Create my own Developer kit

Lets assume you have been working on your model for some time and you have tried out many things until now. Finally you are satisfied with your model. Then you have tried to rig your model and prepare it to work with Avastar. But you encountered a few issues and finally ended up in a messy situation.

So… we have a practical every day example. we have run into problems and we need to get out of the bad place we are in right now. And make this awesome…

Remove unneeded Objects

• Open the Outliner
• Select unneeded Elements (all together or one by one)
• RMB – Delete Hierarchy
• Do this for all elements which are unrelated to your model

Be rigorous, delete everything you do not really need. Your customers will be thankful.

Note: If you unintentionally deleted something then very often you can get back to the previous step by typing CTRL-Z (or Edit -> Undo on the Top Menu bar)

Tip: If a collection is greyed out then it is disabled. If you want to inspect it before deleting, then enable the appropriate filter in the Outliner’s top menu bar. then you can inspect the item and decide if it needs to be removed.

Take care: If your mesh model is parented to an Armature, do not delete the armature yet. See further down.

You can remove entire hierarchies, here the entire collection gets removed, even if it is disabled.

Remove not needed UV Maps from your Meshes

• Open the Properties window
• Lookup the UV Map panel
• Remove all UV Maps that you no longer need

Note: In this particular model the vertex group rebake tool created bad results. The rebaked UV  map is useless, so we can remove it. If your models uses multiple UV Maps on purpose, then there is no need to remove or replace them. Just ignore this step in that case.

Remove vertex groups (if necessary)

• Select your Mesh in Object mode
• Open the Properties window
• Lookup the Vertex groups panel
• From the function drop down select Delete all Groups

Note: In this particular case the vertex groups are broken. If your model has properly working vertex groups then keep them. Just ignore this step in that case.

Unbind the model from an Avastar rig

If your model is bound to an Avastar Rig

• Select the Rig in Object mode
• Open the N-Panel
• Locate the Avastar – Skinning panel
• Enable the X icon (cleanup Avastar properties)
• Unbind

Unbind the model from a Blender rig

If your model is rigged to another armature (not an Avastar) then:

• Select the Mesh model in Object mode
• Press ALT P
• In the popup Menu click Clear and Keep Transformation

• Now you can safely remove the armature hierarchy (as explained further up)
• You now may want to save the cleaned scene into a new blend file.

We end up with a Blend file that contains only the meshes of our model.

We can take it even one step further and purge all unnecessary data that might have been added to the scene and still lingers around in the blender file.

You need to select the Orphan view in the Outliner, then you can purge all not needed data. You might need to purge multiple times, because purged objects possibly leave other items behind as orphans.

To check:

• Topology
• Symmetry of Mesh
• UV Mapping

Please make sure you have a clean situation as describe in the First Milestone above:

• Take care that only the Mesh is selected in Object mode.
• Make sure the mesh is not yet bound to any armature
• Remove any unnecessary elements from the Blend file.
• Always keep a clean desk!

We aim for a smooth shape with as few polygons as possible. Lets compare the Mesh with the SL Avatar

• Go to Edit mode

In the image i have enable Edge select mode. This shows the mesh topology a bit nicer than the vertex select mode.

• Open the Avastar – Mesh Info Panel
• Click the Refresh statistic Button to get the Mesh info
• Check the vertex count and the Face Count

Compare to the SL System character:

The numbers sound OK. The Mesh could be optimized still, but overall the model seems to be well suited for SL. We will not

• Make sure the mesh is in vertex select mode
• Make a visual check if the Mesh is symmetric to the Origin.

ok, in our case a Quick inspection shows that the mesh looks symmetric but it is slightly shifted. We need to fix that by shifting the entire mesh (select all vertices) to the right in Edit mode.

By visual inspection the mesh is now symmetric. But lets check this with Avastar

• Make Sure the mesh is in edit mode
• Open the N-Panel
• Open the Avastar Tool Box
• Find the Vertex Tools
• Click the Asymmetries Operator

The operator selects all vertices which have no symmetry partner on the other side of the X axis.

We see that almost all vertices are selected. This is because our visual fix was not precise enough.

However we can force symmetry. Make sure the vertices are still selected (see previous step). Now click the Fix Asymmetries Operator (the double arrow in the image). this will fix most of the asymmetries.

We can check if everything is now symmetric by calling the Asymmetries Opreator again, and see…

This time only 4 vertices are reported as being asymmetric. So, you need to manually make them symmetric. This may be a challenge, especially because you first need to find the vertices on the mesh.  They are selected, but in this special case its very hard to actually find where they are.

Tip: Use CTRL-I to invert the selection, then hide selected. Now only the asymmetric vertices are visible and you can locate them easily..

Once you have symmetrized all vertices, lets proceed by checking if the edges are symmetric as well.

• Make sure the mesh is in edge select mode
• Open the Avastar Tool Box
• Click the Find Asymmetries Operator

UV Mapping

I assume you know enough about UV mapping so that we can dive into this without further explanations.If you need a refresh, then the first 6 minutes of this video may give you some hints (the video uses an older version of Blender though)

Our aim is to create a useful and easy to maintain UV Map. Our mesh happens to already being UV unwrapped. Lets inspect the map. For this purpose we first switch our workspace to UV Editing.

• Then enter Edit mode
• and choose Face select mode (this is important!)

we start with inspecting the body:

• Hover the mouse over the upper body in the 3D viewport
• Then press l (lower case ‘L’)
• You now have selected a UV island (see below)

Now the upper body except the arms (and the toes) is selected.

Hint: Using ‘L’ to select an entire body part works only in face select mode. Note that the borders of a body part are defined by seams.

On the left side (in the UV Editor) you can see the current UV Map of the upper body. This is a UV island – an isolated  part of the U map that is not connected to any other UV faces on the map.

This partial map (the island) does not look wrong, it covers most part of the map space, it looks symmetric. So we can keep it as it is.

Lets proceed with the arms…

• Hover the mouse over the left arm, then press ‘l’ (lower case ‘L’)
• Do the same for the right arm

Now we can see in the UV Map where the arms have been placed (next image)…

The arms have been placed on the UV Map besides the body. Again there is not much wrong here. So lets keep this as it is and proceed …

Now we look at the toes and nails. this is where things start to become interesting…

Lets switch to wireframe mode, then we can select additional vertices easier

• Make sure the mouse hovers over the 3D Viewport.
• Now press ‘z’ – a pie menu opens.
• From the menu select Wireframe.

• press ‘b’ for border select.
• now click (LMB) somewhere near one hand.
• while keeping the button down move the mouse until the border surrounds all nails.
• Release the mouse button.
• Do the same for the other hand…
• and for both feet (add the toes to the selection).

Now take a look at the UV Map. that seems to be wrong, no?

• The nails in the UV map are too big in relation to the upper body and the arms.
• The nails have overlapping parts with the body.
• Some nails are displayed somehow distorted in the UV map.

So, here is something to fix…

For the begin lets hide the upper body in the UV map and only keep the nails and toes visible:

• Hover the mouse over the Body in the 3D Viewport.
• press SHIFT ‘L’ to deselect the body.
• Do the same for the arms.

Now only the nails and toes remain visible in the 3D Viewport and in the UV map.

But before we take care of each UV vertex separately, lets renew the unwrap:

• press ‘u’ (for Unwrap)
• press ‘u’ again (for default unwrap)
• Open the Operator Redo panel (lower left corner of 3D Viewport)
• And play with the margin to separate the nails and tose in the UV Map

By now we have separated all parts nicely from each other. Now lets take care about the spikes.

We can make this easier by synchronizing the selection on the UV Map with the selection on the 3D Viewport. But when you do that then all visible vertices are shown on the UV map and it looks rather messy. But we can fix that…

Tip: in the 3D Viewport press CTRL-I to invert the selection. Now all faces except the toes and nails are selected. Then press ‘h’ to hide all selected faces. Now you can only see the nails and toes in the 3D Viewport.

Press ‘a’ to select all nails and toes. Now you can see them all again in the UV Map.

The synchronization of the UV Map and the 3D View can be done in the UV section as shown on the image.

Now you can do a nice trick:

• LMB (left click) somewhere on the grey space outside of the UV map.
• hover the cursor over one UV island.
• press ‘L’ to select the island.
• Now the corresponding faces on the mesh are also selected.
• move the mouse into the 3D Viewport, then press the Dot (“.”) on the number pad.
• The selection comes into focus.

Now we can easily inspect the Mesh. And it becomes apparent what is wrong: We got an issue with the seams: Two edges are falsely(?) marked as seams.

• Select the two edges
• RMB – Clear Seam

Now redo the unwrap (we use a trick here)

• Select one face of the toe
• press ‘p’ to pin the face in the UV map

This makes sure the unwrap remains at its location and it keeps the scale during unwrap. When you do not use this trick, then unwrapping one toe will use the entire UV-Map space. This is most probably not what you want.

Finally we are ready to renew the unwrap of the toe:

• Select the entire toe-island in the UV map  (press ‘L’).
• Press ‘u’ (unwrap)
• Press ‘u’ again (default unwrap)

Note: You also can make the unwrap of a toe a bit different, to separate the upper part of the nails from the lower part:

Instead of removing the seams we also could complete them (draw a seam from left to right) and unwrap again. This makes it easier to draw the part ‘under’ the nail. But at the end its your choice how to do the unwrap. Anything reasonable is permitted.

We can proceed with all toes and nails in the same way and clean their UV wrapping up.

Here is the UV map of all toes and nails after fixing. However, there is a little caveat here, that is: The UV Map clearly overlaps with the UV Map of the body. So this is very bad, isn’t it ?

In fact it is not bad at all, the question is what you are trying to achieve here.

Let us elaborate on this and

• unhide all faces (press ALT-h)
• then select the body, the nails and the toes
• Press CTRL-I (lower case i) to select the rest of the mesh
• hide that (press ‘h’)
• And look at the U-map

As a consequence we find that a nail/toe texture can keep much more details  as a body texture of the same size. If you need high details on the nails, then this may be what you want. But then you need to create two materials, one for the body and one for the nails&toes (although both can use the same UV map). then assign different textures to the materials.

But if we wanted to use only one single texture (put the body and the nails&toes into the same texture), then we made a mistake. In that case we want to scale down the nails&toes and place them somewhere into the UV map.

We might actually want to keep the entire UV map clean and use much smaller UV ranges for the toes and nails and move them to a part of the UV map that is currently not used.

In this case we can texturize the body and the nails with one single texture.

• make sure the entire mesh is visible
• Make sure you are in Face select mode

Repeat the next steps for each island until the UV Map is empty:

• Hover the mouse over any island on the UV map
• press l (lower case ‘L’) to select the island island
• move this island outside of the map
• press SHIFT-l (lower case ‘L’) to deselect all UV faces

Now we can go ahead and select each isolated island and arrange it (move/scale/rotate) on the UV map in any way we want. And we can fix the mapping by selecting the island, pin one of its faces then unwrap the island again. We already know from the previous steps how all of this is done.

The final map could look like in the image aside.

And we start simple by moving back to to the Layout Workspace and switch back from Wireframe mode to Solid mode (press ‘z’ and select Solid from the pie menu)

Note: Using poses to edit the mesh might first sound a bit odd, but you can see quickly why it actually is a good idea…

We want to create a Bento rig. Actually we only need the Skeleton and the eyes from the Avastar character:

• Add – Avastar Extended
• open the N-Panel (Properties sidebar)
• Locate the Avastar Tool Box
• Delete System Meshes

Now all meshes are gone. But we have an Operator Redo Panel in the lower left corner of the 3D Viewport…

• Open the Operator Redo Panel
• Select the Eyes

Note: The eyes are not yet at the correct locations. We will take care of this later.

Now lets see what we have so far. Avastar by default creates female rigs. But of course it does support male characters too. There is a gender switch in the appearance sliders panel.

However it looks like this particular mesh was made for the Female Skeleton, because the Skeleton already matches so nicely without any modifications.

So we will keep the gender flag at female and only make some minor changes (see below).

• We bend the hip bones by 3°.
• And we bend the Knee bones back by the same amount.
• That should be good enough for our purpose.

Tip: If the Knee bones can not be rotated you have to disable the rotation limits for those bones.

• Make sure you have the Knee Bones selected
• Open the Rig Controls Panel in the Rigging vertical Tab
• Click Disable Rotation Limits.

• Open the appearance sliders
• Select the Torso section
• Adjust the arms length
• Adjust the shoulder width
• rotate the collars backwards by about 6°
• compensate rotation on shoulders

• pose the hand bones
• also make the hands a bit bigger to change the distance of the knuckles

• Then pose the finger bones along the mesh fingers

• Also take care that the fingers are oriented straight in side view

Warning: when you rotate the steel blue structure bones, then you introduce bone translation (moving) into the first finger bones. This possibly can lead to bending or even distortion of the fingers when you wear the mesh later in SL.

Tip: pose only one side of the character, then select all posed bones, and mirror copy the pose to the other side.

Before we start lets add texture to the eyes. This is very simple to do if the eyes are taken from the Avastar character (we did that further up in this document). Now we can get the eyes as follows:

• Select either the armature or both eye objects
• Set the Viewport Shading to Material Preview
• Open the Avatar Materials Panel
• Select Female

Now the character got the brown eyes from the Avastar.

• Open the Rig display panel
• Enable the Face bones and the Torso bones
• Also make sure you have enabled Shape in the Bone Display style sections

Hint: Make sure you select the green Animation bone groups

 The face bones obviously need to be adjusted to the mesh.

lets begin wioth the most obvious part – the eyes.

• go to side view
• Open the Appearance Sliders
• Select the Torso
• Use neck length to adjust eyes height in the head

• Select the Eyes Section
• Adjust eye width, size and depth

After the eyes are adjusted, you can proceed with the mouth bones. You do this best in side view…

• Select the Mouth Section
• adjust Mouth Position
• Select chin
• Adjust the Jaw jut

• Open the Rig Display
• Switch Bone display to Octahedral
• Disable X Ray
• Adjust the sliders so that the bone tips are sitting close to the skin

• Open the appearance sliders
• And create a new Shape Preset

• Open the Posing Panel
• Locate the Rig Modify tools section
• As Bind Pose

This step has actually modified your Rig and now you got a couple of Joint positions defined. But…

You have created a Bind position. This gives you a great benefit. That is: You can later import your rigged meshes to SL only with weights. This makes the sliders behave much more predictable in the SL appearance editor.

There is a rule of thumb for the bone roll, that is:

• horizontal bones have their Z axis pointing upwards
• vertical bones have their X axis pointing Left

The reasoning behind this is that by convention the main rotation axis of a bone should be its x-axis. Because of this all finger bones have their x-axis laying flat while their Z axis points upwards. why? Because when you grab, then now all finger bones rotate around their local X axis… (for an exception see below)

• Select the armature
• Make sure the green hand and finger bones are visible
• Go to Edit mode
• Select the finger bones and the Wrist bones
• Armature -> Bone Roll -> Clear Roll

Now all finger bones have their local Z axis pointing upwards.

• Now select each bone of the Thumb one by one
• Then adjust the bone roll to 45 degree for the left hand
• And adjust the bone roll to -45 for the right hand

• Select the Mesh
• SHIFT LMB the armature
• Open the Skinning Panel
• Select the Bind Method as: ‘Automatic from Bones’
• Bind to Armature

• Make sure only one armature is  in the scene.
• Make sure the Mesh is bound.
• Put mesh into Object mode.
• Put armature into pose mode.
• Put armature into restpose.
• Take care that you apply the previously stored character shape preset to your armature.
• Store this as a new blend file. This is YOUR reference file

• Open the Avastar Addon properties
• Locate the Developer kit Manager
• Setup the Developer kit parameters
• Add/Replace Devkit Preset

Avastar then stores your settings as a preset. This preset keeps available even when you update Avastar.

You can recall the preset fro editing in the Devkit Configurator, see Devkit Presets selection box above the General Info Section.

• Open Avastar – Developer kit Manager
• Select Cesary – Julian

Avastar loads the collada file and converts it into an avastar rig that is compatible with the current Avastar version.

Now go and make attachments…

I hope this document helps you to setup a fresh character and use it as your personal developer kit, or prepare it for distribution to your customers, whichever applies.

Feedback is very welcome.