Ruth2 v4

Ruth2 v4 Revision 2020-09-02
Based on Blender Mesh from https://github.com/RuthAndRoth/Ruth2 (was Ada Radius Draft 11). Use a viewer which supports Bakes on Mesh, e.g. Firestorm.

Ruth2 is a low-poly mesh body specifically designed for OpenSimulator and which can also be used in Second Life™. It is built to use standard Second Life UV maps using a scratch-built open source mesh by Shin Ingen, Ada Radius and other contributors from the RuthAndRoth Community. Ruth2 v4 is the fourth version of the mesh avatar updated to be built and rigged using Blender 2.8 and with improved documentation of the workflow to make it reliably repeatable and credits to all the asset creators involved.

AVAILABILITY

USER GUIDE

https://github.com/RuthAndRoth/Ruth2/wiki/User-Guide

BAKES ON MESH

Ruth2 v4 is provided as a single mesh that is designed to work well with Bakes on Mesh. It has a simple alpha capability without needing separate mesh parts. Alpha masks can be worn to give more control over hidden areas. Rather than use Bakes on Mesh, skin textures may be applied, but you should then add a full body alpha mask to hide the underlying system avatar.

The “Ruth2 v4 – Mesh Avatar” box contents are designed so that they form a complete initial avatar using Bakes on Mesh. You can switch to your own shape, skin, eyes and hair and/or use the HUD to change your appearance. Some example hair, underclothing, hair bases and a range of alpha masks are provided in the “Ruth2 v4 – Extras” box. Skins as used in the HUD and more can be found in a “R2 Skins – Female” box.

HUD

Ruth2 v4 uses a single combination HUD, created by Serie Sumei, for alpha masking, skin and eye texture application, finger and toe nail colour, and other features. The skins and eyes that are available are set via a notecard (!CONFIG) in the Contents of the HUD which can be edited to incorporate your own skins (11 slots are available) and/or eye textures (5 slots are available).

The Skin Alpha Mode can be changed between Alpha Masking with cutoff=128 (the initial setting) and Alpha Blending. Depending on the Alpha Mode that is used on hair, clothing or other attachments that use partial alpha it may be useful to be able to change the setting used on the mesh body to avoid some parts not displaying correctly.

BOX CONTENTS

Ruth2 v4 – Mesh Avatar – This is the normal distribution box and is designed so that once unpacked its contents can be “worn”. It contains basic “classic” avatar shape, skin, eyes or hair to form a complete outfit, but these can be replaced with the users own preferred content.

  • !README, !LICENSE and
    !CHANGES
  • Ruth2 v4 (Body+Hands+Head)
  • Ruth2 v4 Eyes
  • Ruth2 v4 Eyelashes
  • Ruth2 v4 (posable) Flat Feet, and Fixed Medium and Fixed High Feet
  • Ruth2 v4 Toenails for the feet options
  • Ruth2 v4 Five options for fingernails
  • Ruth2 v4 HUD
  • Initial skin, shape, basic eyes and basic hair
  • Basic underwear

Ruth2 v4 – Mesh Avatar Business – A special version of the Ruth2 v4 Mesh Avatar for G-Rated or Business usage is provided with a modified body shape and skins which have simple baked-on underwear.

Ruth2 v4 – Extras – This is a box of useful extra elements and options.

  • !README-EXTRAS and !LICENSE
  • Ruth2 v4 Body (only)
  • Ruth2 v4 Business (Body+Hands+Head)
  • Ruth2 v4 Business Headless (Body+Hands)
  • Ruth2 v4 Hands
  • Ruth2 v4 Head
  • Ruth2 v4 Headless (Body+Hands)
  • Ruth2 v4 Head+Vneck (section of body)
  • Ruth2 v4 Elf Ears
  • Alpha masks
  • Sample hair and hair bases

Ruth2 v4 – Resources – This box is not normally needed. It contains textures and other resources with original UUIDs as used within the other assets. This can be useful if moving the assets across grid, or to repair elements.

Ruth2 v4 – Mesh Uploads – This box is not normally needed. It contains mesh for all Ruth2 v4 elements as originally uploaded and before attaching a root prim or any texturing.

R2 Skins – Female – Skins and related skin textures as used in the Ruth2 v4 HUD and alternatives from https://github.com/RuthAndRoth/Skins.

APPEARANCE SLIDERS

See this Wiki page for information on Bento Mesh Bodies and Heads… http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Project_Bento_Resources_and_Information

The following avatar appearance slider controls are not supported due to technical constraints as described in this Wiki page… http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Project_Bento_Skeleton_Guide

  • Head Shape
  • Eyelash Length
  • Eye Pop
  • Ear Angle
  • Attached Earlobe
  • Jowls
  • Chin Cleft
  • Upper Chin Cleft

KNOWN ISSUES AND TROUBLESHOOTING

  • Ruth2 v4 with attached Bento head will work with most shapes. The headless body, to use with system head or other mesh head, will work well with the sliders except body fat, and extremes to neck length and thickness, because of the neck seam. There are a few head sliders that don’t work: Head Shape, Ear Angle, Jowls, Chin Cleft.
  • Texture Alpha Mode – Alpha Blending or Alpha Masking? Ruth2 v4 is set initially with mode Alpha Masking with a mid cutoff of 128 (the cutoff range can be 0 to 255) as this may work well with the addition of clothing and hair that use Alpha Blending as transparent edges can appear if too many overlapping items use the same alpha mode. But Alpha Blending can often look smoother. The Eyelashes are set to Alpha Blending mode for this reason since they act more like a hair attachment.
  • The Ruth2 v4 mesh near the toes is adjusted to avoid the toenail area of the skin, as many skins bake in toenails. Ruth2 v4 is designed to make use of separate mesh toenails. For best result, paint over the system toenails and remove as much detail as you can from your foot skin that is probably designed for the system avatar’s duck feet.
  • The HUD Options Tab allows for the posable flat foot pose to be altered and an “ankle lock” facility attempts to keep animations from moving a joint or two. The ankle lock is sometimes needed to counter-act an interaction between some poses/animations and non-flat feet that otherwise bends the foot back another 45-60 degrees. Not every raised foot needs it due to variations in rigging and if the feet were posed with animations already or not.
  • Multiple fingernail shapes are available. The HUD is not currently enabled to support selection between these. Just add and remove the option you wish to use.
  • Due to the scripting facilities used in the HUD, Ruth2 V4 scripts will not work on early versions of OpenSim such as 0.8.2.1 (now five years old). Please update.
    But to help, a box with unscripted versions of the main mesh avatar is available on OSGrid on the RuthAndRoth region. This version does not include the HUD, the body parts are unscripted except for relaxed hand pose activation in Ruth2 v4 (Body+Hands+Head). This version should work for BoM with an appropriate viewer, or apply skins and manually apply alphas where needed.

AVATAR COMPLEXITY

Ruth2 v4 is designed to have low “avatar complexity” when worn to reduce lag. Asset sharing of the meshes and textures has been encouraged wherever possible with all assets made freely available to allow for reuse.

RUTHANDROTH COMMUNITY

Please contribute via the GitHub Repository and send your feedback by posting to the Discord Channel.

CREDITS

LICENSE

See https://github.com/RuthAndRoth/Ruth2 Documentation/Packaging/LICENSE.txt

The main Ruth2 v4 mesh components have an AGPL license and other components have Creative Commons or other open source licenses. Basically, you can use and distribute the materials as you wish, but any modifications to the AGPL meshes that are distributed or made available in a service must be made publicly available at no cost and released under the same terms granted in the LICENSE.

CONTRIBUTORS

Various Authors and contributors to the Git Repository in alphabetical order are:

  • Ada Radius
  • Ai Austin
  • Chimera Firecaster
  • Elenia Boucher
  • Fred Beckhusen
  • Fritigern Gothly
  • Joe Builder
  • Kayaker Magic
  • Lelani Carver
  • Leona Morro
  • Mike Dickson
  • Noxluna Nightfire
  • Sean Heavy
  • Serie Sumei
  • Shin Ingen
  • Sundance Haiku
  • Other contributions and testing by members of the OpenSimulator and RuthAndRoth Communities.

The ‘R2’ logo may be used to indicate projects or products that are either based on or compatible with the RuthAndRoth project mesh bodies.

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5 Responses to Ruth2 v4

  1. bat says:

    An exmple Bento Expression HUD that appears to work fine with the Ruth2 v4 Bento Mesh Head can be found on the Second Life Marketplace at
    https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/BENTO-EXPRESSION-HUD-V14/11827184

    Test area and purchase point in world at
    https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Helsing/54/209/21

  2. bat says:

    Jupiter Rowland’s guide to what boxes to pick up and their contents on the OpenSimWorld blog… https://opensimworld.com/post/77517

  3. bat says:

    From Second Life Viewer 6.6.8.576863 (12-Dec-2022) and Firestorm 6.6.9 or later (which incorporates the Linden Lab 6.6.8 code) the order in which alpha blended textures are layered is fully defined and can be made more predictable. This can help partial transparency appearing around hair or clothing over mesh bodies such as Ruth2 v4.

    The root prim of the attachment should be at least partially transparent. The root prim of Ruth2 v4 (and Roth2 v2) in the usual distributions in both Second Life and OpenSim/OSGrid is fully transparent already.

    For more details, and a list of the priority order of attachments see this blog post…
    https://beqsother.blogspot.com/2022/11/alpha-blend-issues-get-them-sorted.html

  4. bat says:

    Theroniya’s Garage Sale has provided a Ruth2 v4 mesh body variant and modifiable clothing at https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/248121

    Blender sources for the modified mesh body and clothing are at
    https://github.com/Theroniya/garage-sale/

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