Where are these files that you reference in line 2, so I can add them to the empty "quickdress" atom. I can't find them in my entire VaM directory. Am I supposed to know this?
Hold on, let me understand what you mean first.
I assume it's point 2 above.
Presets are not plugins. if this is unclear do go see the tutorials again.
Sorry, but I do mention that I'm talking about presets and this is content shown in beginner tutorials.
There are two dimensions on the guide, one for all* users and another for experienced creators.
First off, I apoligize for some of my statements yesterday. I was just so frustrated with how things were going. My appoligies. Yeah, was not seeing the full instructions, it does say "preset", just was not understanding the concept. So far I have only been using plugins (bodylanguage, vammoan, natualis, etc.) so I was not familiar with presets other than when I save a person atom I use a preset. If you have not figured it out, I am totally new to this type of software. I am not new to computers ( I have built quite a few of my own ). But I never got into programming. My experience is mostly based on Skyrim as a mod user. So I approached this software the same way. I am still trying to get the basics down. When I saw your "template" series I grabbed them all. I loaded up the demos to see them in action but, when I tried to use it with my own creations, well, I failed. I then spent hours trying to figure out where you where getting the files you were using, by looking at every atom you were using and looking inside them. Most of the plugins that your using are still foriegn to me, so I will need to learn them. As I stated earlier, the trouble with most of the guides here and on UTube is that the authors seem to assume that the reader or viewer has the knowledge beforehand. So as a NOOB I didn't understand what these files were or where to find them. When I was trying to load the plugin tab of the empty quickdress atom you had created I was only gettting, well, script listings. After more hours I finally found a few guides for total Noobs. It was then that I learned about presets for clothing, hair, skins, etc. and where they were saved. Then I was able to load the presets you had made. Now, my question at this point is, In the quickdress demo you used UIButtons to set the clothing state, do I need to also create UIButtons to load the clothing states and if so, where do I put them? Do I need to "create" another row of buttons beside your control panel? Again, I do apolgize for yesterday. Just my frustration coming through. and thanks for the "calm" reply.Hold on, let me understand what you mean first.
Line 2 in the resource description or point 2 in the instructions below quoted?
I assume it's point 2 above.
As you can see in the line quoted: "A quickdress has a empty atom preset and a clothing preset"...", I am talking about presets, even says so in the resource title.
Line 2 then refers to where in the quickdress named VAR you downloaded is the preset you're supposed to load.
e.g.:
- You downloaded the VAR from the guide called "atani.quickdress_-_Schoolgirl_2.2.var"
- After doing point 1, you go to that empty atom (preset tab), click load preset and:
- find the VAR atani.quickdress_-_Schoolgirl_2.2 in your files
- if not already in the "empty atom" preset folder of the VAR, then go to Custom > Atom > Empty > quickdress
- Load the file "quickdress_Schoolgirl 2" or something like that
- The above should load like it does in the demo scene.
Presets are not plugins. if this is unclear do go see the tutorials again.
Sorry, but I do mention that I'm talking about presets and this is content shown in beginner tutorials.
I see you're very new to VaM. There's a lot to learn and it will take a long time to have a really good grasp on all that VaM offers. If you don't understand something in a guide, then always check if the concept is covered elsewhere, especially if it's a core concept like presets. Not to be an A-hole but, I don't need to spell everything out when it's a core VaM concept explained elsewhere. While I do hope that the time spent here writing this will help you, you need to help yourself first.
There are two dimensions on the guide, one for all* users and another for experienced creators.
One dimension is in using the quickdress presets, the entry barrier is knowing the basics of loading presets, naming a atom, downloading dependencies of a VAR, and this kind of stuff. If you're not there yet then just check out the beginner tutorials and you'll quickly reach that threshold. Sometimes things look very complicated until you "get it" and it becomes like a walk in the park.
The other dimension is in making quickdress presets. This is something for experienced creators but you're free to learn about it, some day you may become a experienced creator as everyone starts not being one.
When you understand how the quickdress preset loading works and want more of these, you can get them on my website:
hub.virtamate.com
, but I keep it because it is still useful for others starting who are not familiar with the stated plugins and is relatively approachable, even if messy and inneficient.
Thank you for your reply. I guess when I saw the quickdress I was hoping it would solve a problem I am currently at.No worries. If there's one thing I can assure that is shared between necomers and experienced VaM users, is frustration
But frustration can lead to pushing harder to find solutions and ideas, so there's some reward there
I also added a note on the quickdress resource description saying what the person should know how to use before following the guide.
My more recent templates (2023 and NEXT) are not meant for new users or those unfamiliar to the logicbricks and vamstory plugins. I actually thought I had this written somewhere, maybe I deleted it while rewriting, will do that soon.
The above plugins are the backbone of almost all triggers in the template scenes. They allow for complexity and options that would be very difficult to achieve with simple triggers, but for someone that doesn't understand how they work it is all very confusing when breaking it down. I understand this, I used to wonder too how the hell did people make use of those tools and why.
My first template before I understood what logicbricks were:
M-F animation template - Toolkits + Templates -
Superseeded by: https://hub.virtamate.com/resources/scene-animation-template-m-f.21567/ Discontinued development ## There's a newer and better made template (I hope), that expands considerably what this does...
When I finally moved to logicbricks - vamstory didn't exist yet - it opened up a whole new world of scene making for me. I could then do more complex things without going into trigger management hell.
If I were to open this template and see my structure, I would probably vomit a bit
A problem with making guides, VaM or anything else really, is that everyone comes from different backgrounds and knowledge. I've been using VaM for years, and while on some things I can be very experienced, on other things I'm on a beginner level, and each person has gaps in different places than others. Knowledge building and sharing is more of a swiss cheese type rather than a linear solid progression; and sometimes a guide hits a gap for some but not others.
If you didn't see it, the Wiki has a Guides category with curated collections of guides by topic.
Ok, back to the topic of quickdress. The concept is meant for a specific usecase and perhaps you're going too soon into it?
If you just want to load clothes on a person, a clothing preset will do that, just like a appearance preset changes the person's looks. You can also have more clothing presets showing different states of the same clothing. I wanted to have something better than this so that's why I created the quickdress preset system.
A quickdress is a set of buttons options and clothing presets that give you control of the loaded clothes using a UI. It's made primarily for use on my template-based scenes, but adaptable to others with some light scene editing. Essentially you load a quickdress preset* on the quickdress named atom and a menu should appear, giving you options to change clothing states.
Besides loading a quickdress preset and clicking the buttons to change the clothes state, there's nothing else you need to do there. And if you want a different set of quickdress clothes, just load a new quickdress preset of another quickdress VAR. Some (on my website) even include multiple outfits, super quickdress presets if you will
*quickdress preset is a empty atom preset ("empty" is a type of atom in the misc. atom category)
If you prefer more direct guiding, feel free to contact me on Discord. I'm on the official VaM server under the same username as here.
Are you talking about the demo scene or are you adding a empty atom in another scene to load a quickdress preset?
Don't extract the contents of the VAR, or any VAR for that matter, unless you really know why you're doing that. Doing so will make a mess and break things most likely.
Well, That is exactly what I was doing. And now that I went to the preset tab, the problem is fixed.
I made none, doubt that someone else did.
Just more of a viual learner is all. That and I'm still a novice when it comes to how the plugins work and all the functions they have.
