Hello! It's this time of the month again. I'm still working on that scene I talked about. This turned out more time consuming that expected. Well, kind of expected. I'm still figuring out how I want to solve some problems, that's why I won't commit to any particular release date or feature set, it will be done when it is done.
I made a quick video of the current state. Current focus is the transition between the two main poses of the scene, which is the most complicated part. I'm kind of happy with the animation of the right girl, but the long walk of the left girl between poses is rather on the awkward side. Part of this is due to feet and body being animated by different IdlePosers, which are slightly out of sync. The other part is that IdlePoser is using a fixed SmoothStep curve on top of its Bézier interpolation.
In this scene there are 4 IdlePoser plugins on each of the girls, that's two for hands, one for the body and one for the feet. I will likely add another one for the EyeTarget at a later point. These IdlePosers are all being controlled by a central StateMachine and some helping LogicBricks. Using that many IdlePosers means I can combine partial animations to reduce the appearance of repeating animation loops and a create a lot more variance. I'm still experimenting how to make a nicer walk animation with IdlePoser as well as how to setup the central StateMachine without loosing myself in the mess of interacting states. Likely I need some more IdlePoser and LogicBricks improvements.....we coders love to solve everything with just more code! Other than that there is still lots of animation work ahead.
What else happened this month?
- Some work related to upcoming VaM changes related to plugin security for SuperShot, SkyMagic and IdlePoser. This is related to the appearance of a malicious VaM plugin, although it was on a pirate site. You might have seen Meshed's post on Discord about it. Remember, get your stuff from trusted sources only. Anyway, Meshed changed his solution again, so the change is not that urgent anymore....lol.
- Various IdlePoser tweaks and bugfixes.
- Release of my PowerHandles plugin, which was extremely helpful for building my scene so far.
- An unusual amount of people asked quite a lot of questions this month. While I totally like to help people, formulating answers that are actually correct and helpful can easily take 20 minutes or more, especially if there is a bit of back and forth needed. At the end of the month that easily adds up to several hours of time. If you want to help me to use my limited VaM time-budget more efficiently, please consider asking your question publicly in a new thread on the Hub. A lot of you have the same or very similar questions. Asking publicly means more people might profit from my time spend on writing an answer. Also you can potentially help each other and I can more easily post screenshots, code, etc. which is not possible in private messages here on Patreon or Reddit.
Cheers, MacGruber
2021-01-25 19:47:09 +0000 UTC
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Your most essential MacGruber tools in a convenient single VAR package. Version 7 introduces the PowerHandles plugin that was teased a week ago and is intended for heavy users of the VaM Desktop mode. I was annoyed by often accidentally rotating instead of moving and vice versa. Check the video here. See the changelog below for all nice improvements you get from PowerHandles as well as some minor fixes/additions to other plugins in the Essentials collection.
Changelog
- PowerHandles: Position handle only enabled when holding LeftCTRL.
- PowerHandles: Rotation handle only enabled when holding LeftALT.
- PowerHandles: Prevent accidental movement by disabling "MouseGrab" of unselected control nodes.
- PowerHandles: Use global coordinate system when holding LeftSHIFT.
- PowerHandles: Align objects by global position/rotation grid when holding SPACE.
- PowerHandles: Option to scale VaM's control node UI, like the green icons. Also disabling rendering of sphere collider for "Empty" atoms, if the collision is disabled. Great for better overview in scenes with lots of clustered atoms!
- FrameRateControl: Added 1/3 and 1/4 VSync options. Could be helpful when recording video of a complex scene and your machine is too slow. E.g. record at stable 15fps at 50% time scale and speed up the recording to 30fps later. (Note: Using VaM's time scale setting will break audio.)
- FrameRateControl: Removed "keep settings over scene change" option as we have proper SessionPlugins now.
- SuperShot: Added some 32:9 and 36:9 resolutions. The latter is the recommended aspect ratio of Patreon cover images.
- EditMode: Fixed issues when being added as a SessionPlugin.
Download
- This is an EarlyAccess release! Download will be available for free under CC BY-SA license after 2021-02-01. You are allowed to reference this package in your own VAR packages, even if they are paid or use a different license. Links to my Patreon are always appreciated.
- Beware of some browsers mistakenly renaming .var files to .zip when downloading from Patreon. More details on how to install VaM content and missing dependencies here.
2021-01-17 11:53:00 +0000 UTC
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Just a little idea I had on the side to for easier placement of stuff when using VaM Desktop mode. I was annoyed by often accidentally rotating instead of moving and vice versa. So now you can only see/use the move handles when holding CTRL and the rotation handles when holding ALT. You can also use the global coordinate system instead of the local one, just by holding SHIFT. Check the video.
This is just a hacky prototype at the moment.
2021-01-10 18:30:26 +0000 UTC
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Why does something as simple as installing VAR package need a tutorial? Well, glad you asked. When downloading from Patreon it can apparently it can happen with some configurations that a .VAR file is mistakenly renamed into .ZIP by the browser. That is of course not recognized by VaM, causing unknowing users to try extracting the ZIP, making things even worse, etc. I guess this is where some of the confusion about VAR packages comes from.
The tutorial also covers how to easily identify and download missing dependencies like clothing, morphs, plugins or other assets.
If you encounter other VaM'ers struggling with installing VAR packages on Hub, Discord, Reddit, Twitter, etc....please make them aware of the issue and point them to the guide.
Link
2021-01-09 12:12:00 +0000 UTC
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Just some minor improvements and fixes for the demo scenes:
- Fixed mouth opening weirdly when breathing for one of the characters. This was caused by "Drive Jaw Angle From Head Audio" somehow being enabled in the appearance preset I used.
- Improved struggle animation in Room4Demo.
- Properly parenting a number of atoms to others, so you can actually move things around like in the video.
- Update to use Life.12.
- (MacGruber.SecretRoom.4.var unchanged)
Credits
- Bodysuit by VL_13 (Hub-Link)
- Janie Skin by RenVR (VaM Build-in)
- Simone Hair by RenVR (VaM Build-in)
Download
- This is an EarlyAccess release! Download will be available for free under CC BY-SA license after 2021-01-11. You are allowed to reference this package in your own VAR packages, even if they are paid or use a different license. Links to my Patreon are always appreciated.
- Beware of some browsers mistakenly renaming .var files to .zip when downloading from Patreon. More details on how to install VaM content and missing dependencies here.
2021-01-02 09:17:48 +0000 UTC
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My Gaze plugin, that is part of the Life package, always had trouble if the character was not upright. This bug was in there since the beginning when it was originally released as demo for my VaM ScriptEngine release back in 2018. Uh...that was the dark ages of VaM!
Anyway, I refactored a bit and the issue is fixed now! In addition you now optionally can select your own reference control node, if you need full control on where you want "up" to be. This defaults to the characters chestControl, which should be good enough in most cases and it is what was used before. Made a quick video of how this looks now.
Besides this I made some improvements on how you can swap parts of the modular code of the Life package for your own! It's still a bit struggle to create such a VAR, VaM does not recognize the reference to Life.12 on its own, so you have to add the reference manually in the meta.json file. I attached an example of a Life version that does not do mouth/lips animation, as this was something that was requested multiple times so other plugins can take control of that. Note that if you want to re-release major parts of Life in modified form, you have to wait for EarlyAccess to end and release under CC-BY-SA license.
Download
- This is an EarlyAccess release! Download will be available for free under CC BY-SA license after 2021-01-11. You are allowed to reference this package in your own VAR packages, even if they are paid or use a different license. Links to my Patreon are always appreciated.
- Beware of some browsers mistakenly renaming .var files to .zip when downloading from Patreon. More details on how to install VaM content and missing dependencies here.
2021-01-02 09:06:27 +0000 UTC
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Hi! In the beginning of this month I had a poll and my patreons (you!!) voted for me building a fancy scene. So I'm working on that, but it will still be a while. Note that can't commit to any particular release date or feature set, it will be done when it is done.
The current plan is a Femdom POV handjob scene with 2 girls. Obviously this won't be a boring AnimationPattern moving a hand up and down....I want girls switching hands, using just one/two fingers, using toys, various caress movements, the girls tilting the chair (with the player!) back into the pose shown on the second screenshot. Of course, I want that all seamless and random/procedural, so the player does not know what crazy thing happens next, every scene run will be different. That will likely require at least one girl being able to actually walk 90deg around the chair, in both directions. Technically all this is kind of the use case IdlePosers and LogicBricks were made for. We will see if that actually works out and how much animation work I have time for ;)
I made a quick overview of what happened so far and what still needs doing:
What happened so far?
- Building the AdjustableChair asset. This required lots of experimenting to get the right combination of joints and extender sizes so the thing should fit most characters in various poses.
- Release of SecretRoom v4, which contains the chair asset. Required updated demo scenes, new screenshots and video.
- 2 new LogicBricks that will help with handjobs. A simple handjob can of course be done with IdlePoser by using a single state that is anchored to an animated anchor atom. But you want variation, so more states and anchors. Each state would need its own personal AnimPattern/AnimSteps...which get's messy with 10-15 of those all in almost the same place. It's also difficult to pause an AnimPattern exactly at the "up" position in order to achieve a smooth transition into a different pose. So I implemented two special LogicBricks that should help with this kind of thing.
- New improvements for IdlePoser: Increase number of groups from 8 to 12, added ability to transition within same group to reduce amount of groups needed in some cases.
- New room build, its based on SecretRoom scene 1.
- Choosing two girl and one male looks. Thx @ VL_13 for allowing me to use his free bodysuit asset in paid scenes, although it is tagged "non-commercial". The girls are almost defaults, the male is Nat by JoyBoy with some AutoCock tweaks.
- Various testing with AcidBubbles plugins: ImprovedPoV and Passenger. These will be needed to nicely transition to between poses shown on both screenshots while you possess the guy.
- Experimenting with poses and positions to make it look good from PoV perspective and the limited field of view of VR headsets.
- Vague planning of different poses/behaviors, how to blend between them and how to fit them into IdlePoser groups. Complexity is a bit frightening at this point, maybe it have to reduce things a bit.
What still needs doing?
- Proper Light and SkyMagic setup. Possibly some PostMagic?
- Improvements to Gaze plugin (part of Life) to properly handle cases where the character is not upright.
- Some obscure issue causes Life to open the black girl's mouth, despite using nose breathing. Works fine for the other girl, haven't looked into it, yet. Maybe something wrong with the appearance preset I'm using.
- Finding a solution for VaM's character face's seen from a upside down perspective looking awful. Have to experiment with poses some more?
- Probably have to look into using Acid Bubbles Collider Editor plugin, otherwise placing character hands and animating them will be hell. Have not tried that plugin, yet.
- All animation and state machine logic. This will likely take a long while to get it working and even longer to make transitions look good in any situation.
- Update LogicBricks handjob demo to account for the new LogicBricks and improved method of smoothly switching hands.
- Release new LogicBricks, IdlePoser and Life versions. Holding these back a bit in cases I need to additional changes for this project.
- Probably lots of issues and things I don't know about, yet :)
- Making screenshots and video.
- Packaging & Release.
Belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone!
Cheers, MacGruber
2020-12-28 22:55:24 +0000 UTC
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SecretRoom is not just one room, it's a playroom construction kit. Version 4 mainly adds the "AdjustableChair" that was teasered already a few days ago. However, I also took the time to update the included demo scenes, using current plugin versions and improving animations by using IdlePoser instead of boring CycleForces. Added a fourth demo scene for the new chair. I also made a series of new videos to be used for the hub page, since the old video got nuked for some reason:
Credits
- Bodysuit by VL_13 (Hub-Link)
- Janie Skin by RenVR (VaM Build-in)
- Simone Hair by RenVR (VaM Build-in)
Download
- This is an EarlyAccess release! Download will be available for free under CC BY-SA license after 2021-01-11. You are allowed to reference this package in your own VAR packages, even if they are paid or use a different license. Links to my Patreon are always appreciated.
- Beware of some browsers mistakenly renaming .var files to .zip when downloading from Patreon. More details on how to install VaM content and missing dependencies here.
2020-12-28 18:45:09 +0000 UTC
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Some additional 12h of work and about 15 iterations later. Having the sliders exposed via plugin means you can animate everything if you like, hence new video here.
2020-12-21 21:56:46 +0000 UTC
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Just sharing some quick video of work-in-progress stuff. Obviously not done and intended to be used in the scene I'm building. For video click here.
Also testing how well Patreon accepts videos hosted on Redgifs. Sorry that I had to post, delete and post this again, apparently embedding is not supported properly....but linking works :)
2020-12-16 19:53:53 +0000 UTC
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This is the LogicBricks upgrade for IdlePoser, allowing to synchronize multiple IdlePosers or other kinds of external control through triggers. Also IdlePoser itself can trigger things as well now. If you check the video, the difference is that now the 3 IdlePosers can change their pose/state all at the same time, animating as one. But they can also still move independently. Of course, you technically could setup all those poses with a single IdlePoser to achieve about the same, but it would be 120 different poses plus some 5000 transition animations between poses. And this is just a simple demo scene! Using multiple IdlePosers for different body parts with 4-6 poses and 6-15 transition animations each achieves better results, but at the same time is FAR more manageable. Especially since the animations can be less complex, thanks to the anchoring feature.
Changelog
- Allowing external control of state transtions via triggers: SwitchState and TriggerSync work just like the LogicBricks StateMachine. Additionally there is SetStateMask, which allows you to exclude a number of state groups from possible transitions. For example set to ABC to allow only states of groups A,B and C. Set to !ABC to allow only states NOT in groups A, B and C, which is equivalent to setting it to DEFGHN. Letter N stands for the 'None' group. Setting to an empty input disables the state mask. Lowercase letters are allowed, too. If IdlePoser happens to be in an excluded State at the moment of calling SetStateMask, it will trigger a transition to a valid state, if possible.
- Implemented triggers at begin and end of a transtion, both for when entering and exiting a state.
- Added option for InfiniteDuration for states.
- Updated MacGruber.Utils and UI tech overhaul.
- Updated demo scene, screenshots and video.
Screenshots
Download
- This is an EarlyAccess release! Download will be available for free under CC BY-SA license after 2020-12-20. You are allowed to reference this package in your own VAR packages, even if they are paid or use a different license. Links to my Patreon are always appreciated.
- Beware of some browsers mistakenly renaming .var files to .zip when downloading from Patreon. More details on how to install VaM content and missing dependencies here.
2020-12-06 15:02:01 +0000 UTC
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Final results of the poll are in! As explained earlier, I weighted the votes by pledge amount. The blue bars are the result, the grey just for comparison. The next project will be a fancy demo scene! At this point I haven't even started making solid plans as it was not clear what I would be working on. Technically a single 5€ Patreon changing their mind might still have tipped the result towards making tutorials at the last minute. So, expect that scene more towards the end of December or even early January, if something goes wrong.
Anyway, this weekend I will work on finishing up the upgrade of IdlePoser to LogicBricks-tech. Hopefully that will be in a releasable state for EarlyAccess in the next few days. There might also be another LogicBricks release, if it turns out I need something for the scene.
However, I'm curious.....does this approach of "votes weighted by pledge amount" appeal to you? As you can see the difference between plain votes and weighted votes is quite different. Feel free to comment.
2020-12-04 18:49:33 +0000 UTC
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Just a quick interim result showing how far off the overall votes are from votes weighted by pledge amount. This experimental poll on what I will be working on this month is still open till Friday.
2020-12-01 19:18:00 +0000 UTC
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Hello! I want to try something new this time. This time I give YOU a few options what I will be working on in December.
With some Excel magic I will be multiplying your vote in the poll below with your active pledge amount you have at the time I do the evaluation sometime next weekend. If you pledge 5€ instead of 1€, you get 5x the voting power. If you are not an active Patreon at the time, you will have the voting power equivalent of a 0.50€ pledge. Voting power will be capped at 10€ to avoid my more wealthy spenders overruling everyone.
I think it's a simple and fair system, giving you still access to the EA content while encouraging higher pledges. I hope you like it.
Besides this, I will continue to work on getting IdlePoser compatible with LogicBricks. This is work that has already started last weekend and will probably be ready for release sometime next week.
Cheers!
2020-11-28 10:36:51 +0000 UTC
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As mentioned earlier, I spend this month on making my Life plugin compatible with LogicBricks. This is a huge step forward! For example you are no longer limited to control AnimationPatterns, you could also have Life control a Timeline animation, if you like that more. The old DriverThrustSFX sub-plugin has been replaced with DriverThrustTrigger, with gives you more control. Instead of a fixed set of sound effects (bed squeak, flesh slap, etc.) you can now trigger a LogicBrick and do whatever. That could be a RandomSound brick playing your own sounds, or something completely different, like a plugin controlling external devices, say my Connect plugin.
Preparations for all this obviously were already part of the recent LogicBricks releases. Life could have been one huge over-complicated plugin that can do all. That would imply some WTF level of UI, some plugins out there have that. Instead you now have a collection of more or less one-purpose plugins you can stick together like Lego bricks, hence LogicBricks. That hopefully makes it more understandable and manageable, yet at the same time more flexible.
The main demo scene has been updated accordingly. Before there was a scene specific StateMachine plugin controlling the intensity, thrust and some other parameters of the Life plugin. For non-coders this was a black box, not useful for any other scene. NOW there is a LogicBrick StateMachine plugin doing exactly the same as before....except now you can look at it, understand what it is doing, tweak the parameters, add more states and so on, no coding required. You can replicate the structure in your own scene and modify it for your needs.
Have a look at the diagram, it's also displayed in the scene itself, so you have it at hand when dissecting the scene.
Changelog
- BreathingCore: Making "OnChooseBreath" available as VaM Trigger so you can connect to a LogicBrick/StateMachine.
- DriverThrustTrigger: New sub-plugin replacing DriverThrustSFX. Way more options for you by exposing to VaM Triggers. E.g. connect to LogicBrick/RandomSound or my Connect plugin.
- Improved UI: Getting rid of annoying scrollboxes around info panels.
- Demo: Split demo scenes into separate VAR to avoid hard dependency on LogicBricks.
- Demo: Updated and reduced to just two demo scenes, SimpleBreathing and Thrust+SFX. This avoids cluttering the scene browser. Also better naming to not confuse new users not realizing this is a demo scene, should Meshed decide to include this version in VaM by default. (VaM currently ships with Life 10)
Download
- This is an EarlyAccess release! Download will be available for free under CC BY-SA license after 2020-12-06. You are allowed to reference this package in your own VAR packages, even if they are paid or use a different license. Links to my Patreon are always appreciated.
- Beware of some browsers mistakenly renaming .var files to .zip when downloading from Patreon. More details on how to install VaM content and missing dependencies here.
2020-11-20 16:30:39 +0000 UTC
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LogicBricks is a collection of now 23 reusable logic plugins to quickly build simple logic without coding. These go from a simple Relay that just groups triggers via Counter and Blend to more complex bricks for RandomChoice and a very powerful StateMachine brick. There are now two demo scenes with altogether 19 examples to spawn some ideas.
New Features
- Added ValueTriggers that provide a value between 0 and 1. These can be used for various blend operations between value or color parameters using VaM's trigger system. A number of new bricks come with this: ValueRelay, ValueEaseIn, ValueEaseOut, ValueSmoothStep, ValueInvert, ValueRandom
- New Blend and RandomBlend bricks, which are a variant of the Delay and RandomDelay. After Trigger was called, these provide a separate Start trigger, a value slowly going from 0 to 1 and eventually an End trigger. Classic use case would be to blend something in or out.
- StateMachine does now provide a value trigger as well, exposing the internal state clock.
- Counter brick can now count up and down and provides a status value between 0 and 1. Provides a trigger signal when reaching either end of the range.
- New RandomSound and RandomSoundFromAB bricks to play random sounds on trigger signal. These can load VaM's embedded sounds, sound from the Scene Audio tab as well as load sounds from AssetBundles.
- New EventSceneLoad brick that triggers on scene load.
- New EventAudioQueueEmpty brick that triggers when an AudioSource did run out of audio to play.
- New RichText helper plugin. Allows you to use Unity RichText on SimpleSign and UIText atoms. You can have bold or italic font, control the fontsize as well as color of individual words. I used this for the example scenes.
- Various code improvements for the MacGruber_Utils library used in the background.
- Updated examples and also added more. There are now 19 examples altogether, split into two demo scenes. This includes a more complex example using two StateMachine bricks to control interacting AnimationPatterns for a Handjob setup.
Download
- This is an EarlyAccess release! Download will be available for free under CC BY-SA license after 2020-12-01. You are allowed to reference this package in your own VAR packages, even if they are paid or use a different license. Links to my Patreon are always appreciated.
- Beware of some browsers mistakenly renaming .var files to .zip when downloading from Patreon. More details on how to install VaM content and missing dependencies here.
2020-11-14 21:42:30 +0000 UTC
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Another bugfix update for LogicBricks. Again, thx @ TGC for reporting those issues!
- RandomChoice: Fixed UI not being updated on load.
- StateMachine: Fixed initial state setting having no effect.
Note that you can easily update your scene to the new version by opening your scene JSON file with a text editor (e.g. Notepad++) and search&replace "MacGruber.LogicBricks.3:/" with "MacGruber.LogicBricks.4:/" everywhere. You can update from versions 1 or 2 towards 4 the same way. I recommend to keep a backup of the original scene, just in case.
Download
2020-11-03 19:00:15 +0000 UTC
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LogicBricks is a collection of 11 reusable logic plugins to quickly build simple logic without coding. These go from a simple Relay that just groups triggers via Counter and Timer to more complex bricks for RandomChoice and a very powerful StateMachine brick. There is a demo scene with 14 examples to spawn some ideas.
LogicBricks is now free! Version 3 features some bug fixes and UI improvements. Thx @ TGC for reporting those issues.
- Fixed StateMachine UI not being updated on load.
- Time sliders of all plugins have range buttons now. That means you are not limited to a maximum of 2 minutes anymore, sky is the limit! Range usually auto-adjusts to the next power of 10 when needed, although there are some cases where that doesn't happen, but I can't fix all VaM weirdness.
- All sliders that need a whole number (like "Count") now actually display as whole number without confusing ".00" decimal point.
- Updated screenshots.
Download
- https://hub.virtamate.com/resources/logicbricks.1975/
- This was an EarlyAccess release! Download is now available for free under CC BY-SA license. You are allowed to reference this package in your own VAR packages, even if they are paid or use a different license. Links to my Patreon are always appreciated.
2020-10-31 11:13:17 +0000 UTC
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It's this time of the month again! Two weeks ago I released a number of maintenance releases with bugfixes and minor improvements, making the more proper release of my Connect plugin possible.
A week ago I released LogicBricks.2, which allows you to easily make more complex scenes, by using reusable scripts that connect via VaM's trigger system. However, I suspect many non-coders won't immediately understand the power a VaM creator can wield with LogicBricks, especially the StateMachine brick. Maybe that needs an actual demo scene instead of just examples.
My next goal will be to add a way to IdlePoser to be controlled externally, say from a LogicBrick, as well as the ability for IdlePoser to act as it's own LogicBrick and wield that kind of control itself. That should make it possible to have multiple IdlePoser animation layers while interacting with AcidBuddle's Timeline plugin.
Similarly I also want to extend the Life plugin to be able to send sync signals to LogicBricks as well as probably something like a ThrustTrigger, which would work just like the ThrustSFX sub-plugin, but allowing you to trigger stuff instead of playing sounds.
Eventually that all will allow you to connect everything with everything....at least that's the plan for the coming months :D
2020-10-25 12:37:34 +0000 UTC
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LogicBricks is a collection of 11 reusable logic plugins to quickly build simple logic without coding. Since this got a surprising amount of likes in very short time there seems to be a need for this. So I changed plans and added a LOT more LogicBricks. These go now from a simple Relay that just groups triggers via Counter and Timer to more complex bricks for RandomChoice and a very powerful StateMachine brick. I also added a demo scene with 14 examples to spawn some ideas.
The key feature here is that it is using VaM's own Trigger UI, so it should be familiar and easy to use for any creator who used VaM's trigger system before. Just like an UIButton, you can hook it up to AnimationPattern's, Timeline, other plugins and all the kinds of things VaM has to offer.
LogicBricks are a good way to make your scenes a bit more interesting without coding skills. Have some randomness and logic rules instead of just simple animation loops. For example the scene controller plugin used in the Life04 demo scene could now be entirely replaced with just a StateMachine brick. However, you likely won't want more than a few of these in your scene, since at some point coding a custom plugin for your scene becomes way easier.
LogicBricks
- Relay: LogicBrick that triggers directly after Trigger is called. Useful if you want to trigger the same things from multiple sources.
- RelayOnce: LogicBrick that triggers directly after Trigger is called, but only once. Call Reset to use again.
- Counter: LogicBrick that triggers once after Trigger was called a number of times. Resets automatically when count is reached. Call Reset to reset manually.
- Delay: LogicBrick that triggers a fixed time after Trigger is called.
- RandomDelay: LogicBrick that triggers a random time after Trigger is called.
- Loop: LogicBrick that triggers multiple times with at a fixed time interval after Trigger is called.
- RandomLoop: LogicBrick that triggers multiple times with at a random time interval after Trigger is called.
- Timer: LogicBrick that triggers continuously in a fixed time interval.
- RandomTimer: LogicBrick that triggers continuously in a random time interval.
- RandomChoice: LogicBrick that, after Trigger is called, selects a random Choice to trigger. Use Avoid Repetition take the last one or two choices out of the selection, depending on the number of total available choices.
- StateMachine: Very powerful LogicBrick that represents a the concept of a StateMachine. Each State has a random duration after which it randomly chooses among the transitions of that State to switch the next State. Can also be controlled externally as well as provides a sync feature to sync with other systems in your scene.
Download
- https://www.patreon.com/posts/logicbricks-2-42885779
- This is an EarlyAccess release! Download will be available for free under CC BY-SA license after 2020-11-02. You are allowed to reference this package in your own VAR packages, even if they are paid or use a different license. Links to my Patreon are always appreciated.
2020-10-18 16:15:31 +0000 UTC
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This is an EarlyAccess release! Download will be available for free under CC BY-SA license after 2020-11-02. You are allowed to reference this package in your own VAR packages, even if they are paid or use a different license. Links to my Patreon are always appreciated.
2020-10-18 16:14:45 +0000 UTC
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Connect is a plugin that allows you to control audio-driven E-Stim devices. The package also includes VirtualLock, a plugin for virtual self-bondage in VR. In combination that means, if you do not behave, your dominatrix will punish you...in real life!
Changelog for version 2
- VirtualLock: Improved breach behavior. You can set a timer now how long until it resets.
- VirtualLock: Produced a little overview showing the state and events, so you know what needs to be hooked to what. See screenshots.
- VirtualLock: Rearranged plugin UI a bit to be more logical.
- Demo: Slightly improved light setup which was possible now with yesterdays fixes to SkyMagic.
- Demo: New SkyMagic custom sky for this particular setup. Previously the sky did not match the actual light setup.
- Demo: Upgrade to Essentials.6 including the new improved ParentHoldLink script.
- Demo: A few new metal chains in the background.
- Demo: Dependencies that were created for this scene have been released as separate resources to make them more reusable/findable: LogicBricks and SecretToys.
- Demo: New screenshots
Download
This was an EarlyAccess release! Download is available for free under CC BY-SA license. You are allowed to reference this package in your own VAR packages, even if they are paid or use a different license. Links to my Patreon are always appreciated.
Download from the Hub or here from Patreon:
2020-10-11 13:47:48 +0000 UTC
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Nothing new, just releasing the separate small VAR packages that were used for the Connect demo scene in preparation for the free release of Connect soon'ish.
LogicBricks
Eventually this is intended to be a collection of small reusable logic plugins to quickly build simple logic without coding. Still very small "collection" at this point, just a single plugin :D
The key feature here is that it is using VaM's own Trigger UI, so it should be familiar and easy to use for any creator who used VaM's trigger system before. Just like an UIButton, you can hook it up to AnimationPattern's, Timeline, other plugins and all the kinds of things VaM has to offer.
I hope this collection will grow eventually as I need little plugins when building demo scenes for other plugins. Maybe other creators chime in and build compatible plugins using the same EventTrigger system. If you are a creator, check out the included MacGruber_Utils.cs, which handles the needed building of custom UI for the trigger screen, internal handling of AssetBundles as well as scene load/save for you. The actual plugin can be comparatively simple, you only need to hook my wrapper code in, which is essentially copy&paste from my plugin. The Utils class also helps with creating sliders, buttons, etc. for your plugin UI.
RandomTimer: Triggers a repeating event with a random wait time between a min and max.
SecretToys
Currently just a simple riding crop. Collection might grow eventually. Obviously intended to be used with my SecretRoom environment, but a separate asset in case you want to use it for something else.
I recommend to use my ParentHoldLink plugin, part of the Essentials package, if you want a character to hold the thing for an animation.
Download
This is a free release! Downloads are available for free under CC BY-SA license. You are allowed to reference these packages in your own VAR packages, even if they are paid or use a different license. Links to my Patreon are always appreciated.
2020-10-10 20:37:15 +0000 UTC
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Your most essential MacGruber tools in a convenient single VAR package. Version 6 introduces an improved version of Blazedust's ParentHoldLink plugin and also brings various bug fixes for SkyMagic and SuperShot.
Changelog for Version 6
- ParentHoldLink: The build-in ParentLink feature in VaM that can link one atom to another has the problem of using the position the atom was at in the previous frame. Even at 90fps, for fast animations this can cause obvious visual lag. ParentHoldLink solves this issue, updating the atom to the correct position. This plugin is obviously based on the identically named plugin by Blazedust, but has some improvements:
- ParentHoldLink: Usage instructions displayed directly in the plugin UI. Otherwise no UI needed anymore.
- ParentHoldLink: Saving link offset with the scene to avoid potential misalignment when loading the scene later.
- ParentHoldLink: Handling plugin enable/disable correctly.
- ParentHoldLink: Code cleanup and minor performance improvements.
- SkyMagic: Fixed issue where sliders in 'Scene Lighting' panel were not being applied to custom skies.
- SkyMagic: Fixed NullReferenceException exception that could happen when loading a scene while unloading a similar scene.
- SkyMagic: Updated SkyMagicDemo to use current plugins dependencies.
- SuperShot: Display log message if the plugin or the atom is not enabled to avoid confusion of silently doing nothing. I hope this was the issue that cause the plugin to stop working occasionally.
Download
This is a free release! Download is available for free under CC BY-SA license. You are allowed to reference this package in your own VAR packages, even if they are paid or use a different license. Links to my Patreon are always appreciated.
Download from the Hub or here from Patreon:
2020-10-10 11:54:28 +0000 UTC
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Dear patreons! As you might know I'm based in Europe. Patreon recently added the possibility to change payout currency from USD ($) to EUR (€), which I just did now. This helps with declaring taxes and more importantly avoids paying double conversion fees (2 x 2.5%) when you convert from your local currency to USD and a second time when I convert to EUR.
If you have an existing pledge, it will automatically continue running at the same price in USD. However, if your local currency is not USD, I recommend updating your pledge to make sure your money is used efficiently and is not wasted on useless conversion fees.
Additionally, for those of you who are located in the UK, you can now pay directly in GBP (£). Same for the US, you can still pay in USD. Everyone else pays in EUR for now, unless Patreon decides to expand further and add more local currencies.
Note that the minimum pledge is now €1, $1 or £1. This is set by Patreon, I can't change that. However, a $1 pledge is super inefficient anyway, as it has 21% cost in fees, compared to 15% for a $3 pledge.
For those who like numbers I made an overview table when you can see how efficient your pledge is. Note that is before income tax, which of course comes on top.
Cheers, MacGruber
2020-09-28 19:17:36 +0000 UTC
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This Patreon has been running for a full year now! Therefore I wanted to pickup on things I promised some ages back. However, the release this month came a bit late because this had a lot of moving parts. Getting everything done in a single month was certainly a challenge. Well, it's still not done, but I didn't want delay any longer. Old gamedev wisdom says the last 20% take 80% of the time, and it's entirely true ;)
In other news, Patreon seems to enforce their adult theme policy now more than before. All adult content needs to be "Patreon only". When I tried to upload screenshots for this release, some AI detected "nudity" in the pictures, although I had already sanitized the pictures intended for Patreon upload. That's not enough anymore apparently. For this reason, I will change the way I'm posting things:
- Instead of the split description and download posts here on Patreon, I will post a single "Patreon only" post. However, as before, the same information will also be posted on the Hub as well as Reddit, where you can read it for free. Posts on Discord and Twitter will link to the Hub. You can still get the same information as before, I won't hide behind a paywall. However, I have to respect Patreons policy.
- I can safe time by not having to prepare special non-nude screenshots for Patreon.
- Also to save time I will not upload to MEGA anymore. Setting up all the links and checking them always took quite a while. The reason I did that was so that users could download without login once the download was free. However, now you have to login anyway to get past the "Patreon only", so there is no point anymore.
- Once EarlyAccess period ended I will manually upload everything to the Hub as I did before. However, that might of course lag a few days behind, as I have to do it manually now.
In the coming weeks I will probably also clean up the older posts in the same way as well as produce a new banner image...since they also don't allow adult banners.....and think about what to do with the "about" page.
Not quite sure yet how to keep adult content out of the Monthly Reports. Possibly I just have to make them "Patreon only" as well.
Cheers, MacGruber
2020-09-26 20:20:04 +0000 UTC
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Connect is a plugin that allows you to control audio-driven E-Stim devices. The package also includes VirtualLock, a plugin for virtual self-bondage in VR. In combination that means, if you do not behave, your dominatrix will punish you...in real life!
Content
- Proof-of-concept demo scene: Essentially the girl is whipping your dick randomly, which is replicated in E-Stim. Rather simple AnimPattern triggered by script. But there is some IdlePoser animation and of course Life plugin. And....if you try to escape her....it might hurt :)
- ConnectAudio: VaM plugin that connects to the app. It allows you to send E-Stim commands via VaM's build-in trigger system, for example from within a Timeline animation, from other plugins or just a UIButton atom.
- ConnectAudioApp: External application that uses your soundcard to generate waveforms your E-Stim power box can interpret. The app package also includes a 6 page PDF tutorial.
- VirtualLock: VaM plugin tracks your hand and head position, and optionally ensures you are looking at an atom named "VirtualLockFocusPoint". In the demo scene that means you HAVE to look the girls in the eyes. If you move too much, there is a warning first and at a larger distance a "breach" is triggered. Of course a breach is also trigger if you try to open the UI or quit the game. It is using the VaM trigger system, you can hook it up to all kinds of things, not just E-Stim.
- Assets for the demo in separate VAR packages for reusability: Riding crop asset ("SecretToys") and a random timer script ("LogicBricks").
Hardware needed
In order to try the E-Stim part of this you will need some stuff:
- Obviously, you need an E-Stim power box that allows for direct audio input. I’m using two ABox devices by a UK based company called E-Stim Systems. These are available through various shops. The ABox pretty much directly takes the audio signal from your soundcard and just amplifies it.
- Potential alternatives might be the 2B power box by the same company as well as the more known Erostek ET312B. However, I don’t have those rather expensive boxes, so I can’t actually be sure they are compatible. If you happen to have one of those devices, please report back if it works.
- In addition to the power box you will need electrodes and potentially cables.
E-Stim Safety
- E-Stim is absolutely safe, if applied correctly!
- Prefer battery powered devices and devices build in countries that have reasonable safety standards.
- Read the fucking manual of your power box!
- Don’t apply E-Stim near anything vital like brain, heart and lungs. As rule of thumb, do not apply electrodes anywhere above waist area. Careful with readjusting electrodes while the power is on. Theoretically the current could flow through your hands and arms into your heart.
- Don’t use if you have a heart condition or similar.
- Always use water-based lubricant or specialized electrode gel.
- Use this software at your own risk! As in any software by “random people from the internet”, there might be bugs. When using this software, always stick to intensity levels you can handle.
Usage instructions
- Launch the external application and load the "DemoSceneProfile.json".
- Connect and calibrate your E-Stim setup. Essentially that means "get the volume right". See tutorial.
- Launch VaM in VR mode and load the demo scene.
- Possess the guy.
- Press the "VirtualLock" button, which starts a countdown and brings up a head-up display.
- Go into the pose you want to stay in during your virtual self-bondage, e.g. with spread arms or whatever. Look at the girl! The center of your headset has to point at her eyes.
- Have fun! The demo scene is setup to a lock time of 1 minute only.
- After the time is up "Unlocked" appears and you are free again.
- (Use the slider on the plugin to lock up to 30min, you can also tweak allowed movement range, etc.)
Known issues
- This release was a bit rushed. Getting everything done in a single month was certainly a challenge. Well, it's still not done, but I didn't want delay any longer. Old gamedev wisdom says the last 20% take 80% of the time, and it's entirely true ;)
- There was no time for a proper light setup and there are only very simple animations. This deserves a way better demo scene...but there wasn't more time.
- If you move too much and cause a "breach" it's a bit complicated to reset. Didn't want to make it too easy, so you can't escape punishment, still looking for a good solution here. For the moment it's easiest to reload the scene.
Dependencies for Demo
License
- This is an EarlyAccess release! Download will be available for free under CC BY-SA license after October 11, 2020. You are allowed to reference this package in your own VAR packages, even if they are paid or use a different license. Links to my Patreon are always appreciated.
Download
2020-09-26 20:19:41 +0000 UTC
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It's this time of the month again! I'm posting a report like this near the end of each month, reporting on what I worked on behind the scenes and what the vague plans for the next month are. It is intended to help you decide if you want buy-in on the coming month or not.
SuperShot / SuperVideo
The majority of my time this month went into these two plugins. Due to some major vacation time lined up, I could spend WAY more time than usual on VaM stuff. There was a heat wave here locally and obviously the Covid thing, so there were not much other useful options than staying at home and doing some relaxing coding :)
Some of you might have noticed it was a 3 week EarlyAccess instead of the regular 2 weeks. This was because the more than usual amount of effort that went into it.
The technical approach for SuperVideo could be the foundation for proper post effects, a replacement for the poor quality provided by PostMagic. However, this would need highly customized post-processing shaders and fighting VaM's internal render pipeline to get it working. So another major time investment, and I'm not sure it is actually useful when VaM 2.0 comes with it's own post effects. While a plugin creator can't, Meshed can "just" take ready-made effects for Unity and deploy them...that will likely be better than anything I can achieve on my own.
Maintenance Updates
Second half of the month went into various bug fixes for Life and IdlePoser, partially related to the VaM 1.20 release and people apparently being in a more bug reporting mood.
You might have seen that I tweaked the default volume with Life 10 when in VaM desktop mode. Months ago when I made the plugin I carefully tweaked the plugin to have a reasonable default volume. A few people complained about very low volume back then. Now recently the volume in desktop mode was suddenly very low for me as well. I did not change any local settings, so no idea why. Maybe some Windows update? Question: Is it better now? Please check the poll at the end of the post.
Upcoming
I'm not yet sure what I gonna work on in September. Obviously, I have tons of cool ideas, but I don't want to commit to anything specific just yet.
Note that there is no more upcoming vacation I could spend on VaM for the next months, so my time budget will be back to more normal levels.
Cheers, MacGruber
How's the default volume with Life 10 in Desktop mode?
- Please make your system volume is reasonable first by trying some other applications. Youtube, Netflix, Spotify, various games, etc. Note that these applications might have their own volume sliders that could interfere. Also check that you don't have application specific volume settings in the Windows "Volume mixer". You can find that by clicking with right mouse button on the Speaker icon next to the clock.
- Try the Life02 and Life04 demo scenes included in the Life10 package. Default volume was changed in that version, so don't use the older versions.
- This is poll is for the desktop mode. If you would like to report on volume in VR mode, please use the comments.
2020-08-29 09:41:26 +0000 UTC
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IdlePoser is a solution for idle animation, part of the Life plugin collection. This is a maintenance update fixing issues with VaM 1.20:
- Fixing morph captures which were broken with VaM 1.20. Since the new VaM version removed the "Animatable" checkbox for morphs, I had to re-implement the morph selection entirely. Now using the new fancy filter popups!
- Since filter popups are rather slow when used with lots of morphs combined with the Dynamic UI approach used with IdlePoser, I had to figure out a way to implement caching, which took a while.
- Supporting VaM 1.19 would cause rather messy coding. Therefore VaM 1.20+ is now required! However, with VaM's new version defines you at least get a reasonable error message, if you try to launch IdlePoser 5+ with VaM 1.19 instead of cryptic errors.
- Updated demo scene to use the latest versions of my other plugins. Already referring to Essentials.5, which is still in EarlyAccess for a few more days, I did not want to refer to an old version or delaying this release just because of this. The scene uses Essentials only for SkyMagic, you can easily replace it with Essentials.3, if needed.
Download
2020-08-25 19:37:15 +0000 UTC
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Yay...more tiny maintenance updates, sorry again.
Changelog
- Reset duplicate morphs used by old versions to avoid causing references to multiple versions of Life.
- Long months ago several people complained about low volume. I wasn't able to repro this back then, but since a few weeks I had this myself, despite nothing in VaM changed at the time. Might been caused by a Windows update? Anyway, I tweaked desktop default volume from 0.22 to 0.70...so it is now "normal" for me again.
Download
- MacGruber.Life.10.var (via Hub)
- Download under CC BY-SA license. You are allowed to reference this package in your own VAR packages, even if they are paid or use a different licence. Links to my Patreon are always appreciated.
Credits
- Contains audio by VoiceLikeCandy, Bluzz44 and FreeSFX.co.uk, as well as some audio extracted from VaM. Contains morphs by DDQuidam and TimelordToby. Full credits see MacGruber_Life_Credits.txt inside VAR.
2020-08-23 19:06:34 +0000 UTC
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