Blender and Rigging

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, 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, 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 are two files at the RuthAndRoth GitHub: Reference > Armatures.

• avatar_skeleton.xml(FemaleArmature).blend is the armature Ada Radius built from avatar_skeleton.xml - that's the file in the viewer Character folder that defines the default armature, before any morphs or bone editing.

• male_2016_08_05Rebuilt.blend is the same information, more or less, with bone head positions adjusted to what can be deduced from the SLWiki downloads at their Bento resources page for the default avatar with male morph.

These two files have all of the mBones and VOLUME bones for the Bento armature, though not the attachment bones, and are fine for skinning and vertex weighting to a default sized avatar. If you need to rig to the volume (fitted) bones, you'll probably still need the Avastar exporter, because of the custom bone settings, unless you're good enough at python scripting to do it yourself. Ada has blogged about the volume bones and her analysis of the problem.

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

• https://adaradius.com/2020/05/04/roth2v2-blender-workflow/

• https://adaradius.com/2020/03/01/how-to-build-the-bento-armature-in-blender-2-8x-part-1/

• https://adaradius.com/2020/03/03/how-to-build-the-bento-armature-in-blender-2-8x-part-2/

• https://adaradius.com/2020/01/16/blender2-81-dae-export-part1/

• https://adaradius.com/2020/01/18/blender-2-81-collada-exporting-for-opensim-second-life-rigged-models-part-2/

• https://adaradius.com/2020/01/30/blender-2-81-collada-exporting-for-opensim-second-life-rigged-models-part-3/