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Upload Custom Shape

Work with your own SL Shape

Avastar supports the import of your own shape to allow exact animations made for your character. But we also provide a way to export your shape back into Second Life as a weighted mesh. While it does not make much sense to reimport your already existing shape to Second Life, there are some situations when you actually want to have your shape imported as mesh.

  • You want your shape setup as a mannequin in world (for your shop maybe
  • You want to use attachment point animations which only work with meshes but not with the defauilt Avatar( Attachment point animations will be available with Avastar soon)

But we do not stop here. If you like you even can use an entirely different custom mesh for your animations. However i will not cover custom meshes in this article.

Important:
In the following i assume that you have installed SL Collada-1.8 or newer.

Hint: Avastar allows to export rigged meshes provided you also have installed the SL Collada addon (available for free from this Blog)

If you have not yet installed SL Collada, then do this now:

  1. Download SL Collada
  2. Install SL Collada
  3. Continue on this page.

 The SL Collada installation can be done in less than a minute. You find instructions on the download page.

 

Export your Shape from Second Life
On Windows the Viewer is normally installed in the Program folders. Unfortunately the Character shape is also stored in the installation folder.  On Vista and on Windows 7 you must run the Viewer as Administrator. Hint: If you are on Windows, then open your SL viewer by Right Click on the Viewer icon, then “Run as Administrator”.
Ensure that you have the Develop Menu in your menu bar. If you can not see this entry, you can enable it by pressing CTRL+ALT+Q (on Windows)
open the Develop menu and proceed to the Avatar entry
From Avatar proceed to Character tests
And from Character tests proceed to Appearance to XML

When all is running smooth, then you will find your XML file in your installation folder. For me it is in:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SecondLifeBetaViewer\character\new archetype.xml

For you it might be at a different place.

  

Import to Avastar

Add a new Avastar rig by navigating to:

Add -> Avastar

By now you should see a default mesh character and an orange colored Rig around it (lots of orange circles):

Open the Properties sidebar of the 3D view and navigate down to  “Avatar Shape”. There click on “Load Shape”.

Navigate to your new archetype file and select it.

By now the default Mesh character has been replaced by your own mesh character. Note, that your imported character is rigged and weighted already. There is no need for any additional step. However you can still change the Avatar shape by using the shape sliders. You find them in the properties sidebar (press “n” while your mouse points somewhere into the 3D view)

You find the shape section below the “Load shape” button.  We provide the exact same shape sections in Avastar as you can find in the SL Shape editor. The sliders are supposed to behave exactly in the same way.

Hint: The sliders are a bit slow sometimes. Currently there is not much that we can do about that.

  

Export as Collada

I assume that you have installed the SL Collada 1.8 addon. If you do not have this addon installed then the proceeding descritption will not work for you.

  • Enter Object mode
  • Select the parts of your mesh (usually the Head, the upper body and the Lower Body)You might want to also select the eyes, eye lashes, skirt.
  • Important: Also select the Armature. You need to do that, because Avastar changes the Bone offsets.
  • Now navigate to File -> Export -> sl collada
  • A file selector box opens. Here you can specify the name of the export file.
  • Finally press on Export SL Collada:

Import to Second Life

You find a short description of the Import on the SLCollada page. After you have uploaded your mesh, you can wear it. It should respond to your movements.

Important: You might find your mesh become distorted when you wear it. This is because your shape has a certain influence on the appearance of the mesh. You have to define a “neutral shape” which cancels out all influence on your character. With Avastar we will eventually provide a way to find the neutral shape. For now you may need to experiment a bit. Best is to start with a new default shape and then adjust the sliders (only the body and head size sliders are relevant)

And now go and dance Collada :)

Here is it as cheat sheet:

  • import model (select .dae file)
  • check “Skin weights” to see if your mesh is OK
  • optional: select “joints” (if you have exported with your armature)
  • Proceed to the “Upload options” tab
  • Check include skin weights
  • optional: Check include joint positions (if you have exported your armature)
  • optional: in the “Physics” tab select a physics shape
  • Calculate weights & fees
  • Upload

1 comment to Avastar Upload Custom Shape

  • isigmund
    January 26, 2012 at 3:02 pm · Reply

    Hello,
    I followd the tutirial and was able to import my mesh avatar to SL. Problem is that it sems I cannot use standard SL skins or clothes from the marketplace on my mesh avatar. To make my mesh vivible in SL, I wear it and additionally use a full body alpha to hide the standard avatar. It seems that using this Alpha also hides he skin and clothes. Am I doing something wrong with using the mesh avatar in SL or is it in general not possible to wear skins and clothes on a mesh avatar ?

    Thanks for your help
    Take care
    Ingo

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