VaM 1.x Additional dependencies occur during packaging

[whitelemon]

As an independent look content creator, my scenes typically do not include dependencies from other authors' works. Throughout my workflow, the resources I have used mainly consist of textures from the jackaroo male base folder, as well as eye shadows and reflections from paledriver (with proper authorization). However, with the recent requirement to review package body dependencies for free VAR uploads, I have noticed that my projects contain various unused resources, such as assets related to vamx and splinevr. I am also a regular user of vamx and have installed numerous scenes created by other authors. I am uncertain whether this issue is caused by having too many scenes installed. I would appreciate it if any experts could provide clarification on this matter. Thank you.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

Hair, clothing and morphs are the usual suspects for mushrooming dependency lists. Hair, especially seems to have so many duplicates on the hub that it's tricky to get the one from the original creator. If you just click the first one you see, it might be from somebody else's scene or look, which pulls in the whole scene. This causes tons of sub-dependencies. I looked at some of your older free looks. They have massive dependency lists, many of which are sub-dependencies. A simple look should not have > 100 dependencies.

What you have installed is only an issue in that you may have a lot of duplicate assets in there, leading to the above problem of not getting the original standalone item you wanted. The Package Builder only goes by what you put in the scene or look. You can examine the meta.json in the AddonPackagesBuilder folder after you create a var. It has all the info in there. If you see some referenced var with lots of stuff indented below that var's level, that's one of the culprits. You may have wanted only one item in that indented list, but it pulled in all of it, because you referenced the wrong one. The issue of duplicate content is one of Vam's serious weaknesses. As a content creator, it's up to you to be careful where you get your items to put in your scenes or looks.

 

[CV42]

Try manually editing the scene.json and meta.json (of the .var). Just Ctrl+F to find the culprits in there. The structure and syntax of the meta.json is pretty simple and self explanatory.

Some resources have unnecessary sub dependencies listed which automatically get added to ones own dependencies when using them in a scene.

Imo manual editing is the best way to sort things out.

 

[boomer2hand]

Open the scene and purge unused assets, most apps have a “clean dependencies” tool. After that, VAR upload should pass.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

Hand-editing json files is powerful, but there are land mines in there. The syntax is fairly simple, but easy to break. If you're going to do that, use a text editor that flags syntax errors in that format. In general, fixing the scene in Vam is still the best, IMO.

 

[CV42]

Hand-editing json files is powerful, but there are land mines in there. The syntax is fairly simple, but easy to break. If you're going to do that, use a text editor that flags syntax errors in that format. In general, fixing the scene in Vam is still the best, IMO.

I find that rather often it isn't even possible to fix things properly within VAM. Stuff like badly packaged hair resources that have plugins, looks or whole scenes as dependencies. Only way to remove such things is manual editing.

Ofc things can break but we always can try again with a new copy of the scene or a new package.

Visual Studio Code is pretty good for the job. Syntax highlighting helps a lot with avoiding mistakes and understanding the block structure.