What's new?
Layer Selection Replaced the old number slider with color-coded toggle buttons. The slider was unintuitive since the layer numbers are meaningless without context. Each layer is now color coded and comes with a description of how it affects collision in your scene, so you can make an informed choice without having to test everything yourself.
Multiple Lights Lights on the same layer now share their exclusion lists automatically. Previously, if you had multiple lights that needed the same exclusions, you had to set each one up manually. Now when you exclude an atom from one light, the others on the same layer update instantly. A Sync button lets you manually pull settings from other lights if needed. The plugin will also warn you if you try to exclude an atom that's already claimed by a light on a different layer — something that would previously cause both lights to behave incorrectly without any indication of why.
Scene Reload Fix This was the big one. Excluded atoms now correctly restore on scene load. The root cause was two things working against each other — figures with clothing and hair load asynchronously in VaM, meaning they weren't fully ready when the plugin tried to restore them. Additionally, if the same atom was excluded on two different layers, they would fight over it on reload and both end up broken. The fix hooks directly into VaM's asset loading callbacks so each atom is handled at exactly the right moment, and the conflict detection prevents the two-layer problem from happening in the first place.
Shadow Suppression Added the ability to suppress shadow casting on non-figure objects. This came from a lighting workflow where you want a light to only illuminate figures but the scene geometry was still casting distracting shadows. You can apply it to individual atoms or everything at once, and it saves and restores with the scene.
Atom Dropdown Cleanup Removed atoms that have no business being in the list — SubScenes, empty atoms, UI buttons/sliders/toggles, and the Player Navigation Panel. SubScenes in particular were causing scene reload failures because their contents load asynchronously just like figure assets, but unlike figures there's no reliable way to hook into their load completion. Since there's no valid reason to exclude a SubScene itself, removing it from the list was the right call.
WHY?
Each light gets assigned to an exclusion layer. Lights on the same layer share their exclusion list — exclude something from one, and all lights on that layer ignore it too. This is ideal for lights that should behave identically.
Lights on different layers are completely independent — each maintains its own exclusion list. Use this when you need different lights to illuminate different combinations of objects.
Each light can only belong to one layer at a time. If you need a light to behave differently from its layer-mates, move it to its own layer.
The tradeoff: the same object can only belong to one layer at a time, so you can't exclude it from two lights that are on different layers simultaneously.
In addition, certain layers in VAM are used for specific purposes. Sometimes you can piggyback on them, sometimes you can't without odd behaviors happening, like colliders not working.
