Solved Head not Pointing at Camera

[Jedi]

Hi, I wonder if there is a toggle switch or setting somewhere to make the models head point at the player/camera or a specific target. Once i loaded VAM and the head was pointing at the camera. All the other times just the eyes point at the camera. I already found the Auto Behaviours Eye Control settings; that just controls the eyes.

 

[Brody_09]

There is a plugin I use called 'Real Gaze' This will include head and body movement to look at and away from the target (look-target or player)

 

[Jedi]

Ok thanks I will check that out.
I found out what happened to me with it being on once. There is plugins included in VaM1.20 that must have auto loaded once in a example scene and carried over to other scenes somehow. idk how that happened but I found the plugins. It was also activating breathing animations. So to activate:

1:Select Character (key shortcut :N: cycles selection)(or use green select person button)
GoTo Plugins > Add Plugin >Select File > McGrubber.Life.10 (in left panel list)> MacGrubber_Life.cslist > Open Custom UI's: to change breathing sounds and make other adjustments.

This turns on auto breathing and Gaze control that makes the head point at the camera.

 

[Jedi]

The 'Real Gaze' plugin is different in that it moves the torso and gives you more options.
Here is the link for it: https://hub.virtamate.com/resources/realgaze-by-pornaway4148415.1908/

Macs next Plugin 12 solves the upside down problem that is not addressed by Real Gaze.

 

[MacGruber]

Just for additional info:

• Note that you can animate the EyeTargetControl of a character to control where Life#Gaze looks at, e.g. using IdlePoser with anchored animation or some Timeline stuff.
• Life 12 released yesterday with improvements to it's Gaze plugin, it can now properly handle characters that are not upright. I had a quick try with RealGaze just now and it seems to have the same problem, although there might be some option I'm not aware of.

 

[Jedi]

Just for additional info:

• Note that you can animate the EyeTargetControl of a character to control where Life#Gaze looks at, e.g. using IdlePoser with anchored animation or some Timeline stuff.
• Life 12 released yesterdaywith improvements to it's Gaze plugin, it can now properly handle characters that are not upright. I had a quick try with RealGaze just now and it seems to have the same problem, although there might be some option I'm not aware of.

Thats amazing you figured out how to do that.
Do any of your plugins also animate the torso or rest of the body to point at the camera or other objects? That is something that makes it more realistic; because real people move the rest of their body when they look around.

I havent checked out the Real Gaze yet, but what I would like to see in this kind of plugin is sliders that affect the amount that various joints point towards the camera; like the "Look at Me Pose Control" in DAZ that lets you set joint % towards the camera for still shots. But with VaM it should be live tracking of multiple joints. So you could also set the head to be pointing like 0%-100% towards the camera, instead of always totally at the camera.

And also being able to animate the sliders would be great like you can do in Maya on most slider functions.

Oh and my other question is where can you adjust the limits for how much the head turns to look. Because as it is set it stops too soon. Real people can turn their heads further than that.

And my other question is about Life 12 Payment. Can people pay once for it or is it a monthly thing.

And did you update other parts like the breathing or add anything elce other than the upside down look correction in the upgrade from 11 to 12?
I notice you said in the release:

" Besides this I made some improvements on how you can swap parts of the modular code of the Life package for your own! It's still a bit struggle to create such a VAR, VaM does not recognize the reference to Life.12 on its own, so you have to add the reference manually in the meta.json file. I attached an example of a Life version that does not do mouth/lips animation, as this was something that was requested multiple times so other plugins can take control of that. Note that if you want to re-release major parts of Life in modified form, you have to wait for EarlyAccess to end and release under CC-BY-SA license. "

Can you please explain how to swap parts of modular code; and what could we do with that? And how exactly would one edit the meta.json file so that Life.12 works. Are you saying this version does not do mouth/lips animations? Or that included in the release is also a no mouth version. What plugin do they say is better for that?

 

[MacGruber]

@Jedi

1. My Gaze plugin does only rotate the headControl. Everything else should come from other plugins, such as IdlePoser. IdlePoser can do animate in relation for another character, e.g. the one you possess, but there is no ability to turn towards something at this point.
2. You apparently want a plugin that magically does everything. You either get a single purpose plugin that only works for a particular situation like the character standing in front of you or you get complex configuration UI to the point in becomes unusable.
3. Silders in my plugins can always be animated through VaM triggers.
4. My business model is "EarlyAccess", you just pay to get stuff earlier. Usually after about 2 weeks my stuff is uploaded here to the hub for free. I have no tiers like some other creators, you just pay what you think it is worth to you. Minimum is just 1$. Since I'm doing all kinds of things, like 1/3 of my Patreons just subscribe for a month whenever there is something interesting and instantly unsubscribe again. Occasionally, I post work in progress stuff (text, pictures or video) that is only accessible for Patreons, but everything downloadable is always EarlyAccess and the description/pictures are always also accessible here on the hub, so you know what you get.
5. Life is not a single plugin, it is split into modular sub-plugins that work together. There is a core ("Breathing") that selects the breath audio and plays it and provides timing data. Then you have drivers, that do things with that timing data, such as animating morphs ("DriverBreathing") or the thrust driver that can for example move the hip ("DriverThrust"). As a coder you could swap some of those parts out for others. Like you could use a different morph driver because you want to use different morphs. What I provided as an example is a modification that does not do any mouth animation, because someone wanted to animate the mouth on his own, I think to have speech audio? It was a request, but I don't think speech does work that well when Life does not know about it and keeps doing breathing animation. This example is a separate VAR package, containing only the actual modification and referencing to Life.12 for the rest of the code and the audio data. I don't recommend to mess with this for non-coders, unless you make trivial changes like referencing a different morph, etc. There are also entirely separate plugin parts like "Gaze", which you could swap for RealGaze as you already figured out. "IdlePoser" is also considered such a separate part, although its in its own package for easier maintenance.

 

[booyakshaka]

My business model is "EarlyAccess", you just pay to get stuff earlier. Usually after about 2 weeks my stuff is uploaded here to the hub for free. I have no tiers like some other creators, you just pay what you think it is worth to you. Minimum is just 1$. Since I'm doing all kinds of things, like 1/3 of my Patreons just subscribe for a month whenever there is something interesting and instantly unsubscribe again. Occasionally, I post work in progress stuff (text, pictures or video) that is only accessible for Patreons, but everything downloadable is always EarlyAccess and the description/pictures are always also accessible here on the hub, so you know what you get.

Hey, this actually raises a point I was thinking about last night.

Am very new to the whole VAM thing, and it's awesome how many creators are making content, but there's a finite limit to how many I can feasibly support.

I have wondered about doing the subscribe then unsubscribe thing, but part of me feels it's kinda rude to do so, so it's really interesting to see this view from a creators point.

Am I correct in thinking (that you at least, you can't speak for everyone!) have no problem with people doing this?

On a note about your gaze plugin, I haven't used it yet but was about to take a look, does it 100% of the time focus gaze on the player? Is there a way to have a more natural feel, where sometimes the eyes kinda wander off a bit and then come back?

I don't know if you've played elder scrolls or fallout games, it always feels weird when a character you are talking to looks at you 100% of the time and never takes eyes off you for a second, if it happened in real life one would feel VERY much under intense scrutiny and dislike it.

EDIT: on a side note, I have just downloaded MacGruber life from patreon site, forgive the noobyness, but what do I do with extracted zip, just drag across to my virt-a-mate folder?

 

[MacGruber]

For me personally, I'm fine with people jumping on and off all the time. You can unsubscribe already a minute or two after subscribing, as soon as the payment shows as completed in your Patreon account. You still have access for the rest of the month.

Yes, my Gaze plugin is intended to focus on the player or eyeTarget all the time. As I said earlier, the intention is that you move the eyeTarget around to interesting spots, e.g. using IdlePoser, Timeline or something like that.

PLEASE do NOT extract VAR packages, unless you know what you are doing! Just put them into your AddonPackages folder. For packages that have been uploaded on the hub, you can use the Hub-Browser within VaM to download packages. VaM can also auto-download dependencies for you, at least the free ones that are on the Hub, there is a button in the PackageManager window.

 

[booyakshaka]

PLEASE do NOT extract VAR packages, unless you know what you are doing!

The chances of me knowing what I'm doing really aren't that great XD

However the file I downloaded was MacGruber.Life.12.zip not var so I assumed I needed to extract this?

I have read somewhere that var files are basically another form of zip and can be renamed to var, but I didn't want to do that unless it is explicitly instructed.

When I unzipped the file there is no var file, this is what it shows: https://gyazo.com/f85951572b540d50092165189dbeb0ed

So do I rename the file MacGruber.Life.12.zip to MacGruber.Life.12.var and then drag to the virt-a-mate folder?

Yes, my Gaze plugin is intended to focus on the player or eyeTarget all the time. As I said earlier, the intention is that you move the eyeTarget around to interesting spots, e.g. using IdlePoser, Timeline or something like that.

Fair enough, cheers

For me personally, I'm fine with people jumping on and off all the time. You can unsubscribe already a minute or two after subscribing, as soon as the payment shows as completed in your Patreon account. You still have access for the rest of the month.

Cheers for that, it will actually make me more wiling to support more people knowing I'm not ethically committed to not drop once I got what I want if that makes sense

 

[MacGruber]

However the file I downloaded was MacGruber.Life.12.zip not var so I assumed I needed to extract this?

Can you tell me where exactly you downloaded this and which browser you used (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, etc)?

 

[MacGruber]

Did some testing....apparently Firefox thinks its a good idea to just rename Life.12.var file to Life.12.zip when downloading. What the actual f***? Usability at its best!

Please just rename back to .var for now until I can figure out how to solve this. I think this might be where all this confusion about how to handle VAR files comes from. Argh...

 

[booyakshaka]

ahh sorry it's caused some problems, but I guess is better to know!

I use chrome, so it's doing the same in there it seems, I downloaded directly from your patreon site.

Am happy to rename it, maybe it might be useful to let people know to do that on future var files rather than try and figure if you can get around chrome/firefox settings for other users? I don't think it's your problem to solve tbh, but a note about it may be helpful

 

[MacGruber]

I use chrome, so it's doing the same in there it seems, I downloaded directly from your patreon site.

I'm using Chrome as my main browser and I never had that problem. For me both Edge and Chrome do just fine with Life.12.

 

[Jedi]

The 'Real Gaze' plugin is different in that it moves the torso and gives you more options.
Here is the link for it: https://hub.virtamate.com/resources/realgaze-by-pornaway4148415.1908/

Macs next Plugin 12 solves the upside down problem that is not addressed by Real Gaze.

Update: I was able to check out the Real Gaze plugin, and found it always looks away uncontrollably. In the documentation it says that it is a known bug that only happens when the target/camera is behind the model. But that is not the case; it happens no matter where the camera is.