Just some thoughts I've been having on a kind of theory of VAM. This is a guide in a way, but mostly just me jotting down some notes for future reference and hopefully to help newcomers.
Intro
As I read through several of the guides and pieces of advice on here, they often seem like they're written by or for programmers or at least people with a rudimentary knowledge of programming, design, animation, basic photography and sometimes even anatomy and physiology.
Like several of you, I have none of these skills. I started using VAM as a research curiosity as I was trying to understand the promise and peril of virtual reality. Porn speaks to some of the rawest human instincts and affects and so I was most curious about how new technologies might change our relationship to satisfying desire. What I'd seen of VR porn back in the Google Cardboard days had already convinced me that viewing it this way was vastly superior to watching flat scenes and once people figured that out, porn as we knew it would be over. This of course didn't happen, but once I saw apps in the Steam store purporting to give people sexual and non-sexual relationships, I figured the way we socialize itself might be on the cusp of changing forever. At least one well known Canadian scholar talks about how sex robots might change the roles and expectations of women in society irrevocably and perhaps we should welcome this change. I take a more expansive view that automated friendships and sex partners (artificially intelligent or not) means we have a broad menu of social possibilities in front of us regardless of sex or gender identification. These could be positive or negative and it all depends on a number of confounding factors. Reading about VAM and its well-discussed customizability seemed to open these possibilities up even further so I had to try it.
Also, let's be real, I like to jerk off as much as the next person, so getting VAM was a no brainer once I heard how superior it was to its competitors. The graphics and animations I saw in demo videos were light years ahead of most of what I experienced elsewhere. The thing that made me hesitate was the much commented on learning curve. Everywhere I read that it took a lot to master this app and I didn't really have time to be learning software when I just wanted to get off while figuring out some things about VR. I saw a link to the Wiki and groaned. Who has time to be doing what amounts to a full course in something like this when you could presumably be learning Unity or Unreal or something else that you at least know you can use for a lot of things? That was what I told myself, but I was curious. If you had these concerns too and now find that curiosity got the better of you, then read on.
VAM, in Theory
VAM's principal allure is being able to bang a facsimile of just about anyone. You've probably seen videos or photos of people who look quite similar to someone you just saw in a film and more than likely, that's what brought you here. There are a number of ethical quandaries worth pondering about that, but it mostly comes down to whether you consider what is here a matter of:
a) art, or
b) likeness rights.
I tend to see it as art, but many sensational articles focus on it as possibly an issue of likeness rights and exploitation. But consider this: there is no world in which anything happening on VAM is even in the same universe of exploitation as what happens in the flesh trades. Sex workers shouldn't be condemned for what they do to survive, but the routine degradation, rip-offs and outright violence that keep the sex trades alive is mostly abominable. Few people in porn, stripping, camming or prostitution have gotten on those beds or in front of those cameras without some kind of traumatic backstory and the industries are built up around making those circumstances worse for most. In that sense, VAM might be a form of harm reduction in that it allows for a harm-free environment where no one is materially suffering just for you to cum (absent people working in chip manufacturing plants for the CPUs and GPUs required to run this thing). There are other ethical dimensions to consider about likeness and artistic license, but if you tend to side on the idea of this all being art, it's all not much different from pasting a cut-out from a magazine of your favorite star onto a doll. It may be sick and creepy to some, but is it unethical? Maybe, but there's room for a lot of debate. It is more than a bit strange that other people could profit off of selling copies of my face, but we grant that right to social media companies every day, with only tacit consent. Still, saying something is not as bad as something else is not the same as saying it's morally defensible. You may wrestle with this as you use VAM. I still do sometimes, but it's easily overridden by the part of my brain that can't resist having a face and body I've only dreamed of seeing up close dancing nude in front of me to my favorite song. And that's what VAM promises: your wildest dreams.
The great promise of virtual reality is not, contrary to what Mark Zuckerberg and others are selling, the idea of escape to a digital world where you can live with a bunch of other folks or integrate your meatspace life with virtual avatars and environments. The real promise is to be able to get what you want when and how you want it. This is also one of the central drives of human existence, but unfortunately most of us are denied the good life due to the few hoarding all the best things for themselves and setting up a social system wherein we're actively denied our basic needs, to say nothing of our wants. Media has always been a form of escape where we can at least vicariously experience things we'll never know in our real lives. VR is just a trick of the light on a screen, like most media, but because of the way that trick is set up, it feels more like living than like just being a voyeur. Most of us came to VAM because we were unsatisfied with shooting people, swaying side to side dodging things, or listening to dumb kids be dumb kids in social apps. We knew that the real promise of VR was to get what you want when and how you want it. It's to be in the kind of place you want to be, looking at a person who looks how you want them to look, doing and saying things you don't mind them saying and maybe even doing something surprising from time to time. We didn't want to walk through someone else's dreams. We wanted to make our own. Sometimes that means walking around in a beautiful forest. Sometimes it means getting peed on in a squalid alleyway. Luckily with VAM, both are possible. But that doesn't mean it's easy.
You're probably at the point in this "guide" thinking you really wasted your time and I apologize for bloviating, but I feel all of the above things are worth addressing to really get at what this application is. For anyone who's used Unity, it's a big mess. I once heard someone compare it to being god and it's an apt comparison, but you really need to know a lot of things to be god. VAM also requires you to know quite a few things, but not nearly as many. This is the first application I've seen that truly allows a relatively user friendly depth of customization that is probably only rivaled by games like Gary's Mod in how it allows you to do any and everything. It's marketed for and used mostly for sex, but as I like to say, it's much more than that. There are probably similar game engines that you can do as much if not more with, but I don't really know about them if so. You can do a lot in Unity, for example, but not without learning a lot and you can't experience it in real time in the way you can with VAM. That real time experimentation and customization may not be the reason you're here, but I guarantee that if you stay, it will be the reason you stay. So how do you get to enjoy the rich customization of VAM without getting frustrated and quitting? Well, here is where I end my theorizing and get to the "guide" portion of this essay. If you wanted to tl/dr this (which I hope you won't) then this is a good place to jump to. This guide will not be giving you technical advice. There is plenty of that already on the Hub. Instead, this guide will focus on the strategy you adopt in your approach to VAM in order to get the best possible user experience.
What is this thing and how do I get started?
Virt-a-Mate is a sandbox with dolls you can customize and animate. There are probably more complicated descriptions, but that's the easiest one. It's an empty space built with Unity that you can add many different types of files and scripts to depending on what you want to experience. Much like with Unity, you are basically a god. But your divinity has limits.
Ok, but how do I get started?
Honestly, the simplest thing you can do when you first get VAM is to also get vamX. VamX is what's called an AddonPackage or VAR file. If you download vamX you'll immediately understand most of what VAM is capable of in a comparatively easy to use and accessible manner. If you don't use vamX you'll more likely be stuck reading the wiki and watching YouTube videos very carefully. You still may need to do this to use VamX, but it will be much easier to start this way, especially if you just want to masturbate. In fact, if you don't have very particular kinks and just want an on demand banging scene, you could probably get VAM and vamX and never need anything else. This is what I'd call the entry level of VAM and it's likely the best one.
Ok, cool, I did the vamX thing, but now I want more. How do I add my favorite IG model who looks awfully similar to this model on the Hub?
Congratulations, you know what the Hub is! Obviously if you're reading this, you probably know what it is, but information travels fast, so who knows where you're reading this? What I'd say is worth your while after you've gotten the basic swing of VAM from experimenting with vamX is to spend time getting to know the Hub. The Hub is your most trusted and best friend for using this app. Reddit has some useful things. YouTube has some great (though a little out of date) videos, but the Hub has most of what you'll need. I recommend you start by searching for random resources. You can do this using the in game browser or directly downloading from the Hub. You will learn a lot by using the hub about the file types, the hierarchy of how things are organized, past problems that led to the creation of the current file system, ongoing bugs that won't be resolved until the mystical 2.0 finally drops and most importantly, you'll learn that many digital objects and people are at your fingertips. Use the search function wisely. You'd be amazed at what's on here. Sometimes it's not named what you think it should be, but it's there.
Naturally, you'll spend most of your early days in VAM searching through looks and scenes. Building up a robust scene library is the way you collect dependencies that will affect your other scenes. There is extensive discussion elsewhere on the Hub on dependencies and how they work, so I won't recount that here. In simple terms a dependency means a file or script you are using depends on another file or script to work. My advice is to spend time checking your dependencies and filling them in to build your early library. This can be done on the hub in game with the click of a button that searches for missing files, though not all of them will be on the Hub.
If you, like me, are interested in using VAM for things like storytelling and art as much if not more than touching yourself, then I highly recommend you search for ASSETS. Looks and scenes will likely get you started, but getting to know ASSETS is where the real potential of the game begins to shine. With VAM, you can be having a virtual glass of wine in New York with Presidential candidates and singers before a missile intrudes and suddenly turns the whole place into a strange alien world where XPS dogs run through the desert dragging disheveled robot carcasses behind them. If you're using vamX to get a sense of animations and plugins, ASSETS are the gateway to really unlocking the potential of the worlds. Many are imported from other places, but you don't need to know what Sketchfab, Blender, Daz3D or even Unity are. You just need to walk around in a very cool casino while a superhero breakdances in front of you. Getting to know ASSETS is something it's easy to ignore, but I highly recommend it in between shopping for scenes and looks.
Great, that all sounds cool, but I'm not here to build anything so how can I get my hands on some lookalikes?
Depending on your tastes, there are a lot of people doing great lookalikes, but the undisputed champ is Vecterror. There are others like HyperionX, Bamair1984, Sirap, Boyavam, Podflower 3.0 and the underappreciated Fernn who have pumped out a lot of familiar faces that I'm sure you'll enjoy. In my view, there's something of a rivalry between these creators based on how often they do their own version of the exact same people, but that rivalry is great from the user side. While there are probably too many versions of certain folks (if you know magic, there are at least 10 of you out there), but it's good to have different flavors sometimes. These folks also do commissions, so you can have whomever you want, but please do think about how your ex would feel if she knew thousands of dudes were e-banging her when she hates the sight or idea of you. I truly believe making exes and celebs will be the death of this platform someday after someone makes a major issue of it, but alas, the heart wants what it wants and we are already dwelling in the ethically grey spaces of human existence here. If you can obtain consent, you should do so, particularly for a person who is not a public figure. Public figures (celebrities, politicians, creatives, influencers) tend to have wider latitude in how they are used in art, both legally and otherwise, but private individuals are a different story. Remember, if you want to relive old love, you can do so without sharing it on the Hub and can ask whomever does your commission to give you exclusive rights or modify it for public release. In my view, it's art. Lisa Gherardini likely had no idea how many people would become obsessed with her face when she sat for the portrait that became the Mona Lisa. What is a face or likeness really other than a genetically written piece of art on the canvas that is the flesh? Rationalize it to yourself however you want. There are a lot of good looks out there and since they're presumably neverending you never know who will turn up.
The list above is not comprehensive. Those are just some of my favorites, but there are many other great creators making both lookalikes and original looks. I love the idea of a person who has never existed before appearing out of the mind of a creator and being shared here. It's an amazing privilege to get to see the creativity of so many on here, often for free, and I try to show you all love in my reviews. If I didn't mention you above, hopefully someone else will. Two people I will spotlight are Jackaroo, who does a lot of the best male looks, and WeebU for trans "FUTA" looks, both of which tend to be in short supply because of the overwhelming heterosexuality of this place. But bear in mind there are other uses for models besides sex even if you are obsessed with policing the boundaries of your straightness.
Okay, so I have a lot of good looks and vamX was cool, but I see what you're saying. There's more. What else can I do in this sandbox?
Well, I'm glad you asked. If you have a bunch of assetbundles (the file type many ASSETS come in) and clothing in your file folders, you can begin making scenes. I advise you to start by just making screenshots. Pose your characters using some of the many pose presets or just do it manually with your hands (or possession). Put them in a variety of situations and play around with the backgrounds and objects they're holding. Set up angles to take screenshots and look at your screenshots compared to the ones you see on the Hub. One of the first things you'll notice is yours probably look like crap compared to them. Why? Well, because VAM's native screenshot capabilities aren't terrible, but also aren't great. Also likely because you're not a professional photographer and don't know how to place lighting in a scene. So I first advise you to spend some time messing around with lights in different environments just to get a feel for the role that light will play in your scenes. You won't be able to do much just placing and tweaking lights, but you will be able to see what role light plays in making a scene better or worse and you'll get a quick education that some people apprentice in Hollywood for years to understand. Lighting (along with sound) makes or breaks most movies, but it's something we take for granted because it's only worth noticing if it's done poorly. Think of the light. Learn the light. If you skip this step, you'll have to frustratingly come back to it later whether you're doing photos, videos, scenes for yourself or for the Hub. Light is crucial to making the cool environment assetbundles usable. No matter how bright it looks to your eye, remember, this is a trick. There are usually set light sources that must be manipulated. This is more work for your computer depending how the lights are set up, so be aware.
I'm glad you mentioned work for my computer because all these VARs I've acquired seem to be pushing my PC to the limit! What do I do?
There are a number of answers to this all throughout the Hub. I will say two things: 1) Be very careful to pay attention to your storage space when downloading VARs or other files and 2) Be very careful when deleting VARs or other files (sad personal experience). Besides that, know your PC's limits. If it's old, has poor memory and limited storage space, your VAM experience may just suck. Mine is a low end gaming laptop and VAM works pretty smoothly, but I think I've rarely exceeded 20-25 FPS. I've searched for why that might be and still don't know, but it's all good for now. One tip that was INCREDIBLY useful to me was to not use SteamVR to launch VAM. The Oculus link will display better if you have an Oculus, but if you're paranoid about Facebook hand tracking your jacking, then maybe get the Virtual Desktop app. Once you have it, right click on the little Virtual Desktop icon on the right side of your Taskbar. Click Launch Game. Find VAM and launch it from there. Just clicking on VAM will auto-launch SteamVR if it's installed. SteamVR works okay, but gets jittery and buggy a lot in my experience. If you're going through nightmare stutters on your headset, ditch SteamVR. This is the way.
Okay, that's all useful, but I want to do more. VAM is relatively stable and I've got the assets, but I want to be an animator! I want better lighting, ways to attach objects to my characters and I want to live inside them. I want to be in my dreams and I want them to be living breathing imaginaries!
Well, for this you'll need scripts, also known as PLUGINS. There is a lot of explanation of how the Plugin functions work, but I'd just like to say a few people you should pay especially close attention to are MacGruber, AcidBubbles, SPQR, Hazmhox, HuntingSuccubus, ky1001, JayJayWon and also, definitely download redeyes GiveMeFPS, BlazedDust's CUAManager and NoStage3's Unity Asset Vamifier. All three come in handy often. You will likely have had some exposure to plugins using vamX. With them you can animate, improve the lighting in your entire scene, improve the UI of VAM and modify the behavior of the various "atoms" (person, asset, clothing etc). There are a number of tutorials on the hub for how to use plugins and which ones do what, but plugins are where you really enhance the realism of your experience in VAM. Many are complex and will probably frustrate you at times. You'll find yourself launching the in-game menu a lot to re-read the directions and you'll probably think something works one way only to find out it works a little differently than you expected. There are some plugins that people have developed that are seldom used, but have great potential. Others introduce you to the logic of coding even if you know nothing about how to code while still others turn your third rate screenshot or video into something that looks like it belongs in a museum (learn the term LUT). As ever, what's amazing is seeing these changes in real time, on demand. With vamX things have gotten to the point where you can make plugins and digital objects respond to voice commands or interact with a primitive AI. My advice is figure out a few you like in vamX and then build off of those. MacGruber and AcidBubbles in particular belong on the Mount Rushmore of VAM. SPQR is the guy whose work you'll likely not appreciate until you've used this app for months, but it opens up the potential to make VAM all the more immersive and functional. The biggest difficulty you'll face is remembering the names and functions of plugins and this is why VAM's learning curve can be so steep. There are a few methods of organizing things that can help with this that I've seen detailed on here, but a lot of it you'll just have to remember, which is work. If you want to create, you must work.
Is that all there is?
For this first stab, yes, because I'm sleepy. But one other thing I will briefly suggest is that the world of VAM is larger than it appears. The Hub is your friend, but there is more than the Hub. Scattered across Patreon, Reddit, websites in English and other languages, Google Drive Folders, MegaUpload links, and many other hosting platforms are many pieces that you can put together to make your desired experience. There is some debate that seems to go back years in this community over paid versus free content. This is a larger debate that is proliferating throughout all of the "metaverse" and will likely be one of the most important battles of the future immersive internet, much like it dominated web 2.0. There are a variety of questions over what constitutes property in digital spaces. A host of frauds and charlatans have jumped on the NFT bandwagon as a way of claiming property rights, though I can tell you that crypto as it presently exists is mostly a dead end scam propped up by rubes with an almost religious zeal. This doesn't mean some similar system of market relations won't be forced on all of us as we try to have fun and play in our virtual worlds. Zuckerberg has openly stated on multiple occasions that this is what he wants Meta to control. At present, in VAM, we see artists creating art with direct relationships to their patrons who support them on an ongoing basis to do their often time-consuming and intricate work. But in a system that depends on references to one another's work, it actually stunts creativity to have works that are hidden behind paywalls and can't be used to create more derivative work. Some of the creators I mentioned above have a lot of their stuff paywalled behind Patreon, but it's so good that I couldn't help but pay for it. Ultimately who you support and why is up to how badly you want something (and your budget) in this desire-factory. Still, it's the free stuff that is the substance of VAM. If not for the free works of creators, much of the premium content wouldn't be functional. So I implore you on your journey to at least support people who make stuff at no cost with reviews and likes. I recognize that the somewhat shady nature of VAM makes people concerned about leaving any digital traces behind. And it should! Who knows when the feds from some country will decide enough is enough, but assuming your screen name is not your actual name or one you use across the web and that you're careful in general online, you should be okay posting the occasional review. Considering the work a lot of people put in, they at least deserve a thank you or a positive review. Some of the people who made this place what it is have moved on because they put their stuff up to deafening silence, so if you downloaded it, borrowed from it, or came to it, it won't kill you to at least drop a like.
As I've said elsewhere, VAM, as an engine of desire and creativity, is much closer to what I envision wanting from a "metaverse" rather than low poly, kid filled social experiences or worse, ways to make us do more work. With luck, this quasi-guide was helpful in thinking about how to approach VAM as a noob and how to imagine its uses for something other than onanism. I hope you'll enjoy it enough on your journey that you create (or import) something wonderful.
Intro
As I read through several of the guides and pieces of advice on here, they often seem like they're written by or for programmers or at least people with a rudimentary knowledge of programming, design, animation, basic photography and sometimes even anatomy and physiology.
Like several of you, I have none of these skills. I started using VAM as a research curiosity as I was trying to understand the promise and peril of virtual reality. Porn speaks to some of the rawest human instincts and affects and so I was most curious about how new technologies might change our relationship to satisfying desire. What I'd seen of VR porn back in the Google Cardboard days had already convinced me that viewing it this way was vastly superior to watching flat scenes and once people figured that out, porn as we knew it would be over. This of course didn't happen, but once I saw apps in the Steam store purporting to give people sexual and non-sexual relationships, I figured the way we socialize itself might be on the cusp of changing forever. At least one well known Canadian scholar talks about how sex robots might change the roles and expectations of women in society irrevocably and perhaps we should welcome this change. I take a more expansive view that automated friendships and sex partners (artificially intelligent or not) means we have a broad menu of social possibilities in front of us regardless of sex or gender identification. These could be positive or negative and it all depends on a number of confounding factors. Reading about VAM and its well-discussed customizability seemed to open these possibilities up even further so I had to try it.
Also, let's be real, I like to jerk off as much as the next person, so getting VAM was a no brainer once I heard how superior it was to its competitors. The graphics and animations I saw in demo videos were light years ahead of most of what I experienced elsewhere. The thing that made me hesitate was the much commented on learning curve. Everywhere I read that it took a lot to master this app and I didn't really have time to be learning software when I just wanted to get off while figuring out some things about VR. I saw a link to the Wiki and groaned. Who has time to be doing what amounts to a full course in something like this when you could presumably be learning Unity or Unreal or something else that you at least know you can use for a lot of things? That was what I told myself, but I was curious. If you had these concerns too and now find that curiosity got the better of you, then read on.
VAM, in Theory
VAM's principal allure is being able to bang a facsimile of just about anyone. You've probably seen videos or photos of people who look quite similar to someone you just saw in a film and more than likely, that's what brought you here. There are a number of ethical quandaries worth pondering about that, but it mostly comes down to whether you consider what is here a matter of:
a) art, or
b) likeness rights.
I tend to see it as art, but many sensational articles focus on it as possibly an issue of likeness rights and exploitation. But consider this: there is no world in which anything happening on VAM is even in the same universe of exploitation as what happens in the flesh trades. Sex workers shouldn't be condemned for what they do to survive, but the routine degradation, rip-offs and outright violence that keep the sex trades alive is mostly abominable. Few people in porn, stripping, camming or prostitution have gotten on those beds or in front of those cameras without some kind of traumatic backstory and the industries are built up around making those circumstances worse for most. In that sense, VAM might be a form of harm reduction in that it allows for a harm-free environment where no one is materially suffering just for you to cum (absent people working in chip manufacturing plants for the CPUs and GPUs required to run this thing). There are other ethical dimensions to consider about likeness and artistic license, but if you tend to side on the idea of this all being art, it's all not much different from pasting a cut-out from a magazine of your favorite star onto a doll. It may be sick and creepy to some, but is it unethical? Maybe, but there's room for a lot of debate. It is more than a bit strange that other people could profit off of selling copies of my face, but we grant that right to social media companies every day, with only tacit consent. Still, saying something is not as bad as something else is not the same as saying it's morally defensible. You may wrestle with this as you use VAM. I still do sometimes, but it's easily overridden by the part of my brain that can't resist having a face and body I've only dreamed of seeing up close dancing nude in front of me to my favorite song. And that's what VAM promises: your wildest dreams.
The great promise of virtual reality is not, contrary to what Mark Zuckerberg and others are selling, the idea of escape to a digital world where you can live with a bunch of other folks or integrate your meatspace life with virtual avatars and environments. The real promise is to be able to get what you want when and how you want it. This is also one of the central drives of human existence, but unfortunately most of us are denied the good life due to the few hoarding all the best things for themselves and setting up a social system wherein we're actively denied our basic needs, to say nothing of our wants. Media has always been a form of escape where we can at least vicariously experience things we'll never know in our real lives. VR is just a trick of the light on a screen, like most media, but because of the way that trick is set up, it feels more like living than like just being a voyeur. Most of us came to VAM because we were unsatisfied with shooting people, swaying side to side dodging things, or listening to dumb kids be dumb kids in social apps. We knew that the real promise of VR was to get what you want when and how you want it. It's to be in the kind of place you want to be, looking at a person who looks how you want them to look, doing and saying things you don't mind them saying and maybe even doing something surprising from time to time. We didn't want to walk through someone else's dreams. We wanted to make our own. Sometimes that means walking around in a beautiful forest. Sometimes it means getting peed on in a squalid alleyway. Luckily with VAM, both are possible. But that doesn't mean it's easy.
You're probably at the point in this "guide" thinking you really wasted your time and I apologize for bloviating, but I feel all of the above things are worth addressing to really get at what this application is. For anyone who's used Unity, it's a big mess. I once heard someone compare it to being god and it's an apt comparison, but you really need to know a lot of things to be god. VAM also requires you to know quite a few things, but not nearly as many. This is the first application I've seen that truly allows a relatively user friendly depth of customization that is probably only rivaled by games like Gary's Mod in how it allows you to do any and everything. It's marketed for and used mostly for sex, but as I like to say, it's much more than that. There are probably similar game engines that you can do as much if not more with, but I don't really know about them if so. You can do a lot in Unity, for example, but not without learning a lot and you can't experience it in real time in the way you can with VAM. That real time experimentation and customization may not be the reason you're here, but I guarantee that if you stay, it will be the reason you stay. So how do you get to enjoy the rich customization of VAM without getting frustrated and quitting? Well, here is where I end my theorizing and get to the "guide" portion of this essay. If you wanted to tl/dr this (which I hope you won't) then this is a good place to jump to. This guide will not be giving you technical advice. There is plenty of that already on the Hub. Instead, this guide will focus on the strategy you adopt in your approach to VAM in order to get the best possible user experience.
What is this thing and how do I get started?
Virt-a-Mate is a sandbox with dolls you can customize and animate. There are probably more complicated descriptions, but that's the easiest one. It's an empty space built with Unity that you can add many different types of files and scripts to depending on what you want to experience. Much like with Unity, you are basically a god. But your divinity has limits.
Ok, but how do I get started?
Honestly, the simplest thing you can do when you first get VAM is to also get vamX. VamX is what's called an AddonPackage or VAR file. If you download vamX you'll immediately understand most of what VAM is capable of in a comparatively easy to use and accessible manner. If you don't use vamX you'll more likely be stuck reading the wiki and watching YouTube videos very carefully. You still may need to do this to use VamX, but it will be much easier to start this way, especially if you just want to masturbate. In fact, if you don't have very particular kinks and just want an on demand banging scene, you could probably get VAM and vamX and never need anything else. This is what I'd call the entry level of VAM and it's likely the best one.
Ok, cool, I did the vamX thing, but now I want more. How do I add my favorite IG model who looks awfully similar to this model on the Hub?
Congratulations, you know what the Hub is! Obviously if you're reading this, you probably know what it is, but information travels fast, so who knows where you're reading this? What I'd say is worth your while after you've gotten the basic swing of VAM from experimenting with vamX is to spend time getting to know the Hub. The Hub is your most trusted and best friend for using this app. Reddit has some useful things. YouTube has some great (though a little out of date) videos, but the Hub has most of what you'll need. I recommend you start by searching for random resources. You can do this using the in game browser or directly downloading from the Hub. You will learn a lot by using the hub about the file types, the hierarchy of how things are organized, past problems that led to the creation of the current file system, ongoing bugs that won't be resolved until the mystical 2.0 finally drops and most importantly, you'll learn that many digital objects and people are at your fingertips. Use the search function wisely. You'd be amazed at what's on here. Sometimes it's not named what you think it should be, but it's there.
Naturally, you'll spend most of your early days in VAM searching through looks and scenes. Building up a robust scene library is the way you collect dependencies that will affect your other scenes. There is extensive discussion elsewhere on the Hub on dependencies and how they work, so I won't recount that here. In simple terms a dependency means a file or script you are using depends on another file or script to work. My advice is to spend time checking your dependencies and filling them in to build your early library. This can be done on the hub in game with the click of a button that searches for missing files, though not all of them will be on the Hub.
If you, like me, are interested in using VAM for things like storytelling and art as much if not more than touching yourself, then I highly recommend you search for ASSETS. Looks and scenes will likely get you started, but getting to know ASSETS is where the real potential of the game begins to shine. With VAM, you can be having a virtual glass of wine in New York with Presidential candidates and singers before a missile intrudes and suddenly turns the whole place into a strange alien world where XPS dogs run through the desert dragging disheveled robot carcasses behind them. If you're using vamX to get a sense of animations and plugins, ASSETS are the gateway to really unlocking the potential of the worlds. Many are imported from other places, but you don't need to know what Sketchfab, Blender, Daz3D or even Unity are. You just need to walk around in a very cool casino while a superhero breakdances in front of you. Getting to know ASSETS is something it's easy to ignore, but I highly recommend it in between shopping for scenes and looks.
Great, that all sounds cool, but I'm not here to build anything so how can I get my hands on some lookalikes?
Depending on your tastes, there are a lot of people doing great lookalikes, but the undisputed champ is Vecterror. There are others like HyperionX, Bamair1984, Sirap, Boyavam, Podflower 3.0 and the underappreciated Fernn who have pumped out a lot of familiar faces that I'm sure you'll enjoy. In my view, there's something of a rivalry between these creators based on how often they do their own version of the exact same people, but that rivalry is great from the user side. While there are probably too many versions of certain folks (if you know magic, there are at least 10 of you out there), but it's good to have different flavors sometimes. These folks also do commissions, so you can have whomever you want, but please do think about how your ex would feel if she knew thousands of dudes were e-banging her when she hates the sight or idea of you. I truly believe making exes and celebs will be the death of this platform someday after someone makes a major issue of it, but alas, the heart wants what it wants and we are already dwelling in the ethically grey spaces of human existence here. If you can obtain consent, you should do so, particularly for a person who is not a public figure. Public figures (celebrities, politicians, creatives, influencers) tend to have wider latitude in how they are used in art, both legally and otherwise, but private individuals are a different story. Remember, if you want to relive old love, you can do so without sharing it on the Hub and can ask whomever does your commission to give you exclusive rights or modify it for public release. In my view, it's art. Lisa Gherardini likely had no idea how many people would become obsessed with her face when she sat for the portrait that became the Mona Lisa. What is a face or likeness really other than a genetically written piece of art on the canvas that is the flesh? Rationalize it to yourself however you want. There are a lot of good looks out there and since they're presumably neverending you never know who will turn up.
The list above is not comprehensive. Those are just some of my favorites, but there are many other great creators making both lookalikes and original looks. I love the idea of a person who has never existed before appearing out of the mind of a creator and being shared here. It's an amazing privilege to get to see the creativity of so many on here, often for free, and I try to show you all love in my reviews. If I didn't mention you above, hopefully someone else will. Two people I will spotlight are Jackaroo, who does a lot of the best male looks, and WeebU for trans "FUTA" looks, both of which tend to be in short supply because of the overwhelming heterosexuality of this place. But bear in mind there are other uses for models besides sex even if you are obsessed with policing the boundaries of your straightness.
Okay, so I have a lot of good looks and vamX was cool, but I see what you're saying. There's more. What else can I do in this sandbox?
Well, I'm glad you asked. If you have a bunch of assetbundles (the file type many ASSETS come in) and clothing in your file folders, you can begin making scenes. I advise you to start by just making screenshots. Pose your characters using some of the many pose presets or just do it manually with your hands (or possession). Put them in a variety of situations and play around with the backgrounds and objects they're holding. Set up angles to take screenshots and look at your screenshots compared to the ones you see on the Hub. One of the first things you'll notice is yours probably look like crap compared to them. Why? Well, because VAM's native screenshot capabilities aren't terrible, but also aren't great. Also likely because you're not a professional photographer and don't know how to place lighting in a scene. So I first advise you to spend some time messing around with lights in different environments just to get a feel for the role that light will play in your scenes. You won't be able to do much just placing and tweaking lights, but you will be able to see what role light plays in making a scene better or worse and you'll get a quick education that some people apprentice in Hollywood for years to understand. Lighting (along with sound) makes or breaks most movies, but it's something we take for granted because it's only worth noticing if it's done poorly. Think of the light. Learn the light. If you skip this step, you'll have to frustratingly come back to it later whether you're doing photos, videos, scenes for yourself or for the Hub. Light is crucial to making the cool environment assetbundles usable. No matter how bright it looks to your eye, remember, this is a trick. There are usually set light sources that must be manipulated. This is more work for your computer depending how the lights are set up, so be aware.
I'm glad you mentioned work for my computer because all these VARs I've acquired seem to be pushing my PC to the limit! What do I do?
There are a number of answers to this all throughout the Hub. I will say two things: 1) Be very careful to pay attention to your storage space when downloading VARs or other files and 2) Be very careful when deleting VARs or other files (sad personal experience). Besides that, know your PC's limits. If it's old, has poor memory and limited storage space, your VAM experience may just suck. Mine is a low end gaming laptop and VAM works pretty smoothly, but I think I've rarely exceeded 20-25 FPS. I've searched for why that might be and still don't know, but it's all good for now. One tip that was INCREDIBLY useful to me was to not use SteamVR to launch VAM. The Oculus link will display better if you have an Oculus, but if you're paranoid about Facebook hand tracking your jacking, then maybe get the Virtual Desktop app. Once you have it, right click on the little Virtual Desktop icon on the right side of your Taskbar. Click Launch Game. Find VAM and launch it from there. Just clicking on VAM will auto-launch SteamVR if it's installed. SteamVR works okay, but gets jittery and buggy a lot in my experience. If you're going through nightmare stutters on your headset, ditch SteamVR. This is the way.
Okay, that's all useful, but I want to do more. VAM is relatively stable and I've got the assets, but I want to be an animator! I want better lighting, ways to attach objects to my characters and I want to live inside them. I want to be in my dreams and I want them to be living breathing imaginaries!
Well, for this you'll need scripts, also known as PLUGINS. There is a lot of explanation of how the Plugin functions work, but I'd just like to say a few people you should pay especially close attention to are MacGruber, AcidBubbles, SPQR, Hazmhox, HuntingSuccubus, ky1001, JayJayWon and also, definitely download redeyes GiveMeFPS, BlazedDust's CUAManager and NoStage3's Unity Asset Vamifier. All three come in handy often. You will likely have had some exposure to plugins using vamX. With them you can animate, improve the lighting in your entire scene, improve the UI of VAM and modify the behavior of the various "atoms" (person, asset, clothing etc). There are a number of tutorials on the hub for how to use plugins and which ones do what, but plugins are where you really enhance the realism of your experience in VAM. Many are complex and will probably frustrate you at times. You'll find yourself launching the in-game menu a lot to re-read the directions and you'll probably think something works one way only to find out it works a little differently than you expected. There are some plugins that people have developed that are seldom used, but have great potential. Others introduce you to the logic of coding even if you know nothing about how to code while still others turn your third rate screenshot or video into something that looks like it belongs in a museum (learn the term LUT). As ever, what's amazing is seeing these changes in real time, on demand. With vamX things have gotten to the point where you can make plugins and digital objects respond to voice commands or interact with a primitive AI. My advice is figure out a few you like in vamX and then build off of those. MacGruber and AcidBubbles in particular belong on the Mount Rushmore of VAM. SPQR is the guy whose work you'll likely not appreciate until you've used this app for months, but it opens up the potential to make VAM all the more immersive and functional. The biggest difficulty you'll face is remembering the names and functions of plugins and this is why VAM's learning curve can be so steep. There are a few methods of organizing things that can help with this that I've seen detailed on here, but a lot of it you'll just have to remember, which is work. If you want to create, you must work.
Is that all there is?
For this first stab, yes, because I'm sleepy. But one other thing I will briefly suggest is that the world of VAM is larger than it appears. The Hub is your friend, but there is more than the Hub. Scattered across Patreon, Reddit, websites in English and other languages, Google Drive Folders, MegaUpload links, and many other hosting platforms are many pieces that you can put together to make your desired experience. There is some debate that seems to go back years in this community over paid versus free content. This is a larger debate that is proliferating throughout all of the "metaverse" and will likely be one of the most important battles of the future immersive internet, much like it dominated web 2.0. There are a variety of questions over what constitutes property in digital spaces. A host of frauds and charlatans have jumped on the NFT bandwagon as a way of claiming property rights, though I can tell you that crypto as it presently exists is mostly a dead end scam propped up by rubes with an almost religious zeal. This doesn't mean some similar system of market relations won't be forced on all of us as we try to have fun and play in our virtual worlds. Zuckerberg has openly stated on multiple occasions that this is what he wants Meta to control. At present, in VAM, we see artists creating art with direct relationships to their patrons who support them on an ongoing basis to do their often time-consuming and intricate work. But in a system that depends on references to one another's work, it actually stunts creativity to have works that are hidden behind paywalls and can't be used to create more derivative work. Some of the creators I mentioned above have a lot of their stuff paywalled behind Patreon, but it's so good that I couldn't help but pay for it. Ultimately who you support and why is up to how badly you want something (and your budget) in this desire-factory. Still, it's the free stuff that is the substance of VAM. If not for the free works of creators, much of the premium content wouldn't be functional. So I implore you on your journey to at least support people who make stuff at no cost with reviews and likes. I recognize that the somewhat shady nature of VAM makes people concerned about leaving any digital traces behind. And it should! Who knows when the feds from some country will decide enough is enough, but assuming your screen name is not your actual name or one you use across the web and that you're careful in general online, you should be okay posting the occasional review. Considering the work a lot of people put in, they at least deserve a thank you or a positive review. Some of the people who made this place what it is have moved on because they put their stuff up to deafening silence, so if you downloaded it, borrowed from it, or came to it, it won't kill you to at least drop a like.
As I've said elsewhere, VAM, as an engine of desire and creativity, is much closer to what I envision wanting from a "metaverse" rather than low poly, kid filled social experiences or worse, ways to make us do more work. With luck, this quasi-guide was helpful in thinking about how to approach VAM as a noob and how to imagine its uses for something other than onanism. I hope you'll enjoy it enough on your journey that you create (or import) something wonderful.
