I was starting to explain my IdlePoser plugin in a discussion thread. It ended up being a bit more elaborate, so I made it a resource so it can be found. Covers the bare basics only, though. Have fun!
IdlePoser Mini Tutorial - Guides -
This is a Mini Tutorial for my IdlePoser plugin. I wrote this for a discussion thread. I decided I might as well make it a resource so it can be found. IdlePoser is an extremely powerful animation plugin that is using an alternative approach...hub.virtamate.com
For anyone interested, I just uploaded my profile setup for Acid Bubbles Keybindings plugin. This includes settings for IdlePoser. I think it will be helpful for creators who work mostly from Desktop mode. Obviously I use this in combination with my own PowerHandles plugin. I can't do productive work in VaM without these two plugins anymore
MacGruber's Keybindings Profile - Guides -
My profile setup for @Acid Bubbles Keybindings plugin. This is for creators who work mostly from Desktop mode. Obviously I use this in combination with my own PowerHandles plugin. I can't do productive work in VaM without these two plugins...hub.virtamate.com
Version 9 is a maintenance release with some tweaks and bug-fixes. It's directly released as free since it is needed by the demo scene shipped with the free Life.13 release.
Changelog
- Fixed issue with morph reference into a VAR packages with ".latest" or ".minX" version. MorphCaptures are now stored slightly more efficiently in the scene, reducing file size and improving load times for large scenes.
- Fixed issue with current state transitioning into itself when there is no valid transition available.
- Fixed issue with StateMask change not being instantly applied when the state duration already expired.
- Fixed issue with StateMask change not being applied when StateMask was cleared.
- Separated changelog from code into additional TXT file. Since that has grown to around 5K in size, I don't want to bother the compiler with that every time you load a scene. Should again improve scene load times slightly.
Dependencies
- All the dependencies for the demo scene can be found on the Hub, meaning VaM can auto-download them for you.
Version 8 adds support for AcidBubbles Keybindings plugin, an extremely useful Duplicate button as well some minor tweaks and bug-fixes.
Changelog
- Exposing bindings for AcidBubbles Keybindings plugin.
- Added button to duplicate selected state. Duplicates all settings like transitions, triggers, anchors, etc. while capturing from the current pose. This is VERY helpful to quickly multiply variations of animations/poses with little effort.
- WaitDurationMin/Max sliders now talk to each other, so you can't set a max that is lower than your minimum anymore. Default wait time is now 2-4 instead of 3-3.
- Button to dump some stats to VaM's log, like number of states and paths. 'Draw Paths' needs to be enabled for the button to appear in the Options tab.
- Tried to fix issue with morphs reference not automatically tracked by VaM's PackageBuilder when a morph was located in a VAR package. While that works now, it turned out that PackageBuilder still replaces the package version with ".latest" instead of the actual version, which confuses IdlePoser. If you export your scene as VAR, you will have to unpack it and edit your scene JSON and meta.json to search&replace "MORPHPACKAGENAME.latest" with the actual version you are using in your scene. So not 100% fixed, yet, but there was no time anymore today to figure out how to fix this. I had to push this out now as it was needed for the other package release today.
- Fixed a button layout issue.
- Updated demo scene with the new plugin versions.
Version 7 brings new features for better control of transitions, as well as various tweaks and bug-fixes. These changes, together with the updates of my LogicBricks and Essentials plugins are what made the following video possible. That particular scene is still very much work in progress and will be released at some point in the future:
Changelog
Screenshots
- Control ease in/out duration of a state from the Transition tab. Now using a 3-piece smoothing curve consisting of a linear part in the middle and the integral of SmoothStep at both ends. The resulting combined curve has the benefit of allowing you to tweak ease in/out duration while also providing smooth velocity and continuous acceleration/deceleration. (This was the "Math stuff" posted at the beginning of the month, although I ended up using more complex curves. CaseEP correctly pointed out that the acceleration (second derivative) was not continuous, I thought you would not see a difference, but you do. Way more natural!)
- TransitionDuration moved to Transition tab.
- Option for one-way transitions from the Transition tab.
- Option for states to allow in-group transitions. All states along the transition need to have this enabled, giving your precise control.
- Option to default to using a world anchor (instead of person root control)
- Debug rendering of paths and transitions can be limited to the selected state.
- Increased amount of state groups from 8 to 12.
- Listing hidden atoms in the Anchor popups and providing a filter.
- Handling renaming of anchor atoms.
- New PartialStateMask action to allow only change the explicitly mentioned groups in the mask.
- Default to world anchor for non-person atoms to prevent self-reference.
- Default to 'control' capture on non-person atoms.
- Fixed issue with Anchors not being updated/applied correctly.
- Fixed issue with SetStateMask that could not be cleared, you can set it to "Clear" now.
- Fixed SetStateMask interrupting ongoing transitions.
- Fixed issue with debug info not being updated.
- Fixed issue with UI alignment in the state menu.
- Fixed debug rendering render order and reduced performance overhead.
- Fixed issue that could happen when IdlePoser tried to change it's own state through triggers.
- Changed default directory for Pose saves to 'Saves/PluginData/IdlePoser' to comply with VaM's new plugin guideline and avoid the security warning. Note that you may have to manually move your saves poses, if you have any. Folder is now created when missing.
- Updated MacGruber_Utils.cs
- Updated demo scene with the new plugin versions.
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
Video + Screenshots
- 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.
Download
- https://www.patreon.com/posts/idleposer-v6-44728996
- 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.
Maintenance update for 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.
EarlyAccess ended, it's now free!
Dependencies: