The WereHouse Avatars

Almost there!

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:

Leave A Comment, Written on October 8th, 2013 , Avatars, Issues and Fixes

Still working on it…

I have spoken to one of the creators of the Seawolf avatars, and we determined that we might be able to fix our ‘large’ avatars if we use mesh deformers. Unfortunately I am not as well versed in mesh as I would like to be, so this is going a bit slower than I would like. But I did want to show you some of the progress I made with it:

The white ‘stickman’ thing is the mesh deformed shape. As you can see, it still needs a little work, the legs aren’t lining up right, the front paws are a little off. I might use this time to fix some of the issues I’ve never liked on the Dire, but I want to try to roll this out as soon as I can. And no, the deformer shape will be invisible when I’m done, I just wanted you guys to see it for now.

So if I’m using a mesh deformer, why not just go all the way with mesh? Well, I want to! That’s why I’m learning how to make mesh avs now, but I’m only just learning. And this particular issue is actually to fix a problem that Linden Labs caused with that July/August update (The dire wolf sinking). So I want to get this avatar back to working properly before I can move on. And that means using a mesh deformer while continuing to use prim attachments.

When I’m more comfortable making mesh avs, you bet there will be a dire wolf version of it. But I’m not ready to release anything like that yet. Not just yet.

Leave A Comment, Written on October 1st, 2013 , Uncategorized

Dire Wolf Sinking Problem

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.

Leave A Comment, Written on September 15th, 2013 , Avatars, Issues and Fixes

Kaerwyn Kaetif Raccoon Update incoming.

Just letting you all know that with the release of SL’s latest server changes (Server side appearance) that something went Horribly Wrong™ with the Raccoon avatars. For many, the lower body texture will not load properly, either displaying the texture from a prior avatar or not loading at all (or even looking invisible).

We’ve actually tracked down the issue with the Shoe clothing layer. If you remove the ‘Kaetif Raccoon – Shoes” from the avatar, it should display the lower body textures properly. We’re not sure what happened, but it appears that the texture on the shoes was corrupted and is causing the baking process on the lower part of the avatar to fail.

I am currently creating a new shoe layer for the avatar and we will be rolling out updates as soon as we’re done testing and packing the boxes.

If you are in the Realmscapes group, you will see the message about the updates as soon as they’re available. And you can get your update by clicking on the “About” tab of the HUD, and clicking on the “Updates” button.

Leave A Comment, Written on September 5th, 2013 , Uncategorized

Mesh Work

I’m still working on the other projects, don’t worry! But this week, I realized I really need to get on this mesh bandwagon. Don’t worry, I won’t fully replace some of the sculpted stuff we have, I know people like to mod, and it’s kinda hard to do that with mesh parts. But I do like the look of mesh digitigrade legs, and I’d like to offer that as an option. And then maybe do some fully mesh avatars in addition to the sculpted stuff.

Here was my first attempt yesterday at making a leg. It’s not rigged yet, I still need to figure that out. If anyone has any advice on doing that, I’d greatly appreciate it. I’m just kind of winging it on my own here.

Doing all the legwork!

Leave A Comment, Written on May 9th, 2013 , In Progress Builds

Guess What’s Next!

Actually I have a few avatars that I’m working on concurrently. (I guess I have some kind of avatar creation ADD as it’s hard for me to focus on one for very long these days, but I can switch to work on another one just fine somehow).

Anyway, you only get three guesses to figure this one out!

Guess!

Leave A Comment, Written on April 18th, 2013 , Avatars, In Progress Builds

Kaerwyn Creations Kaetif Raccoon Avatar!

We’ll be celebrating the release of this new avatar in Rocket City April 13th at 7pm SLT! Feel free to come out and join us, and you’ll have the chance to win an avatar!

The Avatars are currently available in our stores in Second Life, and will be available on the Marketplace shortly.

Leave A Comment, Written on April 13th, 2013 , Uncategorized

Kaerwyn Creations Kaetif Raccoon – 25 Essential Expressions Meme

I’ve been working on these avatars for the past couple of months and they’re almost ready to go! However I was showing some of the headshots to a couple of friends and the idea came up to try to make all the expressions in the Essential Expressions meme. These images are nothing more than screenshots of the avatar in game – with no extra sculpties, animations or scripting or anything of the like. This is the stock avatar as it comes. It was sitting on a posing stand that keeps the head still, though for Triumph the arm is up because I was editing the backdrop at the time and it seemed appropriate. Either way, we put a lot of work into making our avatars expressive and I think this really shows the potential of the avatar.

This avatar should be available in the next few days.

Leave A Comment, Written on April 11th, 2013 , Uncategorized

Kaerwyn Creations Housecat Avatar Update (V1.1)

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.

Leave A Comment, Written on April 10th, 2013 , Avatars, Issues and Fixes

Wild Wolf Texture Issue

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!