Plugins AnimationPoser

[fyxtc]

Hi, Morph Capures selection is too slow, maybe limit range in fav will be better?

 

[haremlife]

Hello, will the new version be updated recently? I have to check it every day

Sorry yes, I'm working on it, there are new recent commits but now I need to make a major messages refactor (because I figured that messages are better off being plugin globals instead of per animation). This is involving a refactor of the entire ui code because it is very bloated and repetitive. This ui refactoring is supposed to reduce the amount of UI bugs too.

 

[haremlife]

Hi, Morph Capures selection is too slow, maybe limit range in fav will be better?

You can kind of do this if you make your list of favorite morphs of a given category and save it as a layer (without any states added).

 

[fyxtc]

How can I change the curve type between states?

 

[haremlife]

Hey guys, virt-a-mate has always been very detrimental to my health. A long time ago, I decided it wasn't good for me and that I should stop it, but the AnimationPoser project made me keep going because I felt I owned people to finish what I had started. Truth is I never intended to make the project from start to finish, I just wanted to show other plugin creators the ideas I felt were missing in animation in general, but the complete lack of support from other plugin creators has made me have no other choice than finishing the plugin by myself, or else dropping it and disappointing a lot of people.

Right now, the plugin is 95% complete. But this last 5% stretch is being impossible for me since it is not just about code, it is about seeing things working in a screen, putting together a huge demo that could show everything the plugin is capable of in a heavy multi-character scene, etc. This demo alone would demand weeks. Not to mention the unfinished wiki, which would take a lot of time and effort. And I just don't get a kick anymore for seeing 3d characters in a screen. Every time I try finishing the plugin, I end up wasting time with other stuff in the game and regret it because of the very bad effects it has in my health. This week I went through a very scary health issue, which had nothing to do with vam, but which made me think very seriously about how I want to spend my time from now on.

I'd be willing to guide someone who wants to finish the plugin, since there are very few things missing. But as for myself it was a hard but very important decision to finally decide to move on, because I felt enslaved to this here for far too long.

The next steps for the stable release are:

-(Optional) refactor the UI file code so that there is less repetition of code and UI bugs are not as common as they are right now, plus making it easier to add ui components.
-Refactor Messages so that they are per plugin instance, instead of per animation. It is too much overhead to add the same messages to every animation, which is by far the most common case.
-Roles are per animation, because animations can be reused with roles switched. Buttons for saving and loading a list of roles then becomes very handy.
-Add a button to connect all states of a layer in a chain (as in a timeline: State 1 -> State 2 -> State 3, etc), and another to fully connect all states (make transitions between all pairs, coming and going, with the transition defaults coming from the arriving state).
-Test everything and fix bugs

The next steps for the "VamAutomata" plugin, which would be the finished version of AnimationPoser with all intended features:

-Make transitions become a timeline of keyframes. Keyframes can be captured, etc, just like states. But they always form a timeline, meaning a deterministic linear sequence of keyframes, coming from a starting state and going into a finishing state, which is conceptually nothing else than a transition.
-Add a button to import and export transitions to/from the VamTimeline export/import format.
-Add interpolation for better fitting a curve to the keyframes in 3d space (splines, bezier, whatever).

If someone wants to make that final 5%, I'm all here for help. If you can't code, try to convince plugin developers to work on this. I really wanted to show what would become possible with this plugin, but unfortunately I lost the passion for 3d animation before being able to finish this.

 

[cdgczta8]

@haremlife you do what's best for you my dude. I can take a look at where the code stands. I also wouldn't be super dedicated (maybe I'd spend 1-3 hours/week coding this). Happy to take over or help get it across the finish line though I understand that due to my own minimal time commitment I may not be the best person for the job. I'll clone the code to my own github repo and take a look.

 

[haremlife]

@cdgczta8 I definitely believe you can do it! At least the first part above. It is really very few stuff compared with everything that we already did.

Timeline import/export is also not difficult. The complicated part is the keyframe interpolation. But by that point I'm sure someone can help with say bezier implementation.

I can give some examples of scene "scripts" that would test the intended uses of the plugin.

 

[cdgczta8]

@haremlife DM me! Would like to know what you were thinking for the UI refactoring as well. What pieces could be extracted and whatnot.

 

[sardarm]

Hey guys, virt-a-mate has always been very detrimental to my health. A long time ago, I decided it wasn't good for me and that I should stop it, but the AnimationPoser project made me keep going because I felt I owned people to finish what I had started. Truth is I never intended to make the project from start to finish, I just wanted to show other plugin creators the ideas I felt were missing in animation in general, but the complete lack of support from other plugin creators has made me have no other choice than finishing the plugin by myself, or else dropping it and disappointing a lot of people.

Right now, the plugin is 95% complete. But this last 5% stretch is being impossible for me since it is not just about code, it is about seeing things working in a screen, putting together a huge demo that could show everything the plugin is capable of in a heavy multi-character scene, etc. This demo alone would demand weeks. Not to mention the unfinished wiki, which would take a lot of time and effort. And I just don't get a kick anymore for seeing 3d characters in a screen. Every time I try finishing the plugin, I end up wasting time with other stuff in the game and regret it because of the very bad effects it has in my health. This week I went through a very scary health issue, which had nothing to do with vam, but which made me think very seriously about how I want to spend my time from now on.

I'd be willing to guide someone who wants to finish the plugin, since there are very few things missing. But as for myself it was a hard but very important decision to finally decide to move on, because I felt enslaved to this here for far too long.

The next steps for the stable release are:

-(Optional) refactor the UI file code so that there is less repetition of code and UI bugs are not as common as they are right now, plus making it easier to add ui components.
-Refactor Messages so that they are per plugin instance, instead of per animation. It is too much overhead to add the same messages to every animation, which is by far the most common case.
-Roles are per animation, because animations can be reused with roles switched. Buttons for saving and loading a list of roles then becomes very handy.
-Add a button to connect all states of a layer in a chain (as in a timeline: State 1 -> State 2 -> State 3, etc), and another to fully connect all states (make transitions between all pairs, coming and going, with the transition defaults coming from the arriving state).
-Test everything and fix bugs

The next steps for the "VamAutomata" plugin, which would be the finished version of AnimationPoser with all intended features:

-Make transitions become a timeline of keyframes. Keyframes can be captured, etc, just like states. But they always form a timeline, meaning a deterministic linear sequence of keyframes, coming from a starting state and going into a finishing state, which is conceptually nothing else than a transition.
-Add a button to import and export transitions to/from the VamTimeline export/import format.
-Add interpolation for better fitting a curve to the keyframes in 3d space (splines, bezier, whatever).

If someone wants to make that final 5%, I'm all here for help. If you can't code, try to convince plugin developers to work on this. I really wanted to show what would become possible with this plugin, but unfortunately I lost the passion for 3d animation before being able to finish this.

I'm sorry to see this news. I have a high evaluation of this plug-in and look forward to the update of the new version every day. But I support your decision. My friend, your happiness and health are really worth your attention. Thank you for the happiness your work brings me. I wish you good health.

 

[haremlife]

Thanks @sardarm. I often get surprised with such comments because of the scarse support I got regarding development. I think you guys could make some noise in order for other plugin developers to pick up on this. Like I said it is 95% there. What is missing now is a joke compared to everything that I already did. I'd just need someone to give the final push.

 

[haremlife]

Probably the biggest thing people should understand is how the "VamAutomata" (intended future name of animationposer) fits in the general vam structure. VamTimeline could be used to design Transitions (sequences of keyframes). Then, the entire machinery of animationposer would be there to ORGANIZE those transitions in terms of states, layers, animations, messages, etc, allowing for huge amounts of reusability, composability, etc, depending on few clicks, and without relying on triggers. This would be VamAutomata 1.0, and then next steps could be taken in the sense of adding more intelligent automatic behavior (for example, allowing the user to add rules such as "only transition to state K after state B is visited at least 5 times", etc).

I warn you that the developers I talked with were consistently unable to grasp those concepts and they keep thinking that the current plugins can have features like that, without realizing that, while in theory that is true, it would mean 1000x more clicks for the user in complex situations.

The best possible scenario is to combine VamTimeline keyframe editing capabilities for building Transitions (sequence of keyframes) with AnimationPoser (VamAutomata) capabilities to organize hundreds of those transitions in a complex cluster of parallel-running Markov Chains that can be at once saved, loaded and re-positioned in a whim, which is something the plugin already does perfectly.

It might seem that I'm lazy RN, but people have no idea how many entire weeks of full-time work and how many things in my personal and professional life I have lost while developing the plugin. It was excruciatingly difficult for me without any of C#, Unity or Vam development knowledge to put things together, and the lack of the expected support from other developers came with a huge price.

 

[Aty]

I'm sorry to hear that haremlife because I have been eagerly awaiting the full release of VamAutomata, but as sardarm said, your health and happiness is what matters the most! Best of luck to you, and take care of yourself

 

[cdgczta8]

Just for some visibility I am working on this and happy to collaborate with other developers so we're not duplicating efforts. Here's a brief summary of a roadmap.

Step 1: new release w/more features

• (FINISHED) move messages from per layer to per plug-in instance
• (WIP) save/load roles
• Button for auto-gen all transitions and auto-gen one-way transitions
• Add a tutorial or two (maybe a separate resource)

Step 2: refactoring and squash bugs

• I'm a fan of getting community feedback on bugs while I work so while Step 1 may not be 100% stable I'd like to do a release at that point
• Refactor the UI code to remove duplication of code
• Squash bugs

Step 3+: further development

• Integration with Timeline
• Better interpolation
• QoL improvements
• Who knows what else!

 

[haremlife]

@haremlife sorry to hear about that, I hope your health got better and things are ok now

I feel bad now for not being more coherent with my warnings about going too software-engineering about it, I had a feeling your approach was going to be a very very unsatisfying and hard path to take considering how the support around here goes. Also I feel bad for not joining to help when invited, maybe could've helped you avoid some of the troubles, at the time I was trying to do my own animation system as you know and then I left for a while


let's not be too dramatic now surely you've thrown a healthy fap or two at Ridley Weed 2.0. there's nothing wrong with vam (except for sucking big for not being an actual game but that's another story). Whatever you expected to get out of doing this huge task for free for a very cold community and wasn't satisfied is the real fault. And it's good to own our own faults so that we don't repeat them. If you want collaboration and software engineering, you do open source libraries and you know that. vam is smut and vam1 is coughing buttons and sliders on its death-bed anyway

@cdgczta8 I wish you good luck bro and hope you don't fall in the same trap

Playing virt-a-mate once a week is enough for a HUGE impact in my libido and overall energy and lifestyle. Those adverse effects have shown themselves as completely unavoidable for almost two years now. I stopped some months ago, and I gained incredible amounts of weight at the gym, recovered libido and overall health, opened a new business, etc. It is a whole new life for me. Of course those effects are personal and I'm not preaching for anyone to stop virt-a-mate. It has a lot to do with how I approached things and what I wanted out of the game. Last wednesday I tried investing some time in the demo scenes, and all of a sudden I have again lost all libido, etc. So I decided I don't want to go back there, I don't feel like it. Developing the demo scene is something that would take dozens of hours of creative, passionate work, since there is not yet a community library of animation pieces to draw from, and I don't have that passion anymore, which makes it difficult to develop the "stable release", given I'm not myself a user anymore. But I'm here to help.

 

[haremlife]

However @SPQR I would encourage you to try seeing the plugin through another angle, because it goes a lot in line with your game-like goals.

Of course the plugin has a lot of buttons and UI, in the same way as any game while it is being developed. But, once animations are developed, it becomes very much game-like, without the need to interact with the plugin. It becomes basically The Sims, with the characters walking around the house, doing actions, interacting with one another, etc.

 

[haremlife]

haremlife updated AnimationPoser with a new update entry:

The first stable release!

There has been an IMMENSE amount of development since the last version!

-Implemented an intelligent path finding mechanism whereby switching from an state to another makes the character go through a path of intermediate states that are connected through transitions. This is fully integrated with messages: this way, a message needs only to tell where the character should go (the destination state), and it finds by itself a path there through transitions and intermediary states.
-UI has been...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[haremlife]

@cmramlow has managed to keep the plugin alive with extremely helpful contributions in the github.

With this, we could finally make the plugin stand out as it should. It is possible that bugs are still there, because I still didn't create anything very involved with the plugin, but right now it feels pretty solid, and it is the first time everything stands together and works like a charm... like, in combination.

@Aty @sardarm @xueqing12 @CernoAlpha @SuperKingAbobo @VAMEnjoyer @ReignMocap @iLikeSoup @Virt-a-Dict @Lytanshade @rernat @atani @Saint66 @checkking @VamBlaster @Case @Ishimuro @Lione @IamEli247 @hentai_senpai @rabbit1qaz @fyxtc : This version is really worth a try. The goal of the previous versions was to call the attention of the community so that I could have some help in the development. This is the first time I am calling the actual end users.

Your feedback to find bugs sooner than latter will be helpful. You all have seen pretty broken versions of the plugin before. This is the first time I'm really betting on it and calling for a wider trial.

 

[haremlife]

It's god damn working. Tested it now for real. Was able to build a scene for the first time using the plugin. It's holding up very, very well.

 

[Virt-a-Dict]

@haremlife Thank you so much for the great effort you are putting into this plugin.
Imo the next step or I should probably say the very very very next step should be to finally create a package of pre-built animations which can be directly loaded and used.
I'm sure if you start sharing the countless animations that you surely did work on while creating and improving this plugin the community will start to contribute too. And I don't mean this in any bad way. But despite being very powerful, it is a rather complicated plugin which offers you zero content at the start. You have to start from scratch. It would be so great if there where walking, jumping, dancing, etc animations already included. People would start to modify those and surely soon start to create entirely new ones.
But thanks again! It is a great plugin!

 

[rernat]

Very promising, thx for the effort.
But it needs a tutorial or a manual. I'm experienced with idle poser but don't really get how to use the additional functionality animation poser provides.

 

[cdgczta8]

@rernat @Virt-a-Dict I have a very bare bones demo here to get you started

A Night with Ava (AnimationPoser Demo) - Scenes -

Enjoy a night with Ava and learn how to use AnimationPoser! Currently you can test out a blowjob and a cowgirl animation. You can look through Ava's AnimationPoser plugin to learn how to use it. Feel free to ask me questions in the discussion...

hub.virtamate.com

Will update later to the latest version if AnimationPoser.

 

[haremlife]

Very promising, thx for the effort.
But it needs a tutorial or a manual. I'm experienced with idle poser but don't really get how to use the additional functionality animation poser provides.

Hey! Did you check the wiki? It is not complete, but covers the basic features. You probably will need a significant amount of time playing with those features before you start needing stuff like sync layers, roles, messages or cross-animation transitions (which are yet not covered in the wiki), because you gotta have some different layers, animations and characters first for that to be necessary.

 

[haremlife]

@haremlife Thank you so much for the great effort you are putting into this plugin.
Imo the next step or I should probably say the very very very next step should be to finally create a package of pre-built animations which can be directly loaded and used.
I'm sure if you start sharing the countless animations that you surely did work on while creating and improving this plugin the community will start to contribute too. And I don't mean this in any bad way. But despite being very powerful, it is a rather complicated plugin which offers you zero content at the start. You have to start from scratch. It would be so great if there where walking, jumping, dancing, etc animations already included. People would start to modify those and surely soon start to create entirely new ones.
But thanks again! It is a great plugin!

I was never able to play with the plugin before! This is the first time!

I have some very basic animation pieces for kissing only. I'm working on a demo now. It is the first time since the project started in march 2021 that I am able to work on actual content instead of code. Actually; the first time since I got virt-a-mate that I can actually build animations. Probably can share something very soon!

"it is a rather complicated plugin which offers you zero content at the start"

Definitely something that will improve now that the plugin actually works Excited to see community content.

But another thing that will help is when Timeline import is implemented. Then, every Timeline animation will be able to be instantly imported and re-positioned, not to mention mocap. Timeline import is not that hard to implement I think. The hard part is implementing curves so that they look the same as in Timeline. But, even before that, it will be possible to import lots of stuff to play with, even if it doesn't look that great at first.