First Steps with Avastar

The most important reference pages - Read More...

The Avastar Panel locations

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....

About this Document - Read More...

This guide is focused on creating content for Second Life, but it also works for other online worlds like OpenSim.

We expect that you have basic knowledge about Blender!

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.

Important:

Please read carefully. Things might look much simpler than they are. Small mistakes can have large impact!

The second video (below):

  • Use the SL Importer for Upload

What does Avastar provide?

Avastar basically supports the creation of animatable Models (Avatars&attachments) and the creation of animations. therefore the tool adds various functions and user interface elements to Blender.
The full functionality of Avastar can be a bit overwhelming on first sight. You should be prepared to spend some time and patience to get it all working nicely for your projects.

What does this Document provide?

This document is a quick start into Avastar. You should get comfortable with the tool within a very short time. In this section you will learn how to prepare Avastar for your work on attachments, custom characters and custom animations.
However this article only scratches the surface of Avastar’s feature set, so there is a lot more to detect and we invite you to make your own experiences as well.

Next — Preparation