Hello everyone! Its been a long time but an update to E-Motion is finally here!
This update brings so many changes and adjustments I wont be able to cover everything here, so instead I will highlight the major differences and fixes as best as I can!
There are some major changes in the system and your older presets might need a little manual updating for them to work as they did before. The major changes come in the Eye Control section, Personality (mainly the addition of movement effecting mood) and the Distances and Angles tabs. Check these for new sliders and update them before resaving your preset.
Alternatively I have included several presets inside the VAR file to get you quickly started from scratch. I highly recommend you try these out anyway, as they are fantastic presets
I have updated the presets zip file on the release page. This includes the latest version of the external defaults file. If you are updating from an older version of E-Motion you don't need this file, but I still recommend you get it to ensure your defaults are what I intended them to be for all the new sliders
Major Updates
Total Expression rework - The Expression system has had a huge overhaul to how it determines which expressions to mix together at any given moment. Before it was a purely random selection from a limited number of choices depending on the current state or mood. The system still uses randomisation but now the randomisation is heavily weighted according the arousal and happiness. This not only greatly improves the number of options each state can select from, but selections are alot more appropriate to the current state or mood. The end result is much more appropriate expressions depending on whats happening, as well as much better looking expressions overall!
GLANCE SUPPORT! - E-Motion now works properly with the most amazing eye-control plugin out there. Glance. Turn off Eye Target Control in E-Motion and then turn on 'Use EyeTargetControl' at the bottom of Glance to have them both work well together. E-Motion controls the head and expressions while Glance takes care of the eyes. They work amazingly well together!
Control Head options - You can now control the amount of rotation hold and dampening applied to the head and neck by the 'auto configure' system to tweak to your liking
Body Motion Features - New option under Features to enable the body motion functionality. This is set to false by default and ensures that when you load the plugin fresh onto a character, the body will not be adjusted in any way until you tick this box
Minimum Interest - added to personality settings to allow you to set the minimum level of interest in a body part for the character to potentially focus on them
Movement Interest Rate - Body motion and movement now create both arousal and interest. this slider allows you to control how much
Dynamically Calculate Direct Angle - Under Distances and Settings you can now set the 'Direct looking angle' to be calculated automatically. This adjusts the angle according to how far your face is away from the character. Helps alot when the scene has drastic changes in distances between you and the character (like a catwalk for example)
Hand Self Interest - New sliders under Target controls that allows you to control how interested she can be in her own hands (and therefore how likely she will choose her own hands to look at)
New Smile Damper slider under Looks - This slider pulls the corners of the mouth down as a smile increases to lessen the facial change. really helps to make smiles look just right and prevent joker smiles!
Max Eye Open under Looks - allows you to adjust the open eyelid position to dial in the eyes to your look
Huge Overhaul of Body Motion - Angle calculations and movement have been tweaked and improved to be a bit more natural looking. Leg sliders have been added to allow separate configuration of the legs from the rest of the body
Arm Rotation Offset slider under Body Motion - Allows you to rotate the base angle of the arms in towards the body or away. works in conjunction with the position slider that moves the arms back or forward to give much more control over how the arms position themselves
Minor Updates
There is now an option under 'features' to enable and disable the help text
Head tracking will pause if your face gets really close to the character. stops the character from trying to look you in the face when you have your head on their shoulder or just below their chin for example
Blinking system will properly cause a blink if the eye target moves alot in a single frame, depending on how recently the character has blinked. There is a new minimum distance slider under Eye Controls to set how far the eye target must move.
Fixes
Direct Gaze from the character once again correctly follows with just the eyes until the angle becomes too great (for certain look states such as casual). not sure how this broke!
Fixed several issues with how the random points are generated so that they are easier to setup. Values are now direct VAM distances
Fixed several morph combinations for various looks to improve the over-all quality of the expressions and reduce how often a weird look will pop up
Fixed issues with head tracking at extreme angles. Now correctly disengages and goes to look at a random point instead
Fixed an issue that caused character to close their eyes for a very long time for no apparent reason
Several tweaks to how breathing morphs are mixed together to give the range on the sliders a bit more variety
Fixed issues where some sliders/options were not saving into presets (hopefully I got them all this time lol)
Lots of other small fixes to bugs/typos and logic errors. Everything is really starting to work properly without any oddities now!
Using E-Motion and Glance together
E-Motion now supports the glance plugin and they were made for each other. Glance is far more advanced thanE-Motions built in eye target system and really helps bring your characters to life, now you can use these two plugins together for an amazing experience. Using them together is very easy, with just a few steps required to configure both :
1) In E-Motion, under the Features tab, disable Eye Target Control
2) in Glance, at the bottom enable 'Use EyeTargetControl'
3) Configure Glance to your preferences. Keep in mind that where the character is looking (and what at) will effect their mood, so ensure you have set the appropriate values to get the character looking at what you want
I will update the video in the release page once Ive finished it and got it uploaded