Avastar-2.5 is out

Welcome to Avastar-2.5 (27/Oct/2018)

We are very proud to finally publish a new Avastar release. We have been working on this since April-2018. The release contains various small fixes and some bigger ones as well.

You find the new release in your Download Folder

In very short terms we have improved:

• The overall precision
• The Support for Male characters
• The Binding to non default shapes (appearance sliders)
• The weight copy tools (it looks a bit more complicated, but it is really much more intuitive now)
• The user interface
• The Documentation

Below you find a list of the most important fixes and improvements since Avastar-2.4-1. If you want to see the full list you can find this in the detailed Release log

Weight tools

• X-mirror allows the creation of “maps on the other side” where applicable
• The weight tools have now their own panel (more intuitive than before)
• Now all parameters can be set before calling the copy tool (instead of changing in the operator redo panel)

Bind tools

• The binding tool now uses the same function as the weight copy tool to be fully compatible
• Unbind now allows to restore the original mesh (as it was before the binding)
• Binding does no longer add small vertex shifts depending on the appearance slider settings
• Bind tool now much more robust when binding to non default slider settings and/or to Male characters

Developerkit Manager

• The Devkitmanager now also supports imported rigs with up-axis = Y

Animation

• Bones can now be locked reliably (added to animation but not moving)
• BVH Loop calculator now takes care of the rule “The first frame plays 3 times”
• The bone hierarchy on the green animation bones can now be completely reorganized (user customizable)
• Only the animated bones are exported
  In previous releases we exported all bones which made the animation files unnecessarily big

Collada

• The exporter now creates empty weight maps for unweighted bones in parent hierarchy (SL needs that)
• Mesh exports no longer depend on male/female settings and slider values(shape)

Miscellaneous

A collection of other important fixes and improvements:

• We fully reworked the Spine bones controller (fold/unfold have moved to the Rig Control panel)
• Hip Compatibility mode now also takes care of the Volume Bones
• Apply as Restpose no longer modifies the joints
• Meshes now have an Addon Revision number (custom property)
• Long Tool tips are much improved
• Mesh Info panel can auto update or update on demand(good for huge meshes)
• Creation of tinies and giants has been simplified a lot (you only need to scale the armature in object mode)
• Male characters now work as smooth as females 🙂
• Freezing can be undone now (CTRL-Z) without destroying Avastar data structures
• Editing Bone roll did not propagate to Defrom Rig when creating joint edits

Known issues (well…)

These have been recognized but we did not find the time to fix or improve them for Avastar-2.5

• Bone constraints should all be labelled with AVA* but some face bone constraints are not following this convention
• Animation retarget bone guess tool does not recognize finger bones (missing feature)

And more …