DerpWolf

So you're far from "new" creator, sorry for assuming things. Maybe I have one more suggestion though. What if you edit head topology in Blender, instead of recreating it from scratch? Most polygon editing tools, like knife, subdivide or dissolve edges, preserve UV layout when used. And the original head's topology isnt that terrible honestly, you'll just have to dissolve diagonal edges in case it was triangulated on import https://gyazo.com/bb27c1ed0ad00e2ce0a889a38287a54e Then you could put it into Zbrush with UVs intact and sculpt .

There is no easy way to do this. Export the UV layout of the standard head, use it as reference image, and unwrap your head manually to match it. Also take note that even if you manage to do this, it will be pretty much useless because of few reasons. First, the skin products on SL wont be compatible with this head anyway. SL skins only work with system heads and bodies. The creators that make mesh body parts on SL are forced to paint their own skin textures. The second, Second Life cannot import shape keys/morph animations. So animating the head will be a tremendous task, especially for new creator, as it requires lots of programming and complex, cumbersome workarounds. Like, exporting the copy of your head for each facial expressions, then writing a script to switch their visibility on demand.

As far as I know, small avatars in SL should be made of two components. First, visual mesh (on import, check only Skin Weights) and second - the deformer (a dummy mesh hidden inside the body, weighted to one of the resized skeleton's bones, on import select both Skin Weights and Joint Positions). For some reason, joint positions never work correctly on the visual mesh.

ZB Core doesn't support texture maps. This severely limits its use for realtime 3d content (game/virtual world models) creation. Only people I see it will be good for are 3d printing enthusiasts. Otherwise, it will require too many extra software to work with, making it not worthy investment IMO

Yeah, using the XML skeleton definition as reference for rotations is a good idea. I'll check it out. Thanks.

I do not plan to use avastar in the nearest future. Especially considering that everything except animation is possible to make with Blender native tools. The Blender bones system handles bone rotations in a different way than most of 3d software. I know how to rebuild Blender armature to make it properly represent original bone rotations (did it for other virtual worlds), but to do that, I need an original SL skeleton. I'll check the SL skeleton pack once more. Though there is none in 3ds Max format, and I'm not sure if the ones that come in *.fbx and *.dae format do have correct rotations. Since the skeletons from official pack were released with the sole purpose of making mesh clothing, not animations. Rotations arent important for exporting weighted meshes, only bone names and hierarchy.

From what I was able to piece together from my tests, first, your mesh must have vertex groups for all 26 mBones, even if some bones arent really used. Otherwise, the SL importer will fail to recognise skin weights on the mesh. The thing she does at 1.20 (Parent - Armature Deform with Empty groups) does exactly that, creates an empty group for each bone. Do it before you start to paint weights. Other thing to note is the importer parameters (6.12). You absolutely should check "Include Skin weights" in Upload Options tab. And she forgot to specify object type (This model represents... dialogue). Choose Avatar Attachment for clothing items (the Avatar Shape should be reserved for avatar resizers, the rest of the object types do not support skin weights).

Does it exist? I'm wondering since there isnt any for Blender. Avatar bases available for free have wrong rotations on bones and only good for weighting clothes.

I'm implying that the mesh is weighted uniformly between 2 bones, so it "collapses". While for correct behavior, the hand part of the glove should have only hand bone influencing it. If you're still confused, I'd advice to learn Blender's native weight paint tools, and the meaning of vertex groups. Tools like Bone Heat and automated weighting provided by Avastar are "black box" and do not help understanding the program IMHO.

Looks exactly like a weight paint issue. Not sure why you're so opposed to that idea. Here is how it looks when the mesh is weighted 0.5/0.5 between hand and wrist: https://gyazo.com/ad67005a95ce9389955e3fe18f3d99e3 and https://gyazo.com/7031b617e5fc051b22de2fe5d89a8bc9 The same effect will be if they both have 1.0/1.0, Blender will "normalize" that for you. So check if your glove is weighted to the wrist as well. Or to any other unwanted bones

Not sure whats wrong. Check this: about 1.18

To view Material texture, you'll need to enable GLSL shading mode https://gyazo.com/9bf880668bb82d9538e843f3097afa27 and switch your viewport drawing method to Textured https://gyazo.com/fe9b7f0802a3ebda2c783d487ee1c706 If you have texture applied to the faces in UV editor, you'll need only step 2, or enable Textured Solid in Solid drawing mode.

Hovering height is set so avatar stands on ground firmly. I cant set hover height for sitting separately. Thats why I looked for scripted solution. Since sitting action can be detected by script, and make script to do stuff according to it. The question is what to make it to do. So far I havent found the way to script z offset. And no, I'm not using animation overrider here. Just resizer with custom joint positions.Maybe a good idea though. If we can add custom sitting animations, I can raise avatar root position that way. I'll look into it as well.

https://gyazo.com/8b595226fddb320865afe4d8566b4c17 ... and the problem emerged. Taking a seat causes it to bury into the ground: https://gyazo.com/13b87f8fda0e3f158c6cc54840ac2d50 Yeah this is common problem, but asking anyway, maybe the solution is found over the years. I can detect when the avatar is sitting from script, but not much more. Neither edit its Z-position directly or somehow use llSitTarget to tweak it (since latter requires sitting on specific prim).

Also if you need better preview of the deformation, create a test animation for your Blender skeleton. Just some random poses. This way you wont need to export every time just to check weighting