Guides quickdress: quickly load and control clothing presets

It's the cousin of my quickspeech guide. This time, you get to load and control clothing presets with a dedicated UI, and even with animations if you so wish.

I say this is a cousin guide to quickspeech because it shares the same base ideas:

• modularity: atom presets serve collections of content, and control atoms in the scene trigger that content
• scalability: you can use as many collections as you want in compatible scenes

⚠ The use of quickdress presets as I made them requires VaM 1.22.0.3, I use in them the VAMStory Actions plugin to create a UI. ⚠


Demo scene and VAR quickdress presets

The demo scene has quickpress presets as part of a scene. However, being part of a scene is just one way of using quickdress presets.
Quickdress VARs are usable on any scene that follows the requirements (further in the guide) and are easier to share.

I include two quickdress VARs in this guide:


Feel free to download and try them on the demo scene or in any scene you want by following the instructions as stated below.

Thank you to the following creators whose assets the shared VARs use :

• Cloudcover
• hazmhox
• paledriver
• TGC
• YameteOuji

Tip:
You can have multiple outfits in a VAR. Perhaps you have a character with more than one outfit, why not add them all into a one quickdress preset?


quickdress presets as VARs to use in any compatible scene:

A quickdress VAR has a empty atom preset and a clothing preset. The empty atom has 2 instances of the VAMStory Actions plugin, providing a UI for loading and controlling the clothing preset and its clothes. All together, this makes a quickdress preset in VAR form.

How to use the above quickdress VARs in any scene:

1. Add a empty atom and name it quickdress;
   • The person atom must be called Female
2. Load the empty atom preset in the VAR (var_name:/Custom/Atom/Empty/quickdress/Preset...);
3. Click the button Load outfit;
4. Use the buttons to control the clothes.

Repeat 2 and 3 to load another quickdress outfit.
If you use the demo scene there's already a empty atom with the name quickdress, you can just use that one.

Requirements:

• Person atom to be named Female
• Empty atom to be named quickdress
• Having the dependencies in the VAR of course

quickdress presets as part of a scene (demo scene):

This is similar to the VAR packaged instructions above, but as it's part of a specific scene you can called the atoms how you like and make the loading and control parts as you want. This approach is meant to cater specific needs of individual scenes, while the VAR approach is detached from scenes and you can share and use in any compatible scenes.

What is needed?

• Clothing presets
• A quickdress atom like in the demo scene
• Saving a empty atom preset (quickdress atom) for every clothing preset

What's in the quickdress atom of the demo scene?

Very little, actually. In the demo the quickdress atom only has:

• VAMStory Actions plugin to make the UI and triggers
• Logicbrick Relay to load the suitable clothing preset

That's it.

Now, if you never used the VAMStory Actions created by hazmhox, well, no better time to start than now. See the resource's page for more information about it.
This plugin creates the UI buttons and you set the triggers that control the clothing used in the respective clothing preset. See how it's done in the demo.

If you're scared of the word LogicBrick - there's a Relay brick in the atom - don't freak out. Its single function is to be triggered to load the clothing preset to match the UI above, only that.
In the demo scene I added UI buttons with images that when pressed load a quickdress atom preset and trigger the Relay brick. You don't have to use a Relay brick, there's some other options that you can use, but I find it very easy to work with.


Making quickdress presets

Before starting the quickdress preset process, use a existing or make a new clothing preset. You can use several different shirts for example, one closed, another open, save them all in the clothing preset. Set alpha adjust to -1 to hide the clothes you don't want to show at start. Take note of the names of the clothing items names and plan how you want them to be available in the UI buttons.

The quickdress presets can be done in whatever way you want, but for the instructions I'll follow what I did to make this guide's shared presets and use them as a template for new presets.
Once you have your clothing preset ready, the process goes as follows:

1. In a scene with a female atom, name it Female and add a empty atom renamed quickdress;
2. In the quickdress atom, load one of the shared presets (var:/Custom/Atom/Empty/quickdress/something);
3. Go to plugins. There's 2 VAMStory plugins, open the second plugin (#1);
4. The first action is "load outfit", the trigger here is to load the respective clothing preset on the Female. Change the path to your intended clothing preset;
5. You can go to the first VAMStory plugin (#0), that's where the clothes UI controls are made;
6. Do whatever you want here, buttons, toggles, etc, every clothing trigger you want;
7. Whe you're done, go to the atom preset tab and save it with a meaningful name, you're done.

It's helpful to test if everything is working properly. Common problems are usually the naming of the person or atom wasn't set, some clothing triggers with alpha adjust might be forgotten or have no inverse option, etc.

Caveats

The triggers in the quickdress atom are tied to a specific Receiver name. In my demo, just like the quickspeech demo, the receiver is a female atom named Female. If you package them as VARs, the name of the atom needs to be set correctly too. It's helpful to plan ahead and be consistent with any quickdress atom presets you make.


Pimp my quickdress presets!

Undressing animations with Timeline:
My examples in the demo scene are quite simple, mostly being toggles for the clothing. However, you are not restricted to UI toggle buttons, you can even have Timeline animations in the quickdress atom to run a undressing animation. Each quickdress atom preset you make can be very different in functionalities in between them, after all, the information is saved on the preset, not the scene.

Loading with UIAssist:
For those who use the UIAssist plugin, you can load quickdress presets with a flick of a wrist on a compatible scene. How cool is that?
Target to load the quickdress (empty atom) preset on the quickdress atom of the scene, then click "load outfit", and there are your clothes and UI.


Infinite outfits on demand

Every clothing/atom preset is self-contained. They can be loaded and controlled in any compatible scene. You can make and use as many as you want, no information is saved on the scene, it's all in the presets.
To know more about the setup and creating the presets, see the quickdress guide linked above.

For the demo scene I only created 2 outfits to showcase this in action. Pointing this out again, no clothing information is saved on the scene, you can see the person starts out with no clothes, everything is done through the presets and independent of the scene*.

* not completely independent, there's one limitation that is the receiver name. See above the section "caveats".


Credits and thank-yous:

hazmhox: VAMStory
MacGruber: Logicbricks
MeshedVR: clothing
NoStage3: hair
YameteOuji: clothing

Let me know if all makes sense, demo and guide.