I have elaborate scenes that I want to share with you all!

[PuppetMaster]

Long time lurker and creator, first time poster.

I downloaded VAM about a year ago and have explored for hours and hours on end ever since. Constantly downloading new scenes and content, but mostly creating my own scenes and exploring all of the new resources that become available. Truly amazing stuff! Kudos to all the amazing creators out there.

I've now invested so many hours that the scenes I've created are now quite elaborate. I've used @Acid Bubbles Timeline plugin for easily over 100+ hours, and I feel I know it inside out. It truly is an amazing fundamental tool for creating scenes. I've incorporated a plethora of other plugins to achieve interactive voice control (VoiceControl by @VeeRifter ), complex camera systems (Searchlight by @ky1001 with Rubberleash by @Acid Bubbles ), implemented hundreds of custom sounds (Audiomate by @dub ), realistic ass and breasts (Naturalis by @everlaster ) and all sorts of really neat stuff! I've recently been using the incredible Alive plugin by @SPQR ) to communicate with the people in the scene with AI (running oobabooga locally) including text to speech and speech to text using elevenlabs voices I've created. I'm now having conversations with the VAM character! Amazing. I've also been following the Voxta project closely, can't wait to see what they achieve, not to mention get my hands on it and tinker with it further!

Here's my current challenge. I feel like my scenes are wasted simply sitting on my own drive, without being enjoyed by others. However, because they have been projects for exploring the plethora of amazing resources on the hub, they're now riddled with copyrighted content, making it impossible to share in any appropriate sense. That being said, I feel the fundamental bones of each scene (with all of the fancy copyrighted extras stripped away) would still be a valuable contribution to the community that a lot of users would still get a lot of joy from.

I've researched and gone through all of the guides for package creation. I believe I understand them well enough, but personally I'm hitting a wall when it comes to technical capability. Particularly removing references once the extra content has been removed. I've tried a few times now and I simply cannot figure it out.

So I'm reaching out to the community! Does anyone feel equipped to tackle this issue with me? Guidance or even taking the task off my hands completely would be incredible. I know it's a big ask, but I thought maybe there are others, like me, that just enjoy doing this stuff.

Here's a little clip from one of my scenes, you might notice a few things like the ridiculous number of timeline animations, hotkeys, sfx, camera that moves with the target etc..

Spoiler

 

[atani]

Usually unwanted dependencies come from morphs used. Try to use a built-in person and zero out as many red morphs as you can. Do the animations work well after all that?
See if that solved most of the dependency problems, and you can target the remainder based on where they're coming from.

 

[ZRSX]

Following what atani said, I'll go a step further: try reset the custom look(s) you're using to default VAM looks. Because custom looks could often be a dependency cascade (morphs, textures, hairs, clothing... and even unnecessary plugins and assets if they've been been packaged with a demo scene using them).
If that doesn't break too many animations, that's a must-do.


I've seen that you've already read guides, but I will put this link nonetheless in case you missed it:

Guides - How to package like a pro: a guide on proper VAR building

Intro There is a recurring issue with VAR packaging. No one's to blame, really, as there is no guide on how to make a "good" VAR package. I'll try to remedy to that. In short, this guide is for you: If you’re about to post a resource starting...

hub.virtamate.com

There's a whole section about how to fix an ugly dependency list.
If you've got a lot, there is no easy way: it would be a real pain.

Seeing that you struggle to fix it in your current install, I'll suggest that you start by doing a new separate clean VAM install, where you put only the final required dependencies that you wish to keep. Once that's done, 2 options:

1. Copy your scenes save files from you old heavy install to the clean install and work from there. Try saving your scene within the new install: it should clear all dependencies that are not directly involved (for instance, a CUA atom pointing toward a missing package will remain, because the link towards the asset package is directly written into the save file).
   You scene will certainly be broken at first: if you forgot necessary dependencies, add them, refresh packages and reload. If error messages involve unwanted dependencies, you'll need to locate where they're coming from and take action to remove them within your scene (see the guide on how to do that, and yes it will be painful).
2. Or try to rebuild your scene from a new scene in your new clean install. I understand most of the work is about Timeline animations: the good new is that you can export and reimport them in your new scene. Make sure that your characters & related atoms have all the required plugins before importing, otherwise triggers won't work anymore (and even with that, I'm not 100% positive that it will be working without rebuilding the triggers). Depending on your Timeline animations, it could be a pain too. And if there is much beside those Timeline animations, it will also be tedious to remake.

I haven't done that in a very long while, I hope my memory serves me good. Anyway, pick your poison!

 

[PuppetMaster]

Following what atani said, I'll go a step further: try reset the custom look(s) you're using to default VAM looks. Because custom looks could often be a dependency cascade (morphs, textures, hairs, clothing... and even unnecessary plugins and assets if they've been been packaged with a demo scene using them).
If that doesn't break too many animations, that's a must-do.


I've seen that you've already read guides, but I will put this link nonetheless in case you missed it:

Guides - How to package like a pro: a guide on proper VAR building

Intro There is a recurring issue with VAR packaging. No one's to blame, really, as there is no guide on how to make a "good" VAR package. I'll try to remedy to that. In short, this guide is for you: If you’re about to post a resource starting...

hub.virtamate.com

There's a whole section about how to fix an ugly dependency list.
If you've got a lot, there is no easy way: it would be a real pain.

Seeing that you struggle to fix it in your current install, I'll suggest that you start by doing a new separate clean VAM install, where you put only the final required dependencies that you wish to keep. Once that's done, 2 options:

1. Copy your scenes save files from you old heavy install to the clean install and work from there. Try saving your scene within the new install: it should clear all dependencies that are not directly involved (for instance, a CUA atom pointing toward a missing package will remain, because the link towards the asset package is directly written into the save file).
   You scene will certainly be broken at first: if you forgot necessary dependencies, add them, refresh packages and reload. If error messages involve unwanted dependencies, you'll need to locate where they're coming from and take action to remove them within your scene (see the guide on how to do that, and yes it will be painful).
2. Or try to rebuild your scene from a new scene in your new clean install. I understand most of the work is about Timeline animations: the good new is that you can export and reimport them in your new scene. Make sure that your characters & related atoms have all the required plugins before importing, otherwise triggers won't work anymore (and even with that, I'm not 100% positive that it will be working without rebuilding the triggers). Depending on your Timeline animations, it could be a pain too. And if there is much beside those Timeline animations, it will also be tedious to remake.

I haven't done that in a very long while, I hope my memory serves me good. Anyway, pick your poison!

Thank you so much for the detailed response, and sorry for the delay. Life got in the way!

I'm going to give these two processes a shot. I'm going to try 1 first, but I think ultimately 2 will likely be what works. Exporting and Importing the timeline animations should help a lot, but I use a LOT of triggers so who knows.

I'll report back here once I've given it shot. Wish me luck! Thanks again.