SL Avatar mannequins available for download

Hi all SL Clothing Creators,

We've posted some files in the downloads area you might find useful:

https://secondlife.com/downloads/avatar.php

A couple of the files included are Poser 4/5 specific versions of the base SL male and female nude avatar. These models were created for use as animation figures, but the texture coordinates are identical to the SL avatar so the models can also be used as 3D clothing texture preview "mannequins" directly in Poser (no need to log in to SL to check that the shoulder seams align on your textures!)

For those of you who don't use Poser, OBJ models of the SL avatar mesh are provided to allow similar texture mannequins to be created in other 3D modeling/texturing apps. Tools like Deep Paint 3D, Zbrush, and Maya can import OBJ models and allow you to paint textures directly on the 3D mesh. The resulting 2D textures can then be imported directly into Second Life and applied as skin or clothing texture layers.

Enjoy!

-Xenon Linden

EDIT: Got rid of annoying texture references in the Poser figures and added the skirt mesh as separate .obj and Poser prop files. Download the new zip! (same location, same name) -Xenon

Woot! (of course you have to do this AFTER I spent 60 hours reverse engineering the av mesh so I could paint directly on it in Ghostpainter2! *cry*) This is very cool. Thanks Xenon!

Chip,

A couple months ago I saw your templates posted and about cried when I thought how long than must have taken you. I'm still not even sure HOW you did that.

We always intended to release 3D mannequins to aid content creators. They've been requested in one form or another since the beta days, but I think your recent efforts finally pushed it to the front burner.

So you have only yourself to blame

-Xenon

hehehe, no worries! I mostly did it because I wanted to see if my brilliant idea would work. I could get it close but not perfect so this will be better than I what I came up with, especially the fingers which I couldn't ever get right.

What I did was wear the UV templates as a skin. Then I made a 3 sided box and assigned a 12x12 grid texture to the sides. I attached it to my av and did screenshots from various angles in a davinci pose. I was able to use the box attachment as a reference grid for using the camera match utility in max to match the SL camera. Then I just had to move each vertex by hand so it was in the right place from 2-3 different screenshot angles. OCD run amok. To make the hi-rez templates I added a subdiv modifier to the mesh, assigned a wireframe material, and then used render to texture to export it. Worked like a charm.

TY TY TY Xenon (and Chip for driving this to completion)!!!

What wonderfull news!

*WEEPS*

oh this is THE AWESOME. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

When you show emotion, you really show it, dontcha? ^_^

Hope this'll make your poses all dandier now.

Less tweakin', more squeakin'!


Er... inappropriate word choice.

Just maybe.

RAWK ON!!!

This certainly puts a smile on my face. Thanks so much Xenon and all at LL, and thanks once again to Chip for having done all that work on those previous templates.

...

*jaw drops...* How do I love thee, let me count the ways!

1... 2... 3... 4....

actually funny you mention torley, i wasnt even thinking about the poser applications, though those are very cool.

I was more weeping-with-JOY over how exciting this is for baking renders from a 3d package
I just loaded up the female figure and am now playing with applying the surface channel tools in lightwave to the figure to enhance some of my garments, and baking out the renders.
I had to seperate out the UV maps (they were all in together), but that was easy due to immaculate seperation of the surface names. Xenon, you kick so much ass. I adore you. You are my HERO!

So now I'm just waiting for the "Your render is done!" beep so I can compare the original map with the baked one.

*DOES THE OH SO HAPPY DANCE*

Seriously. This is COOL. So, so cool. OMG its so cool. I think i need a cigarette now.
*sighs happily*

heeeeeeeey...................i dont want to push it, but could we possibly get the skirt object too at some point in the future?
__________________________________________
Just because I cant stop gushing about how fabulous this is:
Below is an image showing my first test. I grabbed a couple maps and applied them to the figure in lightwave. The result on the right is the maps plus the extra shading baked into the image via LW. The one on the left is the maps before baking.
*sniffles*
Thanks again Xenon, and Chip for this. YAY!!!!!!!

Blinks...OMG...First off thank you Xenon...Second...I thought you said 18 months ago.....LOL

Yes definately thank you Now I gotta tinker...hehe.

Shadow

That looks awesome Neph. I can't wait to see what you do with this!

I'm not entirely sure this is a TOS violation or what to post chat logs, but this was from ICQ, so maybe I'm exempt.

Earlier today:

Nephilaine: xenon released the avatar objects in a big phattyphat zip file of happiness
Nephilaine: and i ALMOST HAD AN ORGASM IN MY CHAIR

ROFL you bad bad bad bad kitty!!!
*spank*

Oh great! thank you very much! Danke schön!

exellent !!!!

now i really have to restart my surface baking work if i dont want ppl like chip to beat me on my own battlefield ^_^

And when you talked about baking... and then getting a cigarette... I swear, seriously...

I THOUGHT YOU WERE GONNA GET BAKED! :|

*imagines woozy Nephi making clothes with half-open eyelids, thumpin' head to the lazy grooves of reggae dub*

hey. how did you know? where are you hiding?? *looks under the piles of paper*

Something else I cant wait to try with these: procedural textures!!
If you put a procedural bump on the skin, and can tie a gradient to the color channel that is based on the bump, you could in theory very easily make oozy nasty zombie skin

OH THE POSSIBILITIES!!1!

Ok, I promise to spam this thread with my excitement no more apologies I just dont know what to do with myself, im so thrilled about this

OKies.....from a complete Poser newbie....
DL'd the file ( wonderful work by the way ) and went through the motions of getting it moved to poser 5's pplace of residence....no probs there. I go to use the avatar and get it asking me to add the bump file ( upper , lower.... ) . Have I missed a step? Is there something I need to be doing before I start using the SL avatar?

I think you can skip the bump map if you want. It's of no use for SL. Or you can point it to the bumpmap files in the SL character folder.

Rick,

What Chip said. You can just skip through any dialogues asking for bump maps and the figure will work just fine without them. It's my bad that the characters even include material groups with missing textures. You can get rid of the messages by going into the material editor in Poser, selecting each of the 3 materials that start with the name "Material Group..." and disconnect the Bump Image Map connection. Then you need to save the modified figure as a new Poser figure and use THAT as your SL avatar mannequin.

I'll also update the downloadable files ASAP to fix the problem. After all, it wouldn't be a true LL release without a patch, right?

EDIT: Ok, the downloadable has been updated to remove my local material texture references I had carelessly left in. Oh, and I also added the skirt mesh as a separate .obj and poser prop files so you can test textures on the skirt as well. -Xenon

This is going to be fun

**breaks her vow of silence**

absolutely! thats just way too cool. Thanks again xenon and chip
Now, if i could just stop trying to use my SL keys in lightwave. awkward things happen when you try to ctrl-alt-click to move around the mesh :|
*snickers at self*

Well...I have Poser 4 but I'll have Poser 5 tomorrow....my only question is...how do I go about putting the clothing onto the Poser model to see it? I'm a Poser newbie but I love to buy the stuff to fiddle with things so I haven't got the slightest clue. Anyone care to explain...I'm gonna be one of the new Men's clothing designers...(Yay me!).