As of right now, no SDKs (Senra development kits for the new starter avatars) have been distributed, according to Patch Linden.

We anticipate the updated versions of the bodies and heads to be released within a few weeks. In the meantime, we still have all submitted applications saved on file, and new applicants are continued to be welcomed. When the dev kit is ready for distribution, we will release it in batches, beginning with our earliest applicants. – Senra Applications from Second Life Community Board 

Okay, then. I was wondering if my application was incomplete or messed up, as I had had NO acknowledgement or response. They’re holding up the applications because, of course, some issues were identified in the bodies they did release and they have to adjust them before sending out the creator kits. Guess I still have time to figure out Blender, then. Really, I don’t plan on making clothes, just unrigged accessories, but was hoping to have the option just in case.

I’ve been making progress in Blender classes recently, because the ones that I wanted to take inworld have been held at times that I could actually ATTEND. Some of the last series of classes were held during my RL work hours, and weren’t repeated during either the evening or early morning or weekend time that I’m not logged in for work.

This class, on the coming update to Second Life’s mesh texturing pipleline, was particularly helpful. When it’s finally released, it’ll use the glTF workflow, which has slightly different terms and names for the various kinds of texture maps. Instead of being called “Diffuse” for the color map, it’s called “Albedo,” and there’s a “Metalness” and “Roughness” map in addition to the familiar “Normal” map that SL currently recognizes. There’s a 5th map called “Emissive” that we’ll have to use as a work-around for other kinds of maps. But it was so cool when I succeeded in plugging the right little wires into the correct little color-coded ports and the model lamp suddenly became all shiny.

Currently I’m attending classes through 2 different “content creator” groups that focus on teaching Blender. I still have all the old YouTube links from before, too. I’ve tried buying books, too, but most of the books out now are either outdated, or self-published crap that’s even more outdated. I got one recently from Amazon that’s terribly poor in print quality, but it included a full PDF of everything in the book, so that was a bit more acceptable.

At the “Blender School” classroom there’s a kit to make a “Blender is Easy!” button… people were pressing it a lot the other night when things were going well (and not so well). I may try to make that too.

Not sharing this to Mastodon – I already posted a similar link.