A new blend file with replicas of the default viewer avatar mesh that matches the inworld default female well enough and is less annoying to design to in Blender - a devkit. What I did:
More symmetrizing - mesh and UV maps. Right and left feet, right and left arms match better. Upper and lower body islands are symmetrical to themselves. Head, eyes, eyelashes and hair are now globally symmetrical. The skirt has no center lines in the islands and can't be made symmetrical and still match the inworld mesh. These maps unfortunately no longer precisely match the Robin Wood templates, which reflect the slight assymetries in the viewer avatar. If I make a similar tool (color matching), or find any more errors I'll post them here as well.
symmetrized, better labels.
Note that the actual viewer default avatars are not symmetrical, though the differences are small. But visible on the UV maps, which is annoying to work with. So I symmetrized a set of set of models in Blender from LL and Cybernetic sources, and exported a new set.
I'm removing armatures except for the most basic build from avatar_skeleton.xml. Which works more or less, but I found a possible conceptual error in the Maya to Blender conversion, having to do with differences between the way Maya handles connected bone chains vs the way Blender does it. I'm also rethinking some decisions I made re the left-right asymmetries in avatar_skeleton.xml.
this works OK, I'm calling V3 armature done. Blender vertex weighting much less buggy with this armature, and being able to rotate the pelvis is handy. I'm deleting
moved mHipRight chain and mEyeRight below Left, so hierarchy order (left - right) is consistent - seems to better with Blender x symmetry. No, I can't figure why either.
The zip files seem to have become corrupted so I replaced them, unzipped, de-nested them. There are two sets - layered psd files that can open in software such as Gimp, and psd files with vSmart layers that, AFAIK, can only be opened in PhotoShop. Added the skirt png file.
v3 is the same as avatar_skeleton.xml with a few changes to make it easier to use for weighting in Blender. I'm using V3 for skinning and weighting, then rotating the mesh to +X forward (apply rotation) and reskinning to avatar_skeleton for exporting.
The changes:
orient to +Y forward
add non-deforming bone - PelvisChild - so hips rotate correctly
change bone names so symmetry works with Blender's naming conventions (as of 2.91)
clear bone rolls to 0
Problems: I'm still testing this - more nondeform bones may be needed to get the pelvis working correctly. I'm having problems with Blender symmetry on the bones that are in right-left order in the bone hierarchy, and I haven't figured out how to move them nondestructively.
These are the armatures I built from the viewer character folder: avatar_skeleton.xml (female) and a male armature (broken) I downloaded from SL Wiki and repaired from avatar_skeleton.xml values, converted to Blender. Also spreadsheet that has lists of the bones, cross-referenced to the appearance sliders, and other information.
in avatar_skeleton.xml sometimes the right bone is listed first, sometimes the left. I matched the data in this spreadsheet to same order as avatar_skeleton.
Instead of just stashing this as a reference, I started using it as a tool. The bone positions fit the default system male a little better than other armatures, for automatic bone weighting, and the bone layers and groups (based on avatar_skeleton.xml 's organization) are easier to use for weight painting than Avastar's armature. So I corrected some of the bone settings to make it work better.
The rebuilt male_2016-08-05.dae armature turns out to be good for auto-weighting and weight painting in Blender, so, rather than a failed experiment, it's a resource. I deleted Blender-generated bone custom properties and anything else that's either useless or might be misleading.
The "broken" armature downloadable from SL Wiki Bento Testing, repaired in this file from data in avatar_skeleton.xml, available in viewer > Character.
Ada Radius