WHAT'S NEW
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THIS IS A DIFFERENT LEVEL FROM THE BETA WAY STRONGER
** Skeletons that actually follow your mesh **
Bones are now placed using geodesic distance ALONG the mesh surface
instead of a straight axis. Curved strands, spirals, hooks and U-shapes
get clean, evenly spaced bone chains that hug the real curve.
** Branched meshes finally work (hairdos!) **
Meshes whose strands merge into one connected piece (e.g. hairdos where
all the locks join at the scalp) are now rigged as a proper bone TREE:
one chain per strand, all radiating from the attachment point. In 1.0
these ended up as a single chain hanging from a random tip — that's
gone.
** Automatic Base anchoring **
No more guessing where the anchor goes: by default the Base now snaps
to the bone closest to your CUA's control point (the green square).
The log tells you exactly which bone was chosen and how far it was.
Other placement modes (control point, mesh center, v1 pivot) are still
available, plus X/Y/Z fine-tuning on top.
** Way smoother deformations **
Skinning now blends along each strand's own curve: wide sections bend
as a unit instead of pinching at joints (goodbye candy-wrapper effect),
folded strands can't grab weights "across the fold", and an optional
smoothing pass diffuses any remaining hard transition — including
across welded seams. Two new sliders: "Skin blend width" and "Skin
smoothing passes".
** Physics that feels alive **
- NEW "Tip softness": stiffness tapers from root to tip — THE setting
that turns robotic chains into natural hair / tentacle motion.
- Soft joint limits: spring-damped end stops instead of hard clacks.
- Smooth activation: turning physics on eases the object into motion
over a short ramp — no more sudden drop.
- Auto mass from thickness: thick sections carry more inertia than
thin tips.
- Anti-stretch projection, rigidbody interpolation (smoother rendering)
and adjustable solver iterations.
- Spring / Damper / Tip softness / Limits / Mass / Drag / Friction now
apply LIVE on a built skeleton — tune in real time, no rebuild.
** Much better collisions **
- Capsule colliders that cover each bone segment — continuous collision
along the strand instead of a "pearl necklace" of gapped spheres.
- Per-bone collider radius automatically fitted to the measured mesh
thickness (scalable), so thin tips and thick sections both fit.
- Self-collision toggle (off by default so a hairdo doesn't fight
itself), proper friction material, optional continuous collision
detection for fast motion.
FIXES
-----
- Moving the Base after building (placement mode, sliders, snap) no
longer drags and deforms the object — it only moves the pivot, as it
should.
- Objects no longer hang from a strand TIP on merged/branched meshes.
- Fixed a case where the rebuilt mesh could vanish at certain camera
angles.
- Fixed collision ignore pairs being silently lost after toggling
"Activate collisions" off and on (neighbor bones could jam).
- Removed the 3D bone markers — they depended on a shader VaM can strip
from its build and could make "Build Skeleton" fail. Building is now
fully reliable; Base placement feedback is printed in the log.
- Normal-mapped materials now light correctly on the rebuilt mesh.
NOTES FOR 1.0 USERS
-------------------
- Your saved settings carry over — nothing to redo.
- "Bone count (per strand)" now means the number of rings from the root
to the farthest tip; on branched meshes the actual bone count is one
per branch per ring (shown in the log).
- The "Show bones (3D points)" toggle is gone (see FIXES above).
- New defaults are tuned to work out of the box: build, activate
physics, then play with "Tip softness" live — it's the fun one.
As always: if something behaves oddly on one of your assets, please
leave a comment with the asset details rather than a low rating first —
most issues are quick to resolve. Enjoy!
