Using standard SL mesh as fitted mesh base

[Psistorm Voxel]

I've recently been hard at work on making a materials-based full mesh avatar. For practicality's sake, I wanted to use the standard SL avatar mesh as a base body for my anthro dragon, thinking that way it would be easy to make fit with mesh clothing, and seeing how regular skins don't support materials.

That said, I imported the .FBX file of the female body rig as a test, and trimmed away the unneeded parts without editing the skinning any, then imported it into SL along with the limbs. Essentially, it looks good. joint deformations seem to be spot on with the base SL mesh. However the problem begins when I mess with the sliders. The breasts deformer seems quite a bit offset from where one would expect it, and some other sliders have some weirdly adjusted effects.

Since I used the rig the FBX file (taken from the fitted mesh page on the wiki) came with and the original weighting, I wonder, am I missing anything? Is there a way I can get a better result with this method? Essentially I'm hoping for a bit more accuracy, so maybe someone played with importing the base avatar into SL in the past and can help me out. I'm thankful for any information :D

 

On another note, if anyone knows anything on how to add custom bones to the skeleton - i know it can be done, ive seen rigged talkjaws on various avatars before - then I would also appreciate it greatly. I'm trying to make a "Chin" based bone in 3dsmax, but have yet to figure out how to correctly set up/export it

[Gaia Clary]

Facts of Second Life:

Fitted Mesh deformations work entirely different compared to the Morph based deformations of the SL Avatar. There is especially no way to make the fitted mesh fit to the exact vertex location of the avatar shape (when you change the slider values)

That means, even a perfect mesh copy of the SL Avatar will deform differently than the original. All you can get is to make it fit reasonably well to ONE single shape and small deviations (regarding slider settings). The farther away you move the sliders from your initial shape the less well will it fit.

Don't get trapped bty the wording "fitted mesh" does not mean "one fits all" :matte-motes-grin:

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Psistorm Ikura wrote:

 

On another note, if anyone knows anything on how to add custom bones to the skeleton - i know it can be done, ive seen rigged talkjaws on various avatars before - then I would also appreciate it greatly. I'm trying to make a "Chin" based bone in 3dsmax, but have yet to figure out how to correctly set up/export it

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Gaia already answered the first part of your post and I'm afraid I have more bad news.

What you describe cannot be done. The SL skeleton is the SL skeleton, simple as that. There are some tricks, such as using the anim format for your animations instead of bvh, which (if I'm not mistaken) allows you to use the bones at the outer edges (Toes, Skull). You can't add bones to the rig though. It's discussed here.

[Psistorm Voxel]

Well, regarding custom bones, I know that there are limitations, but Kensuke Leviathan has discovered that you can indeed use /some/ custom bones if you name them after single-word attachment points. I personally have seen this working (the Orange Nova Sergal avatar would be a great example of such), I'm mostly just working out how to set it up correctly in max, since documentation is sparse and Kensuke uses a different 3d package.

 

As for fitted mesh, thanks for the input. I may try some manual vertex adjustments, mainly the breasts area could do with slight tweaks, but at least its a "close enough" scenario

[MIstahMoose]

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Gaia Clary wrote:

Facts of Second Life:

Fitted Mesh deformations work entirely different compared to the Morph based deformations of the SL Avatar. There is especially no way to make the fitted mesh fit to the exact vertex location of the avatar shape (when you change the slider values)

That means, even a perfect mesh copy of the SL Avatar will deform differently than the original. All you can get is to make it fit reasonably well to ONE single shape and small deviations (regarding slider settings). The farther away you move the sliders from your initial shape the less well will it fit.

Don't get trapped bty the wording "fitted mesh" does not mean "one fits all" :matte-motes-grin:

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I am sort of confused here, because so far the mesh I have worked on has been a "one fits all" mesh, but the alpha, does not. So I end up making new alphas for extreme-er sized shapes. What kind of mesh is more limited to where you need to do sizes? Is there any more info on that in which you can give?

[Gaia Clary]

yes, this works, but it is highly discouraged to use it as it is not officially supported.

[Gaia Clary]

People expect that a fitted mesh behaves exactly like the avatar mesh behaves. But that is wrong and that's all i wanted to say in my previous post. I am sorry if that was confusing.

[MIstahMoose]

Using fitted mesh without sizes is discouraged? Hrms..? 

Ah well, I will do whatever works I suppose, if people complain then I will go make a ton of sizes

[Gaia Clary]

it is not discouraged to use only one size. It just does not work as many expect. when you use alphas then you r fitted mesh seems to work with "one size fits all" (despite the fact that you used alphas to cover areas where it does not fit.. ehm..) 

i am not sure how i am confusing, and that confuses me a bit :matte-motes-nerdy:

[MIstahMoose]

AH I get you now

People don't expect to have to use alphas, but it is a must in most cases. Simply doesn't work well without! Unless you put a lot of padding between the dress and your avi, which makes you look like you're wearing something too big. 

okay Thank you for clearing that up for me~~