Purpose

Your Model does not contain initial weights. However you want to reuse weight maps that have been made for other meshes (your own mesh weight templates for example, or the Avastar Meshes). You want those weightmaps get copied to your own mesh to get a basic weighting for your model.

And you are aware that you have to tweak your weights manually in almost every case.

Main Workflow (Classic)

This is the most basic process for skinning a Custom mesh to the Avastar armature using classic mBones

Prepare mesh & Rig

  1. Have your mesh ready for skinning (completed your model)
  2. Have your Avastar figure ready (Add Avastar and optionally load Shape)
  3. (Optional)  Move your mesh(es) and your rig on different layers for ease of selection, you can use shift select to add more than one layer, but you can put them as you like.

Attach your Mesh to the Rig

  1. Select your mesh and the rig.
  2. In the Skinning and Rigging panel:
    Set Weight to Meshes or Bones, depending on from where you want to get the initial weights from.
  3. Press the Assign Armature button.

Note: Step 2 is for copying initial weights. This can be:

  • Meshes: Copy weights from whatever meshes are currently visible
  • Bones: This generates meshes by using Blender’s “Assign automatic from Bones” function.

Remember that when you have set the source to Meshes means you must have all source meshes visible!

Note: Source meshes can be any of your Avastar meshes and any custom meshes with weights that are attached to the current Avastar rig. Such as for example the Avatar skirt or a pair of pants you weighted before.

Prepare your Mesh for weighting

  1. Go to Show bones in the Avastar tab and enable Skinning. This will make the Deform bones visible (in this case, the SL Base (blue)), and put you in the weight room.
  2. Enabling Stick will make the bones easier to work with. You can now proceed with testing the mesh with poses an adjusting weights.

Main Workflow (Fitted mesh)

This is the most basic process for skinning a Custom mesh to the Avastar armature using the new Collision Volumes.

Prepare mesh & Rig

  1. Have your mesh ready for skinning (completed your model)
  2. Have your Avastar figure ready (Add Avastar and optionally load Shape)
  3. (Optional)  Move your mesh(es) and your rig on different layers for ease of selection, you can use shift select to add more than one layer, but you can put them as you like.

Attach your Mesh to the Rig

  1. Select your mesh and the rig.
  2. In the Skinning and Rigging panel:
    Set Weight to Meshes or Bones, depending on from where you want to get the initial weights from.
  3. Press the Assign Armature button.

Note: Step 2 is for copying initial weights. This can be:

  • Meshes: Copy weights from whatever meshes are currently visible
  • Bones: This generates meshes by using Blender’s “Assign automatic from Bones” function.

Remember that when you have set the source to Meshes means you must have all source meshes visible!

Note: Source meshes can be any of your Avastar meshes and any custom meshes with weights that are attached to the current Avastar rig. Such as for example the Avatar skirt or a pair of pants you weighted before.

Move your weights to Collision Volumes

Purpose:

You have a model with weights that where made either for the classic mBones or for the Fitted mesh Bones. Now you want to switch the Deform type from “Classic” to “Fitted Mesh” or vice versa.

You have 2 options for moving your weights around:

  • Use Avastar’s “Deform Configuration” Panel
  • Use Avastar’s Copy from Bone function


Main Workflow “Deform Configuration Panel”

  • Ensure your mesh is selected and it is the active mesh
  • Open the Tool Shelf
  • Ensure you have selected the Avastar vertical Tab (since Blender 2.70)
  • Locate the Rigging Panel

Select the deform Type

Inside the panel you now can switch the
SL Rigging Style to Fitted Mesh

  • Fitted: All classic mBones and all Collision Volumes will be marked as Deform Bones
  • Classic: Only the mBones will be marked as Deform Bones.

Note: If you want to mix mBones weighting and cBones weighting then you will still select the Fitted Mesh Option above.

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Select the weight Source

  • Locate the Skinning Panel (it is right above the Rigging Panel)
  • In the panel locate the Adjust Weight Groups Section
  • Select the weight source by adjusting the Selector. Depending on the selection different additional options will appear below the selector (see below for details)
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Avastar

The weights are taken from the Avastar Meshes assigned to the current Avastar Armature. If you select this option you can select from which Avastar Meshes you actually want to get the sources. Note: The Avastar meshes do not need to be visible when you select this option

Meshes

The weights are taken from all currently visible Meshes that are attached to the same Armature as the active mesh. Using this weight source will allow you to copy weights from your own Custom meshes (mesh weight templates) and from the Avastar meshes at the same time.

Bones

The weights are generated by Blender’s “Assign Automatic from Bones” Operation

Move

Weights will be moved from mBones to their corresponding cBone counterparts.

Swap

weights are swapped between mBones and their corresponding cBones counter parts

Empty

All existing weight groups keep untouched. But in addition Avastar generates empty weight groups for all bones that not yet have a weight group in the active mesh.

Keep

Avastar will do nothing with the weight groups and keep the weightmap configuration as it is on the mesh.

Apply the Configuration

This operator does 2 tasks:

  1. Depending on the preset it either marks only the mBones as deform bones (Classic Preset) or it marks all collision Volumes as additional Deform Bones (Fitted preset)
  2. Depending on the weight source it will move, copy or generate the weight groups for the active mesh


Alternative Workflow “Use the Copy Bones Tool”

to be done …

Prepare your Mesh for weighting

  1. Go to Show bones in the Avastar tab and enable Skinning. This will make the Deform bones visible (in this case, the SL Base (blue)), and put you in the weight room.
  2. Enabling Stick will make the bones easier to work with. You can now proceed with testing the mesh with poses an adjusting weights.

 

What you should Know

  • mBones: are the blue SL Base bones in Avastar
  • cBones: are the red octahedron shaped collision/volume bones for fitted mesh