Can make human help with fitted mesh for second life

[AstridKaufmat]

Make human is a great tool. I need something to rig for fitted mesh using referals cause without I'd be like a blind rigger.
I noticed that some pay per use plugins were developed by second life users who show to have been using make human. Of course the actual plugins are sold and that's not my way of being or thinking I want to build my own free and open source for all.

-My question is: can makehuman help anyhow with fitted mesh rigging for second life?

-If not, do you think that such feature could come in next future?

At moment I am struggling myself with avatar_lad.xml file extracted from the character folder of second life game trying to rebuild morphs and bones size change. What is driving me crazy is that apparently in that file I couldn't find all the sizes for all the states of collision bones (most of them show only sizes for fat or muscled or extreme size of the body but not for the skinny ones).
It would be really great having makehuman helping us also with fitted mesh,because the avatar on second life wiki doesn't help at all.As you well know, to rig properly you need to use poses, plus rigging on collision bones that just get scaled is something that requires a proper kit to do it without risking to work blindfolded.

This is the wiki page with the few useless informations
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Ri ... itted_Mesh
You can get second life program and get from the character folder the avatar_lad.xml
I made also a protoptype that give me some results but not perfect because it is not following at 100% the deformations of second life avatar.
https://astridkaufmathq.wordpress.com/a ... kaufmathq/

[joepal]

See viewtopic.php?f=14&t=11517

Or the older but slightly more elaborate discussion viewtopic.php?f=14&t=10028

[duststorm]

As far as I can see, a "fitted mesh" would just require you to add extra bones to the sl skeleton in MakeHuman.
This can be automated by modifying the skeleton data file.

What you need to do is specify the names and hierarchy of the bones, and define the verticex indices on the MH basemesh where the joints of those bones have to be centered.

[AstridKaufmat]

Cool thanks. I'll give this a shot. However the big iussue for me stays that avatar_lad.xml interpretation I can't figure out why only for some second life sliders it's writtedn the smallest and the biggest value of those bones while for others it's just written the biggest one.

[Bo Orsini]

I am indeed, also experimenting with MH models and fitted mesh. This will also take a lot of time to make them fit properly because also weighting has to be done for the extra bones. The weights in the original 'm' groups can then be erased according to an example because all new bones take over the weights. Since there are more bones to weight, for example - 2 extra Pectorals L+R and UPPER_BACK and CHEST instead of mChest only, it can be time consuming to weight them.

So far, I wasn't able to upload a good fitted mesh model yet - using makehuman as basis because I had to create the new bones and do weights properly. I am very close though. Firstly, I want to get the standard rig done well without doing that extra Blender import/export step. Once that works well, we can move on to a Fitted Mesh rig?

[Bo Orsini]

Cool thanks. I'll give this a shot. However the big iussue for me stays that avatar_lad.xml interpretation I can't figure out why only for some second life sliders it's writtedn the smallest and the biggest value of those bones while for others it's just written the biggest one.

For all shape sliders in SL to work, you need indeed a Fitted Mesh rigged body.

[AstridKaufmat]

Cool thanks. I'll give this a shot. However the big iussue for me stays that avatar_lad.xml interpretation I can't figure out why only for some second life sliders it's writtedn the smallest and the biggest value of those bones while for others it's just written the biggest one.

For all shape sliders in SL to work, you need indeed a Fitted Mesh rigged body.

yes exactly I mean those sliders that control the collision bone scale too, like you can see in this list
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Appeara ... cted_bones
Btw I found out that there is an error in that list canse body fat must include also the legs collision bones.

About getting some results with fitted mesh without using sold plugins. Yes I have had some interesting results,using my free kit, especially for boots. I made a simple pair of boots, then rigged it first on mbones, cause you might not want your feet to squash stretch like a puddin and stay more realistic. then from theupper edge at shin/knee level I started balancing the weight between mbones and collision bones using as referal to decide how much to weight the pose library that I made in that kit that you find on my blog, plus as extra check referal the obj files that are included in the empty object that I have in the liquid democracy developing kit.
It was surprisingly working good once in betagrid of different sizes. I made several shapes trying to break it and I realized that there is a magic bugger: if you make a shape body fat 100% and leg muscles 100% the boots were not fitting good.
I said ok fine maybe it's just my tool that is not perfect. The big surprise came when I randomly started buying from marketplace freebie demos of rigged boots made with fitted mesh especially from makers that in their blog declare openly to use one of those famous plugins. I worn them in world and wearing with them a shape leg muscles 100% body fat 100% I broked I bugged lso those shapes made with those pricey plugins:P.

The problem is that fitted mesh is not at all a precise way to do it and as you said yes it's big waste of time compared to mesh deformers, plus not at all working good whatever the lies they put in blogs "now fitted mesh is working" then explain me why I can still bug their products ha.

A solution that I thought to solve this is to use anyway even for fitted mesh some sizes. tha bad new is that if you use for instance a lattice to make a new size then you can't just put on the new sized upper boot the weights you used for the smaler size, because on a smaller size you have used more intense weighting to let them be stretched more by bones. On the bigger size of the boots hence they are already large they need less influence from the collision bones or they'd be pushed by them too far, this would take you to edit those weights again. here you see what a mess is fitted mesh.

The biggest iussue though is that, whatever some people say without having understood what fitted mesh is, we cannot rig without using a referal.
As support of this thesis I give a one more example. when I saw those boots not fitting well I said "oh let's give the upper edges more weight just to make a test( after all the avatar from wiki is rigged with almost 100% weights on collision bones for all vertices). The result? well that pair of boots was bugged even more, the upper edge when uo wear a 100% body fat 100% leg muscles shape is pushed down leaving a big space between your avatar and the upper edge of boots.

This shows how much it's important and needed to properly rig with fitted mesh having referals to properly weight your creations. When some people say that we could rig good quality fitted mesh without having a good referal kit or plugin it's because they have just done some full body avatars.

The full body avatar wearing a full body alpha is the only scenario where you could rig without having an avatar that in your 3d software behaves like secondlife having those collision bones scaling just like sl and the shape with them. This happens because on a full body custom character you can just decide to spray a few weit on breast bones and butt bones testing them also with animations to give them a few of physic behaviour in second life. Now you see why I am tryig any strategy to build a kit a tool that makes the avatar deform bones and the body with it like second life but free for all, cause without we'd be just forced to buy a not cheap plugin ( not democratic at all).

[Bo Orsini]

I honestly like your way of thinking Astrid. Perhaps that's why I never bought Avastar or any other plugin that help creating something that people actually want to do themselves in a unique way. Still they ask LOTS of money for doing something that we can do ourselves and in a more educational way as well. Satisfaction guaranteed.

Because I can create my own models with MakeHuman because that's its purpose. If I was able to create my own Mesh model too, I'd probably be rich and working for the new Avatar Movies as 3D artist. Anyway, if I really start messing with that Fitted Mesh rig including the Collision Bones, I will probably have something in a few days. And to be honest, I am close. I just have priorities like the Dev Team too; get a flawless working - directly exported MH body - in SL/OS without that Blender step described in my latest tut. Because Blender... has a pretty steep learning curve for a LOT of people... Think of... +90 degrees along the X, and about 90 along the Z in Euler.

[AstridKaufmat]

thanks but I just try to be myself iron lion zion. I don't want to be part of the exercitus of god-Money it has done enough troubles in this world. That's why, when I saw that blender has some potental to help other people ( I come from more than 5 years of maya and with it I couldn't help others as I would like to), I decided to use blender as first start for that purpose. Then I saw that the devs of plugins have had some more or less experience with makehuman and like an history investigatrix I said let's try this path too. The sad thing, as I already told you, is that about fitted mesh there are so few informations given by linden lab (maybe because they just accepted what plugins do wirhout really care for common people without them).
The biggest iussue stays with interpretation if avatar_lad.xml that, as I said, is not giving me all the informations about the collision bones scaling.
And yes we can build our stuff after all those plugins are just rigs (based on a free mesh given by linden lab), something that I know too well how to make in blender and maya, it's easy to make your own rig. No marketing out of second life would demand for such madness of rigging on collision bones- the big iussue with those bone s is that only few teachers for what I can remember from the books and tutorial I watched would recommend a "similar" technique and they would do for a limited number of bones such as for butts to adjust deformations if they plan to send the model through more software using an fbx and the two softwares don't support an "export morph or shapekeys" which is the easiest way to do it for rigs out of sl thingy.

I watched the page about your totorial and I also showed it to a few mewing cats who can't fully run huge softwares but find makehuman user friendly for them . Thanks for sharing it.

[duststorm]

If it is as simple as adding extra bones, perhaps one of you could create a .blend file with a MakeHuman mesh and SL skeleton, and add the extra bones that are needed to it manually. If defining the skeleton file for MakeHuman is too difficult. We could use the blend file as reference to create the skeleton file.