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Blender and Rigging

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Ai Austin edited this page Mar 25, 2022 · 22 revisions

The objects in the Dev file do have vertex weighting. But no armature is included. That should be added in whatever is the most recent version of Blender at the time of use, with an Avastar plugin for the armature that will export Collada (.dae) files correctly. An armature that will be compatible with future versions of Blender, Avastar or Bento Buddy cannot be included as the requirements can change frequently.

Only the final cleaned up objects are contained in Ruth2v4Dev.blend, plus the text file where Ada Radius put licensing information. Ada left out armatures, custom properties, and anything that might snaggle the different kinds of uses designers might use the model for with future versions of Blender, Avastar, Bento Buddy or other plugins. Ada suggests that anyone who wants to use the file will want to use it as a library: open a clean recent version of Blender, append the objects, text file and images from Ruth2v4Dev.blend, and add a new armature or whatever to get what you need done. This will avoid incompatibilities with future versions of Blender, the Avastar plugin, Bento Buddy, etc. The Collada (.dae) files are fine for importing to Second Life or OpenSim right now, but can come back into Blender with unneeded and possibly incompatible data.

Ruth2 > Contrib/Ada Radius/Ruth2v4Sources.blend shows where Ada got the models to create Ruth2 v4. That's for people who want to know what she did. It is available to provide continuity for anyone who wants to do a Ruth2 v5.

If anyone needs just the armature, there is a sample one in the GitHub RuthAndRoth repository: Reference > Ada Radius.

More Help from Ada Radius

Vertex weights are stored in vertex groups and are essentially a property of each vertex, up to 4 weights per vert allowed in SL or OS. You can see the weights in the properties tab under Object Data Properties (triangle icon). It's context sensitive, you only see all the options in Edit or Weight Painting, Vertex Selection mode, at least in Blender 2.9. Or select one vert, go to the n panel under item, and you'll see what bones that particular vert is weighted to.

After you add an armature and you have skinned the Ruth or Roth body to the new armature (Preserve Weights), you can also skin your clothing mesh to the same armature, and copy weights from the Ruth2 or Roth2 bits to your clothing mesh. Depending on the clothing, you will still probably need to adjust the vertex weights by weight painting, because the clothing is further from the bones than the bodies, and cloth doesn't drape the same way as skin.

Ada Radius Blog

More information on the rigging process can be found on Ada Radius's blog:

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