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So here is a short tutorial how you can get your Avatar out of Secondlife and prepare it for your mesh activities. This tutorial was made for Blender 2.49 and for the Phoenix Viewer. It may not work well with newer versions of Blender. |
Part I Getting your Avatar from Second Life
You can do that with the Phoenix Viewer or with Emergence (special thanks for this hint go to Brian Kanisz). Other viewers might work or not. You have to experiment a bit. However here is how you can do it with Phoenix:
- Prepare your avatar: Take off the shoe base. Otherwise your avatar is created with an ugly looking heel. As far as i have seen the currently effective morphs are taken into account. So watch your fingers during export. They might be morphed into the relaxed pose, pointing pose, or fist pose. If you don’t want that, you need to remove your AO (animation overrider) first.
- Open the Advanced Menu. If you do not see the Menu button in your top menu, then you can unhide it with CTRL-ALT-D.
- Navigate to “Advanced -> Character -> Meshes And Morphs”
- Move down further along the path:
“headMesh -> headMesh -> CurrentMesh – Save OBJ”
and save the file to your favorite location on your computer.
- Proceed with the lowerBoddyMesh and the upperBodyMesh in the same way.
You will end up with 3 .obj files named:
- avatar_head.llm_current.obj
- avatar_lower_body.llm_current.obj
- avatar_upper_body.llm_current.obj
If you wish you also can download all other parts of your avatar (skirt, hair and eyes) but for our purpose this is not necessary.
Part II prepare the rig in blender
- Make a copy of avatar.blend and open the copy with blender. This file contains all we need to get our personal avatar perfectly rigged in a few minutes only.
- Hide all unneeded parts of the default avatar, i.e. the skirt and the hair:
- Just right click the hair part,
- then SHIFT right click the skirt part,
- then press the “h” key to hide the parts:
We do this only for convenience. It is not necessary!
- Now select the Head,
- then SHIFT right click the UpperBody
- and SHIFT right click the LowerBody of the avatar:
- We will move the selected elements to another layer (layer 2) by pressing
the “m” key and selecting layer 2 Press OK. This is also not necessary, but it leaves us with a cleaner desk at the end. - Now select just the Armature and move it to layer 2 just as you did before (press “m” and select the layer, then press OK)
Note that you could have selected the body parts AND the armature in one step and move all of them together. But maybe you want the Armature to be placed on yet another layer, or as in my case i just have forgotten to select it right away (shhh… Mum’s the word!
).
By now we have separated the 3 body parts and the armature into layer 2. We will now add the exported avatar from the first step.
III Import the Avatar
While still in object mode select an empty layer (by clicking on one of the small rectangular icons in the 3D view menu bar). You can just use layer 3 if you like.
And since you selected an empty layer, you won’t see anything in the new layer. This is on purpose! Your SL-default avatar is still sitting on layer 2.- Now add your personal head via:File -> Import -> Wavefront object and in the import options deselect the button “-90″:
- And then click on “import”.
- Proceed with your personal upperBody and LowerBoddy one by one in the same way (File -> Import -> Wavefront Object …)
Now the default avatar and your personal avatar are perfectly aligned to each other, but reside on different layers. You may need to adjust the size of your avatar. Take care that it is scaled such that its height matches the height of the default avatar.
There may be a possible problem with tinies. I have not checked how they work with the Phoenix exporter. So if anybody stumbles over an issue with tinies i would appreciate if you reported a comment here. Thanks!
Depending on what you want to do with your personal avatar later you can now join the 3 body parts to form one single mesh. This is not strictly necessary though, but it may make your life easier later. So let us join the parts now. But we will be clever and first add some seams so we can actually see where we have glued the parts together. This also comes in handy later:
- Select the upper body part of your personal avatar and go to edit mode
- Now select only the topmost loop where the head will later be glued to the upper body and select the lowest loop where the lower body will be glued to the upper body. Hint: When you press “z” you will toggle between solid mode and wireframe mode. You may prefer the one or the other mode. Here i switched to solid mode for demonstration:
- Finally press CTRL – e – 1 (mark as seam). Now the yellow lines should turn orange.
- go back to object mode
- Now subsequently select the head, mark the corresponding seam to the upper body.
- Then proceed with the lower body and again mark the seam to the upper body.
Note: I want to keep the exact seams for later. This comes in handy for various purposes. But i also want to glue the 3 body parts all together and remove duplicate vertices. But when removing the duplicates that may unintentionally remove parts of my seams too. The reason is that the remove double does not define which of the duplicates is actually removed.
I can avoid to loose the seams by just defining them for each of the 3 parts separately. Then when i join the parts and remove doubles, the seams keep intact (because all duplicates are actually marked as seam and so t does not matter which of them get removed).
So let us go ahead now:
- Go to Object mode
- Select all 3 parts of your personal avatar (right click the first, then SHIFT right click the other 2)
- Object -> Join Objects -> Join selected (Yes, you want to merge the selected meshes).
- You can go to edit mode and verify that now all 3 parts are indeed part of one object and the seems are fully preserved:
- Now let us remove the duplicates:
go to edit mode and remove doubles (w 6) and wonder how many vertices get removed. There are a few more of them duplicated in the mesh besides the ones at the seams. - go to object mode and “set smooth” (in the F9 button section). This will make your avatar look less blocky and more like you will see it in Second life:
IV Copy the mesh weights
So we have now a default avatar separated into 3 parts and we have our personal avatar as one single object. Now how to proceed ? We need to rig that avatar and create the weights for the rig. But we have one big advantage: Both meshes are fully compatible, hence the weight maps from the default avatar will fit exactly to the mesh of your personal avatar (because your avatar has been morphed from the base mesh). So we can actually just copy the weights. And fortunately blender supports that.
One note beforehand: You may want to scale your avatar up or down as needed. the better it fits to the mesh of the default SL avatar the more acurate will be the weight copy! But i also found that even rough correlations will be enough to gain reasonable results with this method in a very short time.
Note: As mentioned before i do not know how tiny avatars behave in this context!
- select the new avatar
- go to edit mode and switch to face select mode. I do this, because in face select mode the seams will help me to select the right sets of vertices.
- ensure that no face is selected.
- put your mouse over any of the head faces and press “l” (lower case of “L”). this will select the face under the mouse plus all linked faces. But tada, it will stop the selection at the seams! So this is a nice trick to just select the head part without need to single select faces or vertices:
- Now we will copy the weights of the default avatar head to this selection of faces into the personal avatar:
- go to object mode
- switch over to the layer 2 and SHIFT select the default SL-avatar head.
Note: It is important that the SL-avatar head is selected AFTER your personal avatar! - Double check that both objects (your avatar and the default head) are selected(just switch between the 2 layer and see both objects are selected)
- Selected both layers at the same time (SHIFT select the layers) so you can see both avatars together (see the image below).
WARNING: It is evident that you have both layers selected at the same time. Otherwise you will get an error message stating that you should select 2 objects - while still in object mode: Object Scripts -> Bone Weight Copy:
Note again that i have selected Layer 2 and 3 together. You see that the head is rendered in lighter pink. this indicates that the SL-default avatar has been selected as secnd object which is what we want. - In the upcoming Copy Weight popup box select “Quality: 3″ and then press OK. Quality has an impact on the precision with which the mesh weights get copied. With Quality set to 3 i get good results:
- First nothing seems to hapen. But after a few seconds you can see that a progress bar pops up in the top menu bar indicating the rendering time for the weight copy:
Depending on your computer power the calculation can take up to several minutes until the weights are finally copied. And sometimes the progress bar does not show up but the calculation still takes place.
After the initial weight copy has taken place, you may want to take a look at the settings of your personal avatar. In fact the weight copy program has added a whole bunch of vertex groups (logical groups of vertices) to your avatar. Here is how to examine them:
- go to layer 3
- Select your personal avatar and lookup the vertex groups. (I think you will always see “Worried Eyebrows” as first selection. So this may give you a hit where to find the vertex groups in the edit button section (F9). From all of these groups only the 2 groups “mHead” and “mNeck” are relevant. The other groups have to do with the morph targets defined for the default SL_avatar. Since Morphs are not supported with meshes, we will ignore these vertext groups and just keep them. they are not harmfull.
Now lets get back and proceed with the upper body part as follows:
- go to layer 3
- Select your personal avatar
- Go to edit mode and there select only the upper body vertices. You can do this exactly as you did before with the head:
Just deselect all faces, then place the mouse at any face in the upper body part, then press “l” (lower case of “L” and see how only the upper part gets selected. So seams are great for modelling too - go back to object mode
- go back to layer 2 and there select the UpperBody part of the SL-default avatar:
- Again select: Object -> Scripts -> Bone Weight Copy
- ATTENTION NOW!!!
In the upcoming popup menu select:- Quality 3 as before
- and now also checkmark “Update selected” !
If you do not do that, you will get an error about two objects with vertex keys not beeing processable by the copy process. So please ensure that “UPDATE SELECTED” is enabled!
- Press OK. And when the copy is done then go back to the personal avatar,
- go to edit mode
- and select only the lower body part vertices. You know by now how to do that.
- go back to object mode
- go to layer 2
- SHIFT select the body part of the avatar
- Again: Object -> Scripts -> Bone Weight Copy
- And AGAIN ATTENTION!
In the upcoming popup menu select:- Quality 3 as before
- “Update selected”
By now our weight painting is done. We only need the rig. Note that by now you will see 19 vertex groups in your personal avatar which all start with the letter “m”. These vertex groups will be directly associated with the correct bones in our rig. The remianing groups are of no relevance for our purpose.
Creating the rig
We can reuse the already existing rig from the default avatar. And to make our life easy we first make the rig visible in layer 3 as follows:
- go to layer 2
- in object mode right click the rig:
- Press “m” and SHIFT select layer 3. This will make the rig appear in layer 2 and in layer 3:
- Now go to layer 3. You will see the armature and your personal avatar. And if everything went right your avatar is already placed at the corre t location. Now right click the personal avatar.
- Then SHIFT right click the rig:
- Navigate to Object -> Parent -> Make Parent:
- Select : “Make Parent to Armature”:
- Don’t create groups (They have been created by the copy tool):
- That’s it! Done! (well not fully done, you will see in a minute why)
Test your rig
So now we can check if our rig works properly and the personal avatar reacts when the rig gets moved:
- Go to layer 3 and in Object mode select just the rig: then choose “Pose mode”:
- Now you can select individual bones by right clicking on them. Lets try the left hand. Right click on the bone. Its color changes to a light blue:
- Now press “r” to rotate the bone. You will see that the mesh reacts by bending along with the bone:
Actually i have seen a few issues with the Weights of the SL default avatar itself. And these problems get copied to our own mesh model. Look for example at the sharp edge at the wrist. This is partialy caused by a bad mesh topology and by a bad weighting in that area. We will fix that issue later. - For now you should go ahead and test all your bones to find errors in the weighting, i.e. parts which do not bend appropriately, or seem to get ripped off when you move the bones …
- I know of one bad error in this example tutorial. When i move the legs it gets apparent:
Tis problem is caused by an overlap of vertices in the mesh itself:
- We can fix this either by correcting the weight map, or by correcting the mesh. If ever it is possible to correct the mesh, that will be the better option. In our case we just have to shift the endpoints of the two overlapping faces a bit to separate the mesh parts: So at the end the thighs no longer touch each other:
- Now select again (only) the whole lower_body part of your personal avatar.
- then go to object mode
- We need to reset the rig now to the rest pose. We do this as follows:
- Select the rig
- If you are not allready in Pose mode, go there now.
- now select ALL bones (press “a” twice) You rig should look like this now:
Now you can press ALT -”r” to clear the rotation of all selected bones. The rig should snap back to the rest pose. - Now go to object mode.
- then select the personal Avatar
- and SHIFT right click the lower body of the default SL avatar (on layer 2).
- Now call again Object -> scripts -> Bone Weight Copy (update selected as before)
- After you have recalculated the weights for the lower body part, the mesh behaves well:
Summary
Here is the list of what we have done until here:
- Used Phoenix to get our personal Avatar mesh (in three pieces)
- Used Avatar.blend to get the default SL avatar and the SL rig.
- Prepared the SL avatar
- Prepared the personal Avatar (merged parts)
- Copied the weights from the default SL avatar to the personal Avatar
- Parented the personal avatar to the rig
- tested the rig
- Fixed a flaw (overlapping vertices got wrong weights)
- Recopied the Weights
A few more hints:
- If you want to export this avatar, you first have to make the armature “real”. You go to the modifier stack, locate the armature and find the “make real” button. Click on the button and your armature is ready for export. If you do NOT do this, your collada file will not contain the weight data!
- If you want to get this avatar into the Mesh beta, just select the avatar and save it to a collada file. The weight data will automatically be added.
- If you want to texturize the avatar, note that the UV maps for head, upper body and lower body are still intact and are the same as with the default SL avatar. You only need to assign three images to the different parts of the mesh:
– Select the head faces and assign these to one image.
– Then select the upper body faces and assign those to a secnd image.
– Finally select the lower Body faces and assign them to a third image. – Now each of the three images will be texturizable just like before. hint: Use the image Pin to work with multiple texture faces on one mesh!)
Note further that the UV maps are exactly matching what SL wants to see for the default avatar mesh. So if you have an SL-skin at hand, go for it and add it to your avatar. it will work. I used Vint Falken’s open source skins as a test:
The next tutorial will take care about weight painting.
Thank you for reading.
Donations are welcome
Hiyas, when joining the avatar, its shape deforms quite a bit which is especially visible on the arms and neck (they turn fatter/bigger). Also when selecting upper,lower,head mesh before hitting ctrl – J, the border of the selected parts turn red instead of orange. Are more people having this issue? (blender 2.63, avastar 432, default avatar). Thanks
hello, this looks great, but i cant download the avatar blend file the link is broken or someting , it opens me a page code :S any otherplace were i can get it please? thank you
try right mouse click -> download as …
Phoenix 1.6 doesn’t have the mesh option on the character menu. Any clues to where it ended up ?
This is an awesome tutorial – thank you so much!
I don’t mean to be LL negative – they DO provide an awesome platform and a fantastic experience. But it seems like over the years they’ve retreated (in some areas) on openness / interoperability, and I wonder if that in a way isn’t part of why this is a relatively messy process.
Certainly mesh import is a dramatic step forward, the ability to bring an avatar, piece of architecture, sculpture into the world is amazing. But export is kind of anemic. Perhaps because of the tight IP restrictions. As I noted in a blog post last year,
http://vaneeesa.com/2011/02/16/rez-power/
it’s dramatic how anemic an SL export is compared to, for example, an InWorldz export.
Anyway, I do love SL, and I love your tutorial and I’m certainly not second-guessing LL on their platform, but for the small percentage of users, including cultural institutions like Museums that might invest in creating documents and experiences, I wonder if a more robust and easier import-export wouldn’t make more people willing to do more and yield a richer world (or worlds)
How great would it be if with a few clicks my avatar could be on my smart phone in an Augmented Reality display somewhere.
Whether there’s enough of this “fringe use” to make it worth anyone’s while to make it easier and more robust, IDK, but I’d love to take advantage of it!
I’ve tried this several times, and I get different results EVERY TIME. NOW it’s telling me either select 2 mesh objects, or I’ve selected too many mesh objects. Maybe joining the 3 pieces was just the wrong thing to do? Is EVERY tutorial I encounter written by an engineer for other engineers?
this tutorial is just a proof of concept written summary. I never found the time to create a proper tutorial out of this article. I even considered to remove this article completely, since we now have Avastar up and running, which makes life a bit easier.
Where are the tutorials for us non-engineers? Ones that don’t require me to buy a plugin?
“go to the modifier stack, locate the armature and find the “make real” button”
Where might these be found?
When I try to copy bone weights I get the “Select 2 objects first” error. When I face select the personal avatar and switch to object mode, the personal avatar has no selections, thus no primary object selected. I’m on Blender 2.49 with Python 2.6.2 How am I supposed to have 2 objects selected? I followed the directions to a T and the same result each time. Once again, Blender has proven overly complicated and frustrating.
I tried following this for Blender 2.6 but after selecting the head (using lower case L ) it would not let me select the SL Avatar head in addition. In other words it would only select items from one layer at a time though you can select more than one layer. Anyhow also the objects tab does not have scripts… so I could not do anything past that point. If anyone know how to do this with Blener 2.6 I would love to hear it.
hi.
This tutorial is really not made for Blender 2.6.
Anyways it should mostly work as described.
You will need the BoneWeightCopy Addon and the SL Collada Addon to get it to work.
Regarding your first question i believe that you simply have forgotten to switch to Object mode
before selecting the avatar parts ?
It is mentioned in the tutorial but maybe it can be quickly overlooked…
I don’t know why but even with the addons it is not working. I did switch to object mode before making selections. I did notice however that in edit mode I have to use the lower case l for the front and back of head, the sides and the ears. It will not select the entire head– would this made a difference?
maybe you did not use the import options as indicated in “III Import the Avatar” ? What you describe sounds like you have enabled the “Separate Objects by Group” option during import to Blender.
Why is it that the bone weights go missing when I follow this procedure:
1. Open avatar.blend.
2. Select each individual mesh, Upper body, Lower Body, Head, Eyes, etc….
3. Select the armature.
4. Make the armature parent of the object.
5. Play with it in pose mode (it works).
6. Finally click each mesh, and hit the make real by the armature modifier.
7. Export to Collada 1.4 using Blender 2.49b.
8. Import into Second Life… the skin weights checkbox is GRAY.
I’m trying to get the avatar in avatar.blend into second life. I have seen many times you mention that weights will be missing if we do not use “make real”. I am using it, and it still does not work. Any ideas?
I have Blender 2.49b; which I am told “should export a 1.4 dae file that SL can read properly.” Sure. I have analzyed the SimpleBot dae and blend files that do work against my dae and blend files that don’t. However, I have not as of yet figured out how to GET my blend and/or dae into a format that DOES work.
BLEND FILE:
avatar.blend has this kind of hierarchy in it:
* Simple Bot (the object)
– Sphere.001 (the mesh)
– Modifiers
—–Armature
——–avatar (the bones/rig)
– Vertex Groups…..
my blender file has this hierarchy (after parenting to armature):
* avatar (the rig)
– Pose
– avatar_bones
– Mesh.010 (my object)
—– Mesh.010 (the mesh)
—– Vertex Groups…..
Somehow, mine is backwards, and the rig is not a “modifier” of my mesh. It DOES work properly, however, if I go into pose mode and test it. Additionally, since it is not a modifier, I can’t do these other steps you have, the “make real” part. (But I was also told that wasn’t neccessary either.)
Of course, when I export the DAE and import into SL, the ‘skin weights’ and ‘joint positions’ checkboxes are greyed out.
The DAEs my blender is producing are also formatted differently than the simplebot.dae (which uploads properly). My DAE’s have a lot of crap in them, like all my vertex groups are also “effects.” ??? Mine also have a library_materials section that the simplebot lacks. I tried deleting all that, it’s no help.
What the simplebot.dae file DOES have that mine doesn’t… is a library_controllers section, with an IDREF_array full of all the joint names. This is the ONE AND ONLY place where the joint names appear. In my dae files, the joint names appear several times throughout the dae. (Even excluding the ones that are -fx and -material.)
I’m going to guess that this IDREF_array came from the avatar armature being a modifier under the Simple Bot object. If I could just get my blender file to work like that, I could check.
But I’m STUMPED.
I do not understand how you can do poses without having an armature associated to your object. Actually the only issues i ever had with creation of a DAE in blender 249b where:
- unweighted vertices
- Missing bones (weight groups) in export file
- reference to non existent material (python error during export)
- multiple armatures on same object (all sort of weird behaviour)
- armature not made REAL
Maybe you have found another case. If you like, you can send your blend file for inspection to mailto:gaia.clary@machinimatrix.org
I have sorta fixed my problem. But I have a new problem. Here’s what I did.
A: SIMPLEBOT.BLEND
..1: right-click the Sphere.001 in the Simple_Bot hierarchy and delete all. (the mesh is deleted, the name is still there in the hierarchy.)
..2: import the mesh (I re-imported the simplebot mesh that I exported as an obj file, as a test).
..3: select your mesh, shift-select avatar (the rig). ctrl-p to parent; “to armature;” create vertex groups from bone heat.
this causes your mesh object to be stuffed under the avatar object in the hierarchy.
..4: select the Sphere.001 under the Simple_Bot object, and in the Links and Materials tab, change ME: Sphere.001 to the name of your mesh object.
..5: select the Simple_Bot object. export dae 1.4; with “triangles” and “selected object only” checked.
now… the dae comes out 99% the same as the original simplebot.dae, with the exception that it has an extra “bind_material” section, which I don’t believe affects anything.
however, when trying to import it into SL, i get an import error:
LLModelPreview::verifyCount:: Error: (expected/got) 5254/4006 vertices.
when i go into my dae file in a text editor and change the vertex_weight_counts from 4006 to 5254… i then get the error in the opposite order. it expects 4006 and gets 5254.
::SIGH::
another problem i am having… when i went to test it on my own mesh, i defined the vertex groups myself, then parented the (edited) rig to the mesh with ‘do not create groups’ as the option. when i tried to export as DAE, the exporter failed because it said all the groups were empty.
that’s a more typical error, isn’t it? any idea why it didn’t recognize my vertex groups?
do you still want to see the files? or maybe screenshots of what i’m talking about?
thanks!
I have seen rigged clothing before, and am having some trouble learning about all of the different requirements to be met when creating rigged clothing of my own.
I would love to see a part II, or a seperate tutorial covering rigged objects to be worn by avatars, if possible.
I think Ashasekayi’s Videos will give you some help.
Ok, I’ve tested this in and out, back and forth, and the Second Life uploader does simply not recognize the collada as weighted. This may have worked at the time this tutorial was made, however it does not work now.
Fortunately I found out why this is the case, namely that bone vertex groups are missing !
This is a list of vertex groups that must exist in order for Second Life to handle your collada as a valid skin weighted collada :
mNeck
mHead
mChest
mTorso
mPelvis
mCollarRight
mCollarLeft
mShoulderLeft
mShoulderRight
mElbowRight
mElbowLeft
mWristLeft
mWristRight
mHipRight
mHipLeft
mKneeRight
mKneeLeft
mAnkleRight
mAnkleLeft
mFootRight
mFootLeft
ok, sorry about that. This problem was actually the reason why i created the avatar workbench . And why i added some extra features to the 2.5 boneWeight copy. I should have remembered earlier about this.
Hi Gaia,
you probably had a Material assigned, and we don’t have it… I’ve got that problem solved, now I have a new one: I cannot seem to assign the skin textures properly. I’ve created three materials, loaded the three textures, assigned one material to each part of the body… and the skin gets distorted. What am I doing wrong?
Eleonore
I’ve followed this tutorial with a torso (upper body) I’ve modified.
I not only modified but also change the geometry adding more faces and change the weight of those vertexes to make the avie move accordingly, also the UV map was modified to match the usual LL skins textures to make my life easier =)
So, i rigged the torso, (ignored the head and the legs), and everything looks fine in blender, but when I try to export it this happens:
FEEDBACK: Illusoft Collada 1.4 Plugin v0.3.162 started
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/home/spike/.blender/scripts/bpymodules/colladaImEx/cstartup.py”, line 681, in ButtonEvent
onlyMainScene, applyModifiers)
File “/home/spike/.blender/scripts/bpymodules/colladaImEx/translator.py”, line 122, in __init__
self.__Export(fileName)
File “/home/spike/.blender/scripts/bpymodules/colladaImEx/translator.py”, line 131, in __Export
documentTranslator.Export(filename)
File “/home/spike/.blender/scripts/bpymodules/colladaImEx/translator.py”, line 427, in Export
scenesList = sceneGraph.SaveToDae(bScene)
File “/home/spike/.blender/scripts/bpymodules/colladaImEx/translator.py”, line 620, in SaveToDae
daePhysicsModel,daePhysicsModelInstance,bScene)
File “/home/spike/.blender/scripts/bpymodules/colladaImEx/translator.py”, line 2152, in SaveSceneToDae
daeGeometry = meshNode.SaveToDae(virtualMesh)
File “/home/spike/.blender/scripts/bpymodules/colladaImEx/translator.py”, line 3065, in SaveToDae
daeTriangles.material = mesh.materials[k].name
AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘name’
now, I try to delete all what is not saved, i ended deleting all except the mesh I want to export, (made real and single user, just in case), all the weights are there. In each step I’ve the same error message on the console.
(Also i changed the units on the translator.py file before).
Halp? I’m kinda lost, is this a regular bug? I’m using Blender 2.49b over Linux 64.
thank you =)
The problem is that for some reason your chacter uses references to non existing materials. I still do not exactly know why thee references appear at all. But here is a fix:
- go to object mode
- remove all materials from your object (by deleting delete the material indexes)
- add again those materials you want to have on your object
- Now Export to Collada works
Yep, that was it, thank you so much for all the tutorials and your will to help others, worked as a charm ^^
Have many things changed since v2.49 > v2.59? Or is it just Blender is very different on Mac version?
Because I use Mac w/Blender 2.59, and trying to follow this Tutorial seems impossible because what I see here does not match to what I see in Blender.
Examples:
The “import” menu options on my screen are very different than here (like there is no “-90″ button to deselect, and the other options do not match at all the sample graphic here)
And there is no “Scripts” option in the Object menu so no way I see to copy the weights.
There is no “Make Parent” option on the Parent menu.
Any ideas what is wrong?
Thanks!
nothing wrong at all. the article was made for blender 2,49b. For blender 2.5 things are slightly different:
1.) I believe you can import the avatar.obj files just like they are. Maybe you have to experiment a bit. it is only important that each piece comes in as one single object and uses one single mesh.
2.) the weight copy script for blender 2.5 can be found here:
http://blog.machinimatrix.org/bone-weight-copy-for-blender-2-59/
3.) In blender 2.5 parenting goes like this (in object mode)
- select the child
- select the parent
- Object -> Parent -> Set -> With Empty groups
4.) You may find it helpfull to also take a look at the Avatar Workbench:
http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avatar-workbench/
I hope that helps a bit.
Yes it did, A LOT
Thanks!
Hello!great review u did:D
i want to ask! I want to make a part of a mesh only not an entire mesh!i want to make the mesh attached on the lower body and active only to he right leg!any tip or help?
(New in blender)
Thanks again:D
in SaveToDae
daeTriangles.material = mesh.materials[k].name
AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘name’
I can’t find any materials… do you know where to look?
Thanks,
Eleonore
This is a reference to a non existing material. This issue slipped into my blend files silently. The workaround is:
- Go to object mode
- remove all materials from your rigged object (look in the edit button section when you are on blender 2.49)
If you want, then you can reassign your own materials to the object as you need them. However the object will be transferable to SecondLife even without having any material assigned to it.
Thanks so much. This tutorial was so easy to follow and really helpful. I on-shared with my plurk community. You are fabulous…!
I find how to fix triangles -> Alt+j in edit mode!
Now the mesh is good
I also need help with the “make real” step. After I select “make real,” more options pop up… what exactly am I supposed to be pressing? It lists Ob: as the root bone (mPelvis), VGroup is blank… Vert.Groups and Envelopes are turned on. If I just hit apply, then export the DAE, the SL importer does not recognize it as having proper Skin Weights.
I was told: “The source joint array (inside the library_controllers node w/in your dae) needs to contain the complete SL joint list.”
I’m a blender/dae noob, so I don’t know what a library_controllers node is, or what a source joint array is or… any of that. Nor how to get them. Any help would be immensely appreciated!
When you mention same height in your tutorial do you mean same leg/torso length or do you just mean the heads have to be at the same point, I use a small (not tiny, but short) avatar that I’d like to try this with.
After following this tutorial, I’m *reasonably* convinced that the steps outlined for copying the weighting of the bones to the new mesh don’t work when using Blender 2.49b, as I just get an error message saying *Select 2 or more mesh objects, aborting*
sorry, i only have seen this comment today. The solution is that you must select both layers at the same time as it was mentioned in the tutorial. I just did not point you to that this is mandantory. I changed that by now in the tutorial and added a warning at the relevant place.
Sorry again for late response.
You deserve a medal. All of your tutorials are great. I agree with you that Mesh tutorials should wait until all the little wrinkles have been ironed out. Having said that I cant wait for the next one.
A big thankyou from all in SL even though most do not know what you do or appreciate your efforts.
Can we please get a picture for the last part: “You go to the modifier stack, locate the armature and find the “make real” button.”
I did that but when I click Apply, it says “Modifiers cannot be applied to multi-user data.” I doubt that I did something wrong because everything worked perfectly as instructed. Body parts move along with the bones just fine. So my guess is that I’m not applying the “make real” part correctly.
Also, I have 2 collada options: 1.3.1 and 1.4… 1.4 gives me an AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘name’… along with some other stuff. The 1.3.1 option ask me what I want to export, I answer “selected”, but then asks me “Export as Matrix element” I answered yes, haven’t tried it out in SL yet, but would be nice if that part would be cleared too.
I’m so sorry I don’t know much about Blender, I just create stuff for fun and don’t excel in anything … so… yeah, all this stuff is new to me, and I love to learn. So if it is not much bother, could you please detail a bit more about how to export the avatar?
Thank you for your time, this was an amazing tutorial and I got to learn so much from it!!!
Wish you well.
What a tutorial
I haven’t tried it yet and not sure if I will ever be able to or have enough time to really create things for SL. However, I admire the creativity and the hard work that people like you put in adding beauty to virtual worlds.
My role in SL is different but I hope that at least for fun I will get to create something interesting even if simple and share it with others.
thank you again
[...] real world. It might be complicated for avatars (here is a tutorial on how to import it to Blender: Machinimatrix rigg your avatar ) and primbased structures (this free program exports to 3D Studio Max: Primcomposer – [...]