Drawing a line under Fitted Mesh... for the moment

I do suffer from a dislike of being outwitted by inanimate objects, and generally I will keep hammering at them until I get them right, even at the cost of my own sanity.

Even after I threw in the towel yesterday I didnt stop messing around. I even tried to take some time away to reset my brain, but a puzzle is a puzzle, and this one was getting on my nerves.

Rigged mesh is pretty complicated to deal with. Well, it is if you are intent on doing it right, and often it will drive you crackers trying to track back this or that little weight that is out but causing you all sorts of problems.
For the most part, I have got that down to a good work flow - I know the pitfalls, I know the quirks.

Fitted mesh, as it seems, is a whole new ball game. Linden Labs said the work flow is exactly the same as with Rigged. Perhaps on the most basic of levels, it is. However how you get there, is utterly different and extremely confusing and complicated.
I know there is a solution to Fitted Mesh - this has already been commercially proven in world by several companies and once you have it right, it works quite well.

The piece that is missing here though, is a master template for weights. What would be the be all and end all of the SL avatar. A mesh you could, out of the box, upload to SL, and it would behave in the same way that the SL body does.
This could then be used to create the basics of the rigging you need on other objects.

Except this file isnt available, outside of those who have figured Fitted mesh out, and somewhere deep inside Linden Labs never to see the light of day,

Of course, I could spend weeks working this out, and countless uploads / failed uploads, trying to work out why this system is being such a pig and come up with my own master template.
Then again, I could wait and hope Linden Labs see the light of day and release an accurate master file, but I think everyone will agree, that would be a common sense and logical thing to do... and thats not what we usually get from the Labs.


Which comes back to the title... and drawing a line under this for the moment. I am not chomping at the bit anymore though. More like grinding my teeth in frustration.