– M4 Head news –

Alright so i have finished working on the HUD for the M4 heads and all that’s left to do now is scripting everything and finishing the remaining animations and a few more textures.

This project was really frustrating, i decided to not half ass it and go all out with this one, making it join seamlessly with Avatar 2.0 and kemono necks, as well as LL neck so you can use this with your overpriced normie bodies as well, i also had to blend the kemono and av2 skin textures for seamless blending to be possible, and made a bunch of LL UV skins for normie bodies. I will need to make a special skin blending kit for skin creators to get their skins blend with the head easier. I also made 2 different nose shapes that you can choose from, one of them is your standard pointy anime nose, the other one is slightly more realistic doll style nose so people dont need to draw noses on top of noses that look weird from every other angle than front lol. Theres also 2 different eye and ear shapes, but i think i already mentioned all this stuff before. So needless to say, there was a lot of complicated fuckery i had to do to get all this to work, and some stuff had to be sacrificed for it all to work, like the 2 different eye shapes cannot be too different or the blink will not work with one of them, or the dreaded 8 face limit combined with alpha sorting issues forced me to ditch some ideas like makeup layers.

– Delays –

Now due to the whole hippo update nonsense and a huge roadblock i ran in with avastar/bento work has been delayed and while im still hopeful that i can meet my personal deadline of releasing the M4 anime head by the beginning of summer, im not sure i can meet that same deadline for the M4 Chibi and M4 Man heads.

For the Chibi head, it shares all the textures and HUD with the M4 anime head so everything is pretty much done but theres a problem with mesh hair compatibility, half of the hairs clip at the sides so im afraid i will have to redo its shape a bit, so im not sure when thats going to be done either. For the male head, it will have skins of its own and some of the features will be different from the female heads so i will need to slightly redo the HUD for it too, so im not sure when thats going to happen eitehr but the base skin for it is already done so all i will need to do is just a few different skin tone versions.

So thats it for now.

– Avatar 2.0 v1.14 is out! –

This is the long overdue fitted mesh update as well as bento face and hand rigging. You can now adjust the shape of your ass, belly, legs and feet, to make your shape more juicy. You can also adjust some of the face sliders but not all of them work (not all bento features are supported due to the way the game treats custom joint positions)

– Whats else is New in 1.14 –

In general this was a huge update, avatar 2.0 now partially supports fitted mesh (the whole lower body bellow the waist) as well as bento rigging for the face and hands.
Huge improvements to render weight from 32K to just 4.8K (the render weight randomly fluctuates between higher and lower numbers because the whole render weight system is garbage) as well as script optimizations.
There are now 2 versions of the body, A and B. Version A is the normal version witch is 4.8k render weight, and the experimental version B with 2k render weight witch will not work for people running the game on ghetto graphics settings.
A bunch of new features implemented such as normal/specular map support, head customization options and other neat things.

Rez or wear your Avatar 2.0 update cards to get it.

All the existing clothing have been updated to work with this new version, rez your update cards.

                 

The old versions of following items did not come with all the textures, scripting and update cards, there for they are not eligible for a free update.

    

Next stop on the to do list is updating the avatar 2.0 appliers to make use of the new texture layers and specular/normal maps, as well as new dummies for content creators.

– WIP kemono bento implementation –

So yeah bento is now part of the official firestorm release and the bento development tools are nearing completion so i started poking at it myself and heres what i got so far.

My goal is to make full use of the bento bones for avatar 2.0 and kemono to drastically cut down on the rendering weight, first im going to make use of the finger and tail bones so that we wouldnt need to use 89475984 invisible tails and hands, one will be enough! and than will see what i can do with the avatar 2.0 face. I might also re release bento versions of the M3 heads since those have a 9384658347598 polygons too that also eat up a lot of the render complexity thing but im not sure how well those rigged heads will align with different avatars since you wont be able to move them around anymore.

 

– Contest over! –

– Contest over! –

Ladies and Germans, the Rikugou customization contest is over and here are the lucky winners!

First place

Izzanami Dagostino with her tank turret robot girl thing inspired by bastion ffrom overwatch.
More pictures here: http://imgur.com/a/gF9Mf

You can see it in action in these videos
Tank mode: https://i.gyazo.com/42f272b80ff9020dd72696dfda96e0cd.mp4
Turret mode: https://i.gyazo.com/f4f91132b9f3100ee1f4457ae9242f6f.mp4

Second place

————

Ashe’s Kampfer is a fully functional thing that can shoot and boost and leave skidmarks as it moves around.
see it in action: video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kCaSWH-TwQ&feature=youtu.be

Akisa’s Mynoghra is a Rikugou armor that she has been hard at work modeling for quite some time and will be commercially available soon, keep a look out on her store for when it drops!
Heres a better image: https://i.gyazo.com/7d4ea165700473b4a76ff846dd8a40ed.jpg

Third place

See more images of
JDB Bing: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rdb4dym1u5igpi4/AAADjz3KoIzcKkmiYq81RybMa?dl=0
Miko Molinari: http://imgur.com/a/OXNRi
Maki: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50238401/contest/2016-10-13_18-16-09.mp4

Honorable mentions

These are customization that did not make it into the top 3 but never the less the judges felt these needed a shout out, so here they are !

See more images of
Xion Hurricane: https://www.flickr.com/photos/140797892@N04/with/29977335103/
cielra: https://www.flickr.com/photos/131443001@N08/with/30498525642/
Vital: http://prnt.sc/cy9pjw http://prnt.sc/cy9x73
Cozmo Boa: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/do0jws81uozsm5w/AADi5dmDk2OIDyeJGy0Nbnana?dl=0

And finaly, the winner of the male Rikugou category

Auxus with Brigs

See it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CZTJBR2Ims

And while i didnt plan any honorable mentions for the male category, i feel PrincePersia Lemondrop deserves a shout out as well.

more pics: http://imgur.com/a/lAdMI
So, now that thats over with, here are the new stuff for Rikugou, Have fun with your new toys !

 

– Updates and other cool stuff –

– Updates –

Get your update cards out for these hot new updates for all the m3 heads and avatar2.0

M3 Anime head v1.12.21:
-Head was restructured for better blinking code optimization, this fix should end the double eyelash thing once and for all, i hope…
-Added diagonal eye rolls in the roll menu.(finally!)
-Removed downwards eye angles from eye movement to fix the “I’ve seen some shit” look on your avatar’s face. (downwards angles can still be selected from the roll menu)
-Code optimizations regarding link tracking and other stuff.

M3 Venus Head v1.12.51:
-Fixed a bug with the tongue out + voice chat mouth animations causing the left eye to go blank.
-Removed downwards eye angles from eye movement.
-Code optimizations.

M3 Kemono Head v1.13.30:
-Optimized blinking, this hopefully fix any blinking bugs.
-Fixed broken voice chat animation.
-Removed downwards eye angles from eye movement.
-Code optimization.

Avatar 2.0 v1.12.27:
-Fixed a bug with custom textures not applying to eyelashes.
-Fixed the no copy issue with the main box.
-Added the missing voice chat animation gestures.
-Code optimizations.

Theres also something updated with the kemono body itself, i think the link tracking thing but im not sure cuz i forgot D:

The downwards angles explained

In reality, when the human eye is looking down, the eyelid moves down too, covering the white part above the iris. On SL however, this doesn’t happen, leaving your avatar with this really uncanny “I’ve seen some shit” look on your avatar’s face. So we removed the ability for the eye to look down during eye movement. But all the downwards angles can still be set through the eye roll menu in the options so no changes there.

– Rikugou customization contest 2! –

As the work on the armors is closing a finish, it’s probably a good idea to give you guys a heads up, theres gonna be another Rikugou customization contest at launch of the 2 new armors, so you guys would have plenty of time to prepare for it. So get your Phtochop or MS Paint ready cuz you might be the lucky winner of one (or both) of the new armors !

More details about the contest will come soon.

– WIP gundam armor stuff –

All the animations are pretty much done, all that’s left now is the scripting part.

here’s a work in progress demonstration of the gun, the battery change aniamtion still needs work.

– WIP – Trying it out on SL

– wip rikugou predator armor –

finally figured how to name it, the armor is like 98% done, just need to change a few more things and i can start working on the other armor.

heres some random pics

– wip rikugou armors and stuff –

OKAY so, the modeling on both armors is done, now all that’s left is texturing and animations, and i finally got something good to show too!

– WIP Rikugou armors 4 –

Just dicking around with colors while waiting for my food to be done