Life
MacGruber updated Life with a new update entry:

Version 10

Minor fixes:
  • Reset duplicate morphs used by old versions to avoid causing references to multiple versions of Life.
  • Long months ago several people complained about low volume. I wasn't able to repro this back then, but since a few weeks I had this myself, despite nothing in VaM changed at the time. Might been caused by a Windows update?Anyway, I tweaked desktop default volume from 0.22 to 0.70...so it is now "normal" for me again.

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Do the Thrust SFX work if you're not using LIFE to drive the Thrust? On the sample scene, the SFX said they're disabled so I wasn't really able to test them.
 
Do the Thrust SFX work if you're not using LIFE to drive the Thrust? On the sample scene, the SFX said they're disabled so I wasn't really able to test them.
ThrustSFX does not function without Thrust, which again does not work without the Breathing core plugin. Life is a modular plugin, so a coder could write additional or improved modules. Still the modules are tied closely together and don't work without each other.
The included demo scenes Life03 and Life04 are identical, except that Life04 also uses the SFX. Essentially you just have to place some audio source atoms in the scene (as sounds need a 3D location), have the SFX plugin link to them and then configure at what time on the way up/down you want to play the sound. The rest of the slider configure how volume/pitch change based on the thrust velocity.
 
Hi!
I noticed that error message after, for example loading newer version of your plugin over older in the same slot, or clearing old plugin and loading newer/older one. I load MacGruber_Life.cslist or MacGruber_Breathing.cslist:
1598250301383.png

And then I see expected result:
1598250416738.png


It happens in v5, v7, v8, v9 and v10 as well - only v6 VAR file seems to load the breathing assetbundle correctly. No matter, if VaM is run as Admin or not. What did change in v6, if I may ask? Cause v6 plugin shows this:

1598250520930.png
 
@mikmod Managed to repro this when having multiple characters in the scene that use different versions of the plugin. I think it confuses the AssetBundle cache either of VaM or Unity in the background to have multiple identical named AssetBundles loaded. There is nothing I can do from my side. However, using two version of the plugin in the same scene serves no purpose.

There are two different methods to update to a scene to different version of Life:
  1. Easy method (Resets Life to default settings)
    1. Switch all characters to the same version of the plugin. Ignore the error messages.
    2. Press "Reload" on the Life plugin for those characters where it is not working.
    3. (If you still have trouble, save the scene and restart VaM.)
  2. Manual method (Keeps your custom settings)
    1. Save your scene (and make a backup of the JSON, just in case)
    2. Open the scene JSON with Notepad++ (or similar text editor)
    3. Use the search & replace function to find all instances of "MacGruber.Life.XX:/" and replace them with "MacGruber.Life.YY:/".
      • XX and YY are the old and new plugin version...e.g. "MacGruber.Life.10:/", its just the name of the VAR file.

Notes:
  • If you are not updating to Life 10 (or newer) it might be that morphs are not correctly reset. That's one of the issues I fixed with version 10.
  • The "Manual method" also works for any other VAR package by other creators.
  • The problem with the AssetBundles can also happen when having multiple instances of the plugin on the same person, but that is madness anyway.
 
Thank you very much! I'll test that - you're right, indeed, in my scenes two people use different versions of Life, which didn't ring a "that-might-be wrong" bell for me! The girl had Life.10, and the guy - older one, v9 or v8. I never duplicated the Life plugin on any person though, cause that would be, indeed, madness. :)

Edit: I went with manual method, swapping every older Life plugin to v10 - time to test it!
 
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MacGruber updated Life with a new update entry:

Version 11

As mentioned earlier, I spend this month on making my Life plugin compatible with LogicBricks. This is a huge step forward! For example you are no longer limited to control AnimationPatterns, you could also have Life control a Timeline animation, if you like that more. The old DriverThrustSFX sub-plugin has been replaced with...

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can you add a feature to toggle off the mouth morph control. I would like to use the breathing features without mouth morphs conflicting with otherplug-ins. I have tried turning down mouth options in your plug-in. that did not work. thanks
 
@thanos Life is a modular plugin. You can just switch out the part that drives the morphs. Life 12 is planned to go out sometime this weekend. I will include an customization example that has the mouth+lips morphs disabled. However, note that some other plugin driving the mouth without doing so in sync with breathing might look strange. Also note that Life is assuming to be the only user of the characters head audio source, messing with volume and pitch. Also the audio source can only play one audio at a time. You might need to place a second audio source.
 
I love the deep intensive breathing you get from using the "original moan" preset. Is it possible to get the motion without the audio? I have other expressions/sounds on the character so turning down the desktop and VR volume in the plugin also turns down the other sounds. Thank you!!!!
 
I love the deep intensive breathing you get from using the "original moan" preset. Is it possible to get the motion without the audio? I have other expressions/sounds on the character so turning down the desktop and VR volume in the plugin also turns down the other sounds. Thank you!!!!
Well, you are asking whether you can remove audio from an entirely audio-driven plugin. o_O Life works by using a large JSON database of hand-edited timing data so play animations in sync with audio. So while this will totally ruin the experience, technically you COULD create a custom version of Life that does not actually play the audio and doesn't override volume/pitch settings on the HeadAudio. If you are a coder, you can check the customization example that ships with Life.12.

What I would recommend instead is to add your own audio to Life! That means you need to create a JSON database for timing data (and some other things) and put it in an Unity AssetBundle together with your custom audio. Assuming you know what you are doing, it takes a few minutes for each individual breath in/out pair to process....so if you plan to add some 100 breaths, it could take a while. There is a tutorial how to do this and what you need to consider, however note that it is for an older version of Life: https://hub.virtamate.com/resources/custom-audio-for-life-7.400/
 
Well, you are asking whether you can remove audio from an entirely audio-driven plugin. o_O Life works by using a large JSON database of hand-edited timing data so play animations in sync with audio. So while this will totally ruin the experience, technically you COULD create a custom version of Life that does not actually play the audio and doesn't override volume/pitch settings on the HeadAudio. If you are a coder, you can check the customization example that ships with Life.12.

What I would recommend instead is to add your own audio to Life! That means you need to create a JSON database for timing data (and some other things) and put it in an Unity AssetBundle together with your custom audio. Assuming you know what you are doing, it takes a few minutes for each individual breath in/out pair to process....so if you plan to add some 100 breaths, it could take a while. There is a tutorial how to do this and what you need to consider, however note that it is for an older version of Life: https://hub.virtamate.com/resources/custom-audio-for-life-7.400/

Thank you! I was also thinking of possibly turning down the headaudio and driving audio through a separate audio source. I'll experiment a bit. Btw, your plugins are *awesome*!!!
 
Is there any documentation regarding the gaze plugin for Life?
Sadly no. However, it should be rather straight forward? Put it on a character and it works? Tweak the sliders as needed. Potentially switch it to look at the EyeTarget instead of the Player and use another plugin (Timeline, IdlePoser or just an AnimPattern) to move the characters EyeTarget.

(The problem is that things always seem straight forward to the guy who made the stuff...so maybe it isn't :D )
 
Hi @MacGruber
Can you clarify some things regards life? I understand you can use life to drive thrusting animations. However, if I have a scene set up ( using timeline ) which already has all the animations set up for thrusting, exactly as I want them to look, can Life be used to fire its sounds, breath and mouth anims based on my existing animations? Or is Life designed to work when its in control of the animations? Any clarification would be appreciated. Cheers.
 
Hi @MacGruber
Can you clarify some things regards life? I understand you can use life to drive thrusting animations. However, if I have a scene set up ( using timeline ) which already has all the animations set up for thrusting, exactly as I want them to look, can Life be used to fire its sounds, breath and mouth anims based on my existing animations? Or is Life designed to work when its in control of the animations? Any clarification would be appreciated. Cheers.
As it is currently, Life has to be in control, that's why I call it "audio-driven". However, you can use it to control a Timeline animation (via Triggers).
 
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