Using SL Shapes

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.

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.

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.

Reasons to support mesh characters:

  • 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)

Hint: Avastar-477 will be shipped with an embedded Collada Exporter. Thus you no longer need to add separate helper tools to make Blender work with Second Life.

 

Export your Shape from Second Life
Start your Second Life viewer. We have only tested with the Default SL viewer. The procedure to get the Character shape may vary slightly for other TPV’s.  
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 application folder. For me it is in:

C:\Users\gaia\AppData\Roaming\SecondLife\logs\Gaia_Clary_nnn.xml (where nnn is a number)

Note the file path contains your Windows user name (mine is gaia) and your SL user name.

  

Import to Avastar

Add a new Avastar rig by navigating to:

Add -> Avastar

Important: This feature is not included in plain blender. But you can purchase and install  Avastar. Then you get all features described here.

  

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

 
Open a Properties window:
  • find the “Object” Section (not Object Data!)
  • finally scroll down to the Avatar Shape tab
  • And select “Load Shape”

 

 

 

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 object properties section, right 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

The following procedure applies for Avastar-477 and all newer versions:

  • 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.
  • Navigate to: File -> Export -> “Collada (Avastar) (.dae)” (see note below)
  • A file selector box opens. Here you can specify the name of the export file.
  • Finally press on Collada (Avastar) (.dae) on the upper right of the file selector box:

Note: You find a quick access button to the Collada exporter in the Tool Shelf: locate the “Collada (Avastar) (.dae)”  button. Click on it will open the Avastar Collada Exporter.

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.

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

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