Avatar editing and animation for SecondLife and OpenSim
Avastar is a Blender Addon for Second Life content creators. Avastar is designed as tool for high quality animations and easy mesh character development. Avastar integrates seamless into the Blender framework. We support download of SL shapes as well as upload of mesh characters. We provide .bvh as well as .anim format. We added IK/FK controls to the standard SL Rig and we support attachment point animation
Non Customers:
Get your personal copy from the Jass-Shop in Second Life, or via Paypal (see left side of this page)
Fully rigged avatar with switchable IK/FK controls. Makes high quality animations a breeze.
Full support of the Second Life Skeleton. All 26 Bones can be animated separately. Attachment bone animation is supported as well.
FK Controlls for Head, Arms, Torso and legs
IK Controls for, Arms, Ellbows, Legs and Knees
And more …
Seamless IK/FK Blending
Rotation/Constraint controls
Breath Control
Create synchronized multiple avatar animations
Use Blenders rich animation features such as the graph editor, constraints and the NLA editor.
Character Creation
Import your own Second Life Shape (or Open Sim Shape) into Blender and make accurate animations that take into account the size and shape of your avatar.
Gender selector for male/female characters.
Do all your Shape editing within Blender: Edit your shape in Blender using the same control sliders as in SL.
Your Character will be automatically weighted and rigged.
The rig can be reused for your own mesh characters.
A Weight Copy function is integrated
Hand Morphs supported
Export Formats
bvh: Export animations for the whole avatar, or only particular bones to BVH format compatible with SL.
anim: Export to SL’s native animation format. This has more controls and features than exporting through BVH.
Texturing support
SL Standard UV maps for all meshes:
Eyes
Head & Eyebrows
Upper Body
Lower Body
Skirt
Use Blenders tools such as projection painting to create texture based skins and clothes.
Rigging can be customised or replaced entirely without affecting the animation export.
The mesh can be replaced, to create and animate custom mesh avatars
I am curious if when time it found could there be a tutorial made on how to make Alpha maps for meshes like shirts. So that when i upload my clothes i cant hide the character skin under it
I have problems with installing Avastar. I downloaded Blender 2.6 and followed all steps. But when I chosen avastar-1-dev-333.zip to install it to add-ons the programm stard to “think”, went unactive and never stoped. I waited for a long time and it’s just the same. I clicked at some place of the screen and it gave me an error an closed the Blender. Now I can’t open Blender again, it closes right in the begining. I tried to do it with Blender 2.59 and it is the same. I’m working with Windows 7. Please, help me.
Avastar can output to .anim format, which supports joint positions. But does Avastar support joint positions? In other words, does it support deformations? Can I create an animation that sets bone positions to new locations, and then a second animation to snap them back to their proper places?
I have been building Transformers in Second Life for quite some time now but I have never finished any of them due to constantly butting up against limitations in the way things are implemented. Mesh potentially would allow me to circumvent many of these limitations via joint offsets and a static height offset, but I would still require deformations to ‘transform’ the avatar into a vehicle shape. I could use alpha objects but I find that to be clunky and you cannot ‘animate’ the transformation gracefully using alpha’d objects. And I know of no way to change a mesh via script, thus no way of using joint offsets to perform the way deformations would.
Animation the attachment points is a fantastic work-around to a few key issues and I will likely be using this to create a few ‘pseudo-bones’, such as moving plates or wheels in and out of place. But I would still need deformations to move the core skeleton. For instance, the current design I am working on requires the shoulders to push forward in front of the chest and snap together, creating the facade of the front of a motorcycle. They then move back to the shoulders when in humanoid-mode. Thus, it is not just a matter of rotations; the joint positions must be set as well.
Does Avastar support .anim files with set joint positions? Thanks for the help!
Animating the bone or attachment point locations is currently disabled. As you point out, this is something that can easily be done through the anim format, but in testing we were getting odd results and it wasn’t as accurate as we wanted. Also we weren’t sure how the animation offsets would play with mesh offsets. Now we have a better handle on the latter we’ll look at animating the bone offsets again.
The Transformers is a nice example of using animation offsets. Most of the previous uses of deformation hacks can now be done cleanly with mesh, but this doesn’t allow a dynamic deformation for something like a Transformer.
Avastar is made for Blender 2.59 and newer vesions only. Since all Jass-Products are based on Blender-2.49b, Avastar will not work with Jass. However you can install Blender-2.59 or newer parallel to Jass and install Avastar there. There is no problem with doing that.
All editing functionality for Prims and Sculpties will be available with Primstar-2 when it is fully implemented. This will enable you to create/edit your prim/sculpt mesh attachments and reimport the modifications to Second Life.
Primstar-2 and Avastar are meant as complimentary products. They do not rely on each other, but they can be used together without any problems.
If you are using Mesh attachments, you can use Avastar as it is. However you will need to import your meshes as .obj (collada import is currently broken in blender) or if you use blender to create your meshes, just open the Blend file, then “SHIFT add Avastar” and go ahead with your edits.
I’m having a small issue with the avatar wig. When I load a new avastar model the bone for the eyes (presumably, the glasses-looking thing in Object View) is offest very far from the head itself. Here is a photo of the issue for clarity: Avastar Rig
I am curious if when time it found could there be a tutorial made on how to make Alpha maps for meshes like shirts. So that when i upload my clothes i cant hide the character skin under it
Is there any information on how to adjust the joints to a set of bones I already setup? Or can I have avastar interact with them?
I have a tiny avatar I made I wish to try and animate with this but my joints are much smaller then the rig.
I have problems with installing Avastar. I downloaded Blender 2.6 and followed all steps. But when I chosen avastar-1-dev-333.zip to install it to add-ons the programm stard to “think”, went unactive and never stoped. I waited for a long time and it’s just the same. I clicked at some place of the screen and it gave me an error an closed the Blender. Now I can’t open Blender again, it closes right in the begining. I tried to do it with Blender 2.59 and it is the same. I’m working with Windows 7. Please, help me.
Avastar can output to .anim format, which supports joint positions. But does Avastar support joint positions? In other words, does it support deformations? Can I create an animation that sets bone positions to new locations, and then a second animation to snap them back to their proper places?
I have been building Transformers in Second Life for quite some time now but I have never finished any of them due to constantly butting up against limitations in the way things are implemented. Mesh potentially would allow me to circumvent many of these limitations via joint offsets and a static height offset, but I would still require deformations to ‘transform’ the avatar into a vehicle shape. I could use alpha objects but I find that to be clunky and you cannot ‘animate’ the transformation gracefully using alpha’d objects. And I know of no way to change a mesh via script, thus no way of using joint offsets to perform the way deformations would.
Animation the attachment points is a fantastic work-around to a few key issues and I will likely be using this to create a few ‘pseudo-bones’, such as moving plates or wheels in and out of place. But I would still need deformations to move the core skeleton. For instance, the current design I am working on requires the shoulders to push forward in front of the chest and snap together, creating the facade of the front of a motorcycle. They then move back to the shoulders when in humanoid-mode. Thus, it is not just a matter of rotations; the joint positions must be set as well.
Does Avastar support .anim files with set joint positions? Thanks for the help!
Hi Vilkacis,
Animating the bone or attachment point locations is currently disabled. As you point out, this is something that can easily be done through the anim format, but in testing we were getting odd results and it wasn’t as accurate as we wanted. Also we weren’t sure how the animation offsets would play with mesh offsets. Now we have a better handle on the latter we’ll look at animating the bone offsets again.
The Transformers is a nice example of using animation offsets. Most of the previous uses of deformation hacks can now be done cleanly with mesh, but this doesn’t allow a dynamic deformation for something like a Transformer.
Hello. Thank you very much for this great tool!!! I would love to use it but I have Jass-magic. Will it work with Jass-magic???
Hi, Kusha;
Avastar is made for Blender 2.59 and newer vesions only. Since all Jass-Products are based on Blender-2.49b, Avastar will not work with Jass. However you can install Blender-2.59 or newer parallel to Jass and install Avastar there. There is no problem with doing that.
Are there any plans to offer a way to edit prim/sculpt attachments on avatars through Avastar?
All editing functionality for Prims and Sculpties will be available with Primstar-2 when it is fully implemented. This will enable you to create/edit your prim/sculpt mesh attachments and reimport the modifications to Second Life.
Primstar-2 and Avastar are meant as complimentary products. They do not rely on each other, but they can be used together without any problems.
If you are using Mesh attachments, you can use Avastar as it is. However you will need to import your meshes as .obj (collada import is currently broken in blender) or if you use blender to create your meshes, just open the Blend file, then “SHIFT add Avastar” and go ahead with your edits.
Do you plan on making a tutorial video soon so people can see it in action?
yes, its in preparation.
Hello!
I’m having a small issue with the avatar wig. When I load a new avastar model the bone for the eyes (presumably, the glasses-looking thing in Object View) is offest very far from the head itself. Here is a photo of the issue for clarity: Avastar Rig
I’m using Blender 2.61 32bit on a Win7 machine.
Thank you!
Merry
This is a known issue. We are already taking care of it. However thank you for the hint!
Cheers,
Gaia
I am on Christmas vacation, but this will be my gift t to myself as soon as I get home. I wish I could do Blender on my iPad. thank you!
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