, just to keep things simple. The eyelid has different materials, so that I have 3 faces in SL. Inside SL, I place a script in the eyelids to make them turn transparent at the right times, to simulate blinking. It works very well, and the script is very basic, so as to not cause any lag. You can ask me for the script inworld, if you need it.

I also move the skull bone into place, which is an extra unused bone, to move the jaw. Of course, you'll need to create your own animations to get this to work. I generally create a few different animations for this, to control typing overrides, and speech gestures for voice. You'll need to use Avastar, as it allows you to export an animation using that skull bone. If enough people are doing this tho, I will consider selling a set of full perm animations to animate these jaws, as I already have a few different sets.

 

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Bongo Steampunk wrote:

I have heard about people making bodies and heads, but somehow using the same UV maps as standard avi so popular skins can fit. My next question is how can the SL uv's ever be made to suit a totally original different mesh?

is it that simply that head/body makers always use the standard avi head / body mesh and rework the mesh yet maintain the uvs?

 

---

Well, it's just a matter of unwrapping the mesh similarly to the SL default, and then manually moving those verts in the UV map into place. You might be able to try something funky where you have the default head parented to yours, and then using some snapping technique to snap your verts to the defaults positions. No matter how you do this tho, there are issues, even if you do get it to work. 1 issue that I found out, is that in order to use a default shin texture, you'd need to get some kind of texture applier, as the skin texture makers don't just hand out skin textures to anyone.

 

I hope this helps

[AkiraKiyoi]

Hello! Did you find a solution for UV?