I think we’ve got a decent working mesh ‘stickman’ that will make the dire wolf the proper shape.  I’m in the process of testing it now.  The Unfortunate news is that with this new mesh ‘deforming’ system, that a lot of the old animations aren’t working properly.  So far they’ve been minor fixes.  But since I was already messing with animations I decided to make two fixes of previous complaints about the dire wolf:  The walk animation has the paws lifting too high in the air, almost like a prancing gait.  We’ve also heard complaints about the dire wolf ‘kicking out’ too much on the run.  Both of these issues have been fixed so far.

Some other changes we’re thinking about doing since we’re already working on the avatar:

• Facial Expressions – When clicking on an animation such as “growl”, it doesn’t revert when the growl stops playing.  We’re looking into making the facial expressions revert when animations are done.
• Head Options – I’m looking at giving the head the same options as are available on our Kaerwyn Creations Kaetif avatars.  (Jaw Angle, Eye Lid Position, etc).
• Leg/Hand Prims – I’ve already changed the rear legs to look at little bit better.  I’ve *thought* about making some actual mesh legs and front paws, but I’m not really sure it would look okay with a mostly sculpted prim avatar.
• Tail – Really never liked the way the tail looked, might try to rebuild it a little.
• HUD Updater.

Here’s the run:

And the walk:

With the latest update, Linden Labs seem to have broken something related to avatars that use deformers to increase the size of the base human avatars. This has been observed in the WereHouse Dire Wolf avatar as well as other avatar makers such as the Sea Wolf Ancient dragons. This issue causes avatars to either sink into the ground or hover over it.

Note that this only affects the Dire Wolf currently as the other Dire creatures do not use a deformer.

There is a JIRA on the LL site currently and we are hoping the Lindens will fix this issue as soon as possible.
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SH-2574

Because this is an issue with Second Life itself, there is not much we can do about it, however we have been looking for workarounds for it:

Step 1: Turn off the AO (deformer will also turn off)
Step 2: Goto Develop menu (Ctrl+Alt+Q if hidden), Avatar submenu, Force Params to Default
Step 3: Turn on AO

We are trying to find a more permanent solution to this issue, and we will post and roll out an update if we can find a suitable solution.

We’re sorry for the trouble and doing everything we can to resolve this issue.

We found a minor bug in the HUD of the KC Housecat.  Any avatar with the box named KCKaetifV1CatPointed will be affected.  This bug is in regard to the pupils of the cat’s eyes on the HUD do not change in size as you use the slider. The button still changes the eye pupil size on the avatar itself, but not on the HUD.  This was the only part that was changed for this update, so if you have modified your avatar at all, all you need to do is replace your HUD.

The update is free and you can use your avatar’s update button to get the new version.  You can find the update button on the HUD -> About Tab.

I had just noticed tonight, that the latest Firestorm viewer is displaying the Wild Wolf’s Recolorable Forearm texture improperly, for some reason it’s showing the soft transparent texture for the legs as having very jagged edges.  I was warned about this by one of Firestorm’s staff members a year ago, but I had never seen the bug show up at all.   Oddly enough, this seems to appear only on the forearms.  The other transparent/semi-transparent textures are not doing this.

Either way, I have tried to make a fix for it and I will probably be rolling out updates in the next few days.   The Dire Wolf, Wild Fox and Wild Tiger might need to be looked at as well, if that’s the case I will probably delay releasing the fix until all of them are ready.

I have no idea if this is a problem with any other viewers, or even if it’s just me. But I’ll try to fix it anyway.  This didn’t show up on the old Phoenix viewer.  If anyone notices an issue like this with any of our avatars, please let myself or someone on my staff know. Let them know which avatar, which texture or part, and what viewer you’re using. That’ll help us track it down!