Export characters settings

[dadirector]

Hi,
is there a way to export the settings of a character. i know we can save presets, but sometime it's easier to have a reference of your work to ease doing modifications?

 

[TToby]

If I understand your question correctly (?) then: No.
Those presets are allready some kind of export of settings.
If you want to have an overview of what stuff you have used in your character,
then go to the hair, clothes, or morphs tabs and select "show only used".
This will show you all the morphs, for instance, that you have used in your look.
AFAIK there is no plugin to collect those informations to an external list.

There is unfortunately no way to (easily) do a list of the stuff you have used in you look from different downloads/var files, if you want to sort out which Var file to keep and which to delete. This is one of the big unsolved problems with VaM.

 

[dadirector]

thanks @TToby

 

[WolfmanVR]

@dadirector - If you want a reference that is outside of VaM, your best bet is to save the model that you want "exported", just like doing a regular save. Then go into the saves/scene folder and find the .json file of your saved model/scene. Besides telling you the relative position of all the limbs, etc, you can also see all of the morph settings. Search for "morphs" in the file, and below it you'll see all the morphs that have been moved from their default positions. For example, I pulled the following few entries from a save file:


"morphs" : [
{
"uid" : "Forearms Size",
"name" : "Forearms Size",
"value" : "0.08240333"
},
{
"uid" : "Shoulder Width",
"name" : "Shoulder Width",
"value" : "-1.740084"
},
{
"uid" : "Upper Arms Size",
"name" : "Upper Arms Size",
"value" : "0.7256838"
},
{
"uid" : "Lats Size",
"name" : "Lats Size",
"value" : "0.4164904"
},
..... ETC.

Note that if you have multiple people, hair, objects, etc, all with morphs, there will by multiple morph sections in the file. So for ease of use, you'll probably want to have a bare-bones scene with nothing other than your model that you want "exported". Then there will only be a single "morphs" section. Make sense?

 

[dadirector]

@dadirector - If you want a reference that is outside of VaM, your best bet is to save the model that you want "exported", just like doing a regular save. Then go into the saves/scene folder and find the .json file of your saved model/scene. Besides telling you the relative position of all the limbs, etc, you can also see all of the morph settings. Search for "morphs" in the file, and below it you'll see all the morphs that have been moved from their default positions. For example, I pulled the following few entries from a save file:


"morphs" : [
{
"uid" : "Forearms Size",
"name" : "Forearms Size",
"value" : "0.08240333"
},
{
"uid" : "Shoulder Width",
"name" : "Shoulder Width",
"value" : "-1.740084"
},
{
"uid" : "Upper Arms Size",
"name" : "Upper Arms Size",
"value" : "0.7256838"
},
{
"uid" : "Lats Size",
"name" : "Lats Size",
"value" : "0.4164904"
},
..... ETC.

Note that if you have multiple people, hair, objects, etc, all with morphs, there will by multiple morph sections in the file. So for ease of use, you'll probably want to have a bare-bones scene with nothing other than your model that you want "exported". Then there will only be a single "morphs" section. Make sense?

that's great thanks that will help a lot

 

[TToby]

??? I thought this was way to laborious and cumbersome to use for all of your looks, and in no way "easy to do modifications".
Maybe it is because I still don't understand for what you want a static list like that.
Many of my own looks have many hundreds of morphs. This long list would be very impractical for an reference, I think?
Usually I simply merge my looks on a certain point with Morph Merger, or I save a "reference" appearance preset to do different modifications from this point on.
Or why not make an extra subfolder for each of your looks and save an appearance preset for every few of your morph changes like a backup copy. I do this a lot myself.
There is even a plugin that can give you some sort of basic "undo" function for a number of last used morphs in a session.

But if you really want such a static list, I would suggest to save a Morph Preset and use the .json of this preset, instead of the full look. This will have much less unneeded stuff in it and therefore will be a bit easier to read.

 

[WolfmanVR]

??? I thought this was way to laborious and cumbersome to use for all of your looks, and in no way "easy to do modifications".
Maybe it is because I still don't understand for what you want a static list like that.
Many of my own looks have many hundreds of morphs. This long list would be very impractical for an reference, I think?
Usually I simply merge my looks on a certain point with Morph Merger, or I save a "reference" appearance preset to do different modifications from this point on.
Or why not make an extra subfolder for each of your looks and save an appearance preset for every few of your morph changes like a backup copy. I do this a lot myself.
There is even a plugin that can give you some sort of basic "undo" function for a number of last used morphs in a session.

But if you really want such a static list, I would suggest to save a Morph Preset and use the .json of this preset, instead of the full look. This will have much less unneeded stuff in it and therefore will be a bit easier to read.

Yeah, it's not the most user friendly idea, haha, but I could see how it could be handy. Perhaps if you wanted to just migrate "breast*" settings, you could search the file for breasts over and over, and toggle back and forth between VaM and the json file to manually replicate the settings into a new model. Just an idea...

But agreed, using the save appearance function is probably more practical to replicate a look, but it's an all-or-nothing approach.

 

[RandomVAMUser]

If there's plugin that can auto zero/default selected morph categories than using morph preset might be an option (to some extent).
Maybe have morph presets with only specific parts (head, body, hip, legs...etc)

But sadly there's a kicker with merge loading, it merges stuff with active morphs (no way to load preset on existing look and use only morphs from that preset inside XXcategory) ...using morphManager, Merger, Mixer might solve that?

morph presets have option to load unlisted(default) morphs from preset, or not (it set "false"),
also any "default" morphs set at 0 are stored inside preset (but not when at default value, even if that value is 0).

However this still doesn't fully "sort" morphs inside categories you wanna save/keep/load/replace
For example: if you keep all head stuff (head, mouth, eyes, jaw...), any unused morphs at 0 value are not stored with preset (since it's at default value).
When merge loading that preset it loads only stored morphs, but it also keeps other "head" morphs (that are already active, not zeroed out/default).

Really no simple way to just replace exact body part...but maybe an idea for someone who is willing to mess with plugins (if something like it is possible).

you can try manually spliting look into 3-4 morph presets (head, body, breasts, limbs, or whatever categories...)
than reset look/load default look,
inside each saved preset set "setUnlistedParamsToDefault" : "false",
after that merge load those presets over that default look.
End result might resemble your original look, but not 100% (if you merge load those parts over different look it's gonna resemble it even less)

If only there is a way to actually save unused morphs at 0 value inside categories you wanna store (it would be a game changer for merging body parts and still have option to tweak it Vs. merged head morph).

 

[TToby]

I would also suggest to take a close look at the Morph Mass Manager.
It has the functionality to „compare“ two looks and then undo, or partially undo, or copy over changes you have made on different body parts. So it would automatically do the work of comparing the json files by hand, or kind of. It works pretty good, but unfortunately it can‘t handle merged full body morphs. But that would be the same with the static list: If a full body morph changes the breasts AND butt, you simply can‘t keep the changes on the breasts and only undo the changes to the butt… As long as you don‘t start to compare and edit vector values in the morph file by hand, too.

 

[WolfmanVR]

I suppose it really depends on what the OP is trying to do. If someone just wants to be able to go back multiple versions of a character but not roll back a large scene they are working on, I suggest saving often to different filenames (which is always a good idea to have at least a couple anyway, in case you make a catastrophic mistake). Then you can load up an old version of the scene and save that particular look, appearance or pose of a model that you want to go back to. Finally, reload your newer/newest version of the same scene and drop in that older version of the model by loading the look/appearance/pose on it. You could also just save looks/appearances/poses as you go along, but I think that would be more confusing than just saving the entire scene which might give you more context. Organization is key though, with a good naming strategy, because soon you'll have a lot of scene saves that could be near duplicates of each other...

 

[TToby]

Organization is key though, with a good naming strategy

True words. My ingenious naming strategy for my many appearance presets are like:
UglyButSexy01 - UglyButSexy24verythin;
or
NewMilf2022_01 - NewMilf2022new_09b


I really rely on the „show old to new“ sorting function in VaM a lot.

 

[WolfmanVR]

True words. My ingenious naming strategy for my many appearance presets are like:
UglyButSexy01 - UglyButSexy24verythin;
or
NewMilf2022_01 - NewMilf2022new_09b


I really rely on the „show old to new“ sorting function in VaM a lot.

hahahahaha And then comes...
UglyButSexy01 - UglyButSexy24verythin_fix
UglyButSexy01 - UglyButSexy24verythin_fix2
UglyButSexy01 - UglyButSexy24verythin_fix3
UglyButSexy01 - UglyButSexy24verythin_fix3_redo
UglyButSexy01 - UglyButSexy24verythin_fix3_crap_go_back_to_2.

 

[TToby]

You‘ve got it!

 

[RandomVAMUser]

I hate to admit it...but my app.presets are sorted in similar fashion (or total mess, depending how you look at it).

It usually starts from somewhat "organized", like "CleoV1", "CleoV2" and so on...
Than i comeback to CleoV1 and make 0_CleoV1tmp (since it's "temporally" and i gonna delete it, right?...NO)

Atm i have 5 main Cleo versions, each with 2-4 sub-versions (example: CleoV2+++, CleoV5+, CleoV5tmp, CleoV5tmp2, CleoV5tmp22)

I usually use sort by name ("easier" to find ).
Once i get to~100 presets, simply create new subfolder and move on.
Naming doesn't make much sense, but i "kinda" know what key differences are.
Looking at thumbnail, depending where it points (head, butt, legs, zoom2face,...).

Also i stopped renaming scenes (auto naming ftw), so i know approx. where stuff is (after 100-150 scenes, dump new folder, move on).