GUIDE : How to use alternate characters in Afterimage scenes
Thanks to
@BANANANA for steering me towards putting this quick guide together that I can link to from future scenes.
Most all of the scenes I build use the same strategies for adjusting clothing presets and changing a character's appearance. It works great for the character the scene is designed for, but using alternate characters requires a bit of effort for the scene to work as designed.
Loading an alternate appearance preset works fine for the scene, but without changing the clothing presets your new character will use the original clothing presets from the scene.
Using a simple idle scene as an example:
If I load in an alternate preset, I get the character with the clothing items I saved into the appearance preset.
But if I then cycle through the clothing presets using the 'CLOTHES' button...
In this case I actually quite like this look, but as an example the glasses in the clothing preset are aligned to Arin, and may not work with GyuA
To change this, we're going to need to look at the '_BRAIN' item, which is normally hidden, so be sure to turn on the 'show hidden' checkbox. This items contains a number of plugins that adjust various things in the scene, such as controlling the min/max animation speeds, vocals, and for our purposes, the clothing presets.
In the current iteration of my template, the clothing options are controlled by plugin #3, which is labeled. The plugin is one of MacGruber's SequenceMachines.
The plugin has a number of 'states' that it cycles through, either using the "CLOTHES' button or automatically using a RandomTimer (also in the _BRAIN item).
I've highlighted the three states in this scene that have the clothing presets. The FADE states are used to fade out the screen in between options.
Selecting a state and clicking on the Actions OnEnter button will bring up the actions, which in this case are:
1. Load a new clothing preset
2. Adjust character's geometry (kept at 0 until naked)
3. Fade the screen in (from a previous action that faded out)
SO, if you adjust the first action (load clothing preset) to a different preset, it will load when that state is called, and you can adjust each state to cycle through the presets.
In Summary: To load in alternate characters
1. Load new appearance preset
2. Adjust the Clothing presets in the plugin in the _BRAIN item
3. Recalibrate Naturalis, either with the 'RESET' button or within the VAM UI
I hope this proves helpful to people when I release future scenes. If there are other functions people have questions about, I'm happy to write up additional guides, just let me know!