Plugins Crowd Generator

[4lt3r3glo]

How about that nude version @hazmhox

 

[Bob Nothing]

@hazmhox , any chance you could add the option of a 'just female' crowd, or 'just male' crowd? For example, trying to do a bachelorette party scene, want the crowd to be all female. Or possibly a 'radio box' check box to select which characters make up the crowd, then I could just select only female characters.

 

[Shylock]

In scenes this plugin has been used in, many of them I have found myself wishing that some or all of the people were holding phone cameras to film/stream/record the action. Is this something that's possible? I think it would fit so many situations.

 

[Shylock]

To support what I was saying, I feel much of what we are requesting could slot into the plugin with minimum effort. In the seeding section, having a toggle for all male or all female, and some check boxes for all white, all black, and all Asian. Adding the phone cameras to the animation section could be a quick thing, just a pose or three of people holding phones. A further suggestion would be a few poses of people pleasuring or readying themselves, along with being naked, but that is clearly a bigger addition.

It would be great to get a lesson on how to modify this ourselves if you can't find the time.

 

[hazmhox]

I'm gonna be blunt honest here, no matter what is the original intention ( friendly, or not if you prefer ).
At best, imagine you're getting that reaction for all the other people who had the same way of asking for stuff prior to you. And you're the "lucky" one to get the result of all those requests, lacking a bit of tact, respect and hindsight.

First, this how you make a request, like @Bob Nothing :

any chance you could add the option of a 'just female' crowd, or 'just male' crowd? For example, trying to do a bachelorette party scene, want the crowd to be all female. Or possibly a 'radio box' check box to select which characters make up the crowd, then I could just select only female characters.

No estimation, no time frame, no work load assumption. Simply "could this be possible".

"Minimum effort", "quick thing"... this is all assumption, coming from someone that has shared zero resources for the community over four months of being registered on the hub. Even further, the end of your request asking for "how to modify" this, means either you did not even look at the code OR you have absolutely zero technical background to understand this. Which is a complete paradox if you take the liberty of estimating how much time an update would take me.

No matter how "you feel"... all my standalone content is free, CC-BY-SA, and does not need you to subscribe to a single patreon to benefit from it. The reason behind that is that: I do whatever I want, however I want, whenever I want. I don't owe anything to anybody by putting a resource on the hub, nor players/creators are entitled to ask for something because they use it. I can consider things, which is what I do most of the time if it's relevant... but I have no obligation to do so.

Now, since it seems you want to know, this is what kind of workload we're talking about for handling the content of the Crowd Generator:

• Finding the models, which means
  • Either creating them from scratch
  • OR porting them, which means migrating the texture, materials, models
• Rigging the models (which even with an auto-rig is a quite tedious process)
• Finding the animation, testing them
• Creating/updating the blend tree (which has a ton of animation currently already)
• Writing/Updating the code to handle all this
• Updating the var
• Testing the var
• Releasing the var

A "quick thing", like adding a phone is not... quick. I don't do "quick", I do right. Which means, I would have to find animations that would fit a person holding a phone, OR duplicate and modify the animations (and potentially the rig) just for that.

Looking at the Crowd Generator, this plugin/asset, is on the low end of the spectrum for the "popularity" in all my content... with less than 60 references. My successful content being around 200/300 or even almost 2000 for some being used the most. Which puts this one very low in the "priority" list. Further than that, my priority list is driven by what pushes the quality of the content for the community, so, at the moment it's VAMMoan 2 and VAMStory or any plugins I see used at the moment.

All that being said, even if it feels harsh. I have no grudge against you, but this is to show you that you have pretty much zero idea of the work load on that specific plugin nor my overall work load on the other stuffs I'm working on.

This is a rule of thumb when you talk to a coder or a creator/artist: you don't estimate the load, complexity, time, delay or duration on something. If you have a "working relationship" with said coder or artist, you can ask for a duration if you need to handle a planning process. But in any other situation, you simple humbly and kindly ask or suggest something. Period. ( and even more with free content )

I'm gonna give you a great example, for what anyone could perceive as "easy": adding a checkbox for an option.
You know why my content almost never has "hotfixes"? It's because I'm extremely careful in my creation process. For a single checkbox:

• Updating the code
• Updating the var file
• Firing up my working VAM:
  • Testing at least 3 legacy scenes to check if the plugin still reloads everything properly.
  • Loading at least one scene and editing it with the new option, saving, reloading to check the storing process
  • Creating a new scene from scratch to see if it works from a blank slate
• Firing up my clean VAM: doing the same three steps as above
• Optional (but often happens): relying on my close vam friends to test it out and ensure I haven't missed anything
• Going on the hub, updating the plugin, writing a proper update post ( sometimes with screenshots and tutorials/documentation )
• Depending on the complexity or importance of the checkbox, updating the main documentation of the asset/plugin.

For a single frikkin' checkbox (and this happened in the years I've been doing VAM content), this is at least 2 hours spent to ensure there is ZERO friction on the player/creator's end. No "ho shoot! I made a mistake", no "Hey man your release is bugged". Clean release. People download, use, it works.
For something that took less than 10 minutes in terms of code, the overall release took me two hours. For a single checkbox.

I generally don't tend to judge my content myself, but one thing I'm really proud of and it's a fact: I'm doing very clean and stable releases 95% of the time. This is not something that happens out of luck. It requires patience, time, focus and organization. What anyone sees as a single checkbox in a release is far more work on my end than it looks. And the average quality of a var release should give you some clues about how hard it is to release proper and clean content.

So... please, in the future, for any request/suggestion: simply kindly ask without assuming anything.

 

[Shylock]

I apologize, I shouldn't have worded it like that, it won't happen again. Though, it is good to know this plugin hasn't been forgotten. I understand your other works are increasingly core to the creatives process, but surprised Crowd is that low, it provides so much life to a scene. So, please accept my apology and know I deeply appreciate your efforts.

 

[hazmhox]

I apologize, I shouldn't have worded it like that, it won't happen again. Though, it is good to know this plugin hasn't been forgotten. I understand your other works are increasingly core to the creatives process, but surprised Crowd is that low, it provides so much life to a scene. So, please accept my apology and know I deeply appreciate your efforts.

Thank you very much.

Due to a couple of new tools I got, I might bring new characters at some point (also new features), but there's also VAM2 slowly creeping... so maybe it might be something to look out for in VAM2