Question how does the skinning system work?

[thx1138]

I was wondering if anyone has links or a description of how the skinning system works for VAM or experiments with it? From what I see, it looks like the skin is dynamically smoothly molded around the underlying body collider structure/morphs, so technically there isn't any mesh to interact with programmatically/plugin-wise at the creator level? Orifice interactions/insertions have a papery-thin geometry aspect to them and I'm guessing that gets into the current computational limits with not wanting to add too much detail.

 

[TToby]

If I understand you correctly, you think much too far. VaM is using the Genesis 2 models from DAZ3D, and even the UV-Maps and the rigging are the same. These models do have a very classical, not too dense mesh, which you have to deal with if you are creating new morphs, for instance. The smoothing function is nice, but not a high-tec thingy. It is only smoothing out the mesh in a non-intelligent way, which is sometimes frustrating enough, if you are trying to create fine detailed morphs. If you are interested in this, there are tons of google hits by searching for DAZ3D. Or you can one-click export the mesh as OBJ and take a look at it yourselfe.

 

[thx1138]

It is only smoothing out the mesh in a non-intelligent way, which is sometimes frustrating enough, if you are trying to create fine detailed morphs.

I think this is part of what I'm grappling with in terms of understanding the limits of interactions(liquid, hand collisions or lack thereof) with the existing models - reading through the VAM wiki creator link tutorials I see the mesh vertex count is set and can be morphed but not changed - so seems like a limitation in regards to additional details or refinement without using a different genesis model I am guessing. I'm familiar with using unity,C# and blender/obj but not DAZ3D so still learning about what the genesis models and what creators/developers are looking forward to in future versions.

 

[thx1138]

This thread discusses some of the issues and partial solutions (for DAZ).

Indenting Skin Where It Touches Objects

Hello peoples. New user here.

www.daz3d.com

 

[TToby]

Hi, sorry for not answering, but I have totally lost myself in AI Shoujo and Koikatsu for some weeks now. The quaity is much behind VaM and VaM is still no1, but the girls are much more "alife".

The collisions, as you may already know, are not a function of the mesh, but a very simple (but in that time ingenious) "tinkering-solution" of the very early VaM. I hope 2.0 will bring real mesh collision. In 1.x the whole body is totally filled with many different geometrical figures of Unity colliders. If you morph a body part, the geometrical colliders in this area will change their size and position, as good as possible (which is a limitation, of course).

Yes, the vertex count is fixed. Not sure if this is technical an issue with VaM, but so you are using DAZ3D for creating new custom morphs, it is a strict limitation of the DAZ morph importer. One vertex more or less and the importer refuses to create the morph.
The new DAZ models Genesis 3 and 8, which are planned for VaM 2.x, have this limitations, too. There are pros and cons using DAZ. I am a big fan of the idea to use DAZ stuff, because the DAZ community is incredibly huge. If VaM has only used some very few own morphs, textures and clothes from the beginning, I doubt it would have become this big as it is today. As a former DAZ user, I see VaM a bit like "DAZ VR".

The new DAZ models are nice (but don't expect wonders), with a somewhat better mesh geometry and some very intresting new features, like morphs that trigger other morphs (rising the arm will morph shoulder and back, too, for instance). But much more I am waiting for all the new Unity features, like enhanced CPU multi core support and way better rendering.