Reference

This part of the documentation contains the context sensitive Help pages of the Avastar Addon.

You can open the help page for any Avastar button (option or operator)  directly in Blender by by clicking RMB (right mouse button) directly on the Button, then select Online Manual or use the F1 function key while hovering the mouse over the button.

Your browser opens the corresponding help page from the related document website (if the help page exists).

However, all help pages are also available directly from within this Website. In fact this document is the root of the Avastar reference pages. You can browse and search directly in the Browser if you like. Or you can navigate through the document hierarchy (on the right side of this text).

The Reference Guide Sections

Intro

Content: Create a Basic mesh character Import a Mesh to your online world. The first Video (above): Create a Character. Use the Shape sliders. Use the Collada Exporter. The second video (further down): Use the SL Importer for Upload What does Avastar provide? Avastar basically supports the creation ...

Adjust

Adjust the Character Shape After you got your Avastar character you might want to change its shape, or maybe you prefer to work with a Male character instead of the default female Avastar? This is where the Appearance Sliders Section comes into play:...
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N-Panel

Properties Sidebar The N-Panel contains most of Avatar’s various tools. This section is further subdevided in Subsections:...
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Properties

where appropriate we have added Avastar features into various Sections within the Blender Properties Editor.  The documentation for those additions is further subdivided into subsections:...
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Import/Export

Import/Export This is Blender’s menu for importing and exporting various types of data including meshes, armatures and animations. Avastar adds an Exporter for Collada and a couple of importers for SL Shapes, SL BVH Animations and SL Rigs....

Where is what?

Avastar has grown a lot over the years. If you are a new user then you sometimes may get stuck with searching where exactly a panel is located. Here we try to give you some basic information about how we name things, what they do and where they can be found. This section will be completed as needed.

Please tell us when something is missing here!

Properties Sidebar (N-Panel)

  • Location: typically on the right side of any Blender window.
  • Open: Click the little ‘<‘ sign (see image)
  • Close: Drag vertical N-Panel border to the window border until the ‘<‘ sign appears.
  • Keyboard Shortcut: N

Vertical Tab

The Properties Sidebar is organized in vertical Tabs. Avastar has got three vertical Tabs of its own. The active Tab is colored with a light grey background (in the Blender default theme)

Panels

Each Tool Shelf section is organized in a set of Panels.

Each Panel can be expanded or collapsed

Use of Colors in the Avastar documentation

Often you find colorized boxes on the documentation images. The colors are extra indicators for you:

  • Dark orange : Marks the current Context in the User interface, here the context is the vertical Avastar Tab
  • Light green : something you need to locate, here the Bind section
  • Sand : Click to start an action, here you call an operator …

The above image might be accompanied with a documentation snippet looking like here:

  • Open Properties Panel (Vertical Avastar Tab) (dark orange, the context)
  • In the Skinning Panel
  • Locate the Bind Section (green, find your path to the action)
  • Click on the Unbind operator (sand, click to all the action)

Panel Section

Each panel can be organized into one or more sections.

And a section normally contains

  • in most cases one (in some cases two or more) Operators (buttons to click for action)
  • and options related to the operator.

User Interface Elements

Operator

You can think of an Operator as a call to a dedicated function. Normally Operators are labelled with a short name indicating what they do, like for example Unbind from Armature or Bake to 2 Meshes

Note: Options can be set before an operator is invoked (button is pushed) and sometimes also after the operator has been processed! See Operator redo panel below.

Options

Options are Values, selections or Check marks (boolean values) which are used to communicate more details to the operators about what they should do, e.g. Keep Groups, Clear weights.

 

Selections

A selection is actually also an Option which happens to have 2 or more predefined values. Selections are typically shown as Popup boxes.

Operator Redo Panel

After an Operator has processed, it possibly opens up the Operator Redo Panel. where you can change the options of the operator. This gives you some form of interaction where you can test the operator with different option settings.

 

However, not every operator has a redo panel and there is no way to see in advance if an Operator actually has one or not. If there is one, then the redo panel is always located at the lower left corner of the 3D Viewport. The Redo Panel title is the same as the name of the called Operator.

The redo panel allows you to change Operator options. In many cases changing an option will cause the operator to revert its work to the state just before it was called, and then redo the operation again with the modified option values.

Tip: The Operator redo panel is interactive: You can use it for test option values on the fly.

Note: Some operators take a whole lot of time to run. So each change in the redo panel can possibly cause Blender to freeze for a while until the Operator has processed again.

The operator redo panel remains active until another Operator is called! But attention: Any change in the redo panel will reset Blender to the state just before the operator was called, then the operator gets applied again with the changed options.