MacGruber Essentials

Plugins MacGruber Essentials

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MacGruber submitted a new resource:

MacGruber Essentials - Your most essential MacGruber tools in a convenient single VAR package.

SkyMagic: Allows you to create cubemaps within VaM to be used for customized global illumination and ReflectionProbes. This can immensely improve shiny materials like metal, latex, leather, etc.

SuperResolution: Take ultra-high resolution screenshots using VaMs build-in screenshot tool. This improves image quality a LOT, especially shadows and hair. It is the de facto standard for VaM screenshots.

FrameRateControl: This plugin allows more fine control over VaM's VSync...
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MacGruber updated MacGruber Essentials with a new update entry:

Version 2: SkyMagic: Scene customized global illumination

During the extended Easter weekend I had another attempt at my trial&error research for making custom global illumination work in VaM. I had a new idea to try. After already wasting a weekend on this back in September, this time there was glorious success!

Now you can not only import cubemaps from Unity, you can also bake a custom cubemap from within VaM! This allows you to setup a scene as normal and then produce a scene specific cubemap that matches your light setup perfectly. Of course...
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MacGruber updated MacGruber Essentials with a new update entry:

Version 3: Updates for FrameRateControl and SkyMagic

  • FrameRateControl: When "Pause VaM when not focused" is active, do no longer pause VaM while a scene is loading. You can be productive now while waiting on a complex scene to load!
  • SkyMagic: Direct export of PNG files. You still need to go through Unity to apply the convolution step, but at least you get a preview now.
  • SkyMagic: Fixed rendering issue with characters and other native VaM objects, by essentially re-implementing the cubemap render step. You can create reflections...
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Greetings! So I think I'm doing something wrong. I'm using an Oculus Quest with Link and when I try to use the SuperResolution script it doesn't seem to work. The FOV slider will move but the FOV in the preview window doesn't change unless I disable/re-enable the script. When I take a picture it pauses and stutters like it did take the image, but then there is nothing in the screenshots folder. Does it save the images in another folder? I know for sure the regular screenshot works as I can disable the script and the regular one will work.

Edit: I tried it in the desktop version and it worked flawlessly. Not sure if it's an incompatibility with my HMD.
 
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Yeah, sounds like an issue with using the Quest, but no idea why that would be different than using a Rift. However, its all hacking into VaM, so if VaM does something different somewhere, that might cause issues.
 
MacGruber said:
Yeah, sounds like an issue with using the Quest, but no idea why that would be different than using a Rift. However, its all hacking into VaM, so if VaM does something different somewhere, that might cause issues.
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That makes sense. I think it may communicate differently because I’ve read about some who have swapped between the two complaining that Quest gets lower performance than the Rift despite connecting to the same PC with the same cable. They also have different refresh rates, so that may have something to do with it.

Its all good though, I prefer it on desktop now because I cannot keep my head level to save my life lol
 
@DaveyJonesFlannel Possibly your graphics card simply runs out of memory? Creating an 8K render texture with 8x MSAA will eat a freaking LOT of graphics memory. Have you tried lower resolutions or without MSAA? If that helps I should probably add an error message or something.
 
@DaveyJonesFlannel Just to clarify what "freaking LOT" means....on my system (RTX2070) GPU memory usage goes up by additional 3.4 GB to take the screenshot. Using Windows Task Manager to measure, which might not be that exact. Something like 2GB is certainly realistic, though.
 
MacGruber said:
@DaveyJonesFlannel Just to clarify what "freaking LOT" means....on my system (RTX2070) GPU memory usage goes up by additional 3.4 GB to take the screenshot. Using Windows Task Manager to measure, which might not be that exact. Something like 2GB is certainly realistic, though.
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I have an RTX 2080TI XC w/ 11GB memory, so I’m incredulous towards that lol but it is possible, I’ll run a test when I get home tonight and monitor.

Edit: Thinking about it now, I know Skyrim VR with 4K textures pushes my memory usage up towards 10GB in dense areas, and it starts dropping frames around 10.5 usage, so it’s perfectly reasonable that my settings are too high for the shot. I’ll let you know tonight.
 
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I have a RTX2070 with 8GB (+another 8GB virtual memory) and never had any trouble myself. I just brought it up because some people expect SuperRes to work on their Laptop with 2GB memory and are surprise if it doesn't :D
 
MacGruber said:
I have a RTX2070 with 8GB (+another 8GB virtual memory) and never had any trouble myself. I just brought it up because some people expect SuperRes to work on their Laptop with 2GB memory and are surprise if it doesn't :D
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So I did a test and it is working now... I did turn off my PC last night, so possibly that resolved something underlying in the OS? What I did notice though was the following:
I have 11 dedicate GPU memory and 8 shared. Before I took the first picture my dedicated GPU memory was about 6.5 and my shared was 0.1. When I took the picture dedicated shot up to 10/11.0 and then dropped to about 9.5/11, while shared went from 0.1/8 to 0.5/8 then back to 0.1/8.

So, it seems like I am hitting the dedicated limit but that isn't causing an issue for me. Hope this was helpful. and thanks for putting so much work into your programs, I really appreciate it!
 
MacGruber updated MacGruber Essentials with a new update entry:

Version 4 - SuperShot and SuperVideo

Changelog for Version 4
  • Two new plugins, SuperShot and SuperVideo, replace the old SuperResolution plugin. The plugin has essentially been rewritten from ground up. SuperShot is intended for screenshots. SuperVideo modifies the WindowCamera, intended for video recording by external software like OBS.
  • SuperShot: Choose among common aspect ratios: 16:9, 16:10, 21:9, 4:3 and 1:1. Each ratio comes with a list of common resolutions. Of course you can now...
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MacGruber updated MacGruber Essentials with a new update entry:

Version 5 - SuperShot and SuperVideo

Changelog for Version 5
  • SuperShot: Fixing compatibility with PostMagic. Note that screenspace post-effects can behave differently when applied at higher resolution.
  • SuperShot: Clear selection while taking screenshot to avoid UI elements in the camera image.
  • SuperShot: Screenshots can be triggered by VaM action. You can hook SuperShot to your custom buttons or third-party scripts.
  • SuperShot: Take screenshots from the...
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MacGruber updated MacGruber Essentials with a new update entry:

Version 6 (free)

Changelog for Version 6
  • ParentHoldLink: The build-in ParentLink feature in VaM that can link one atom to another has the problem of using the position the atom was at in the previous frame. Even at 90fps, for fast animations this can cause obvious visual lag. ParentHoldLink solves this issue, updating the atom to the correct position. This plugin is obviously based on the...
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A tiny thing (bug?) to report, I've tried to make all my assets configured in a subscene for the release of The Core. And it seems that SkyMagic can't work if it is parented to something... like my editors on CUAs were before meshed helped me to figure out how to properly catch the reference to the object ( If you need you have a comment about that in my CUA tutorial ).
 
MacGruber said:
Hm, possible. I haven't used these subscenes at all so far, beyond playing around with them for 5min when they were new.
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Not a big deal, I've used classic scenes to compensate. This is not something that is über urgent nor mandatory :)
I'm not sure but subscenes may not be what triggers the problem. But just the fact that it is parented to something.
 
MacGruber updated MacGruber Essentials with a new update entry:

Version 7 - PowerHandles

Version 7 introduces the PowerHandles plugin that was teased a week ago and is intended for heavy users of the VaM Desktop mode. I was annoyed by often accidentally rotating instead of moving and vice versa. See the changelog below for all nice improvements you get from PowerHandles as well as some minor fixes/additions to other plugins in the Essentials collection.

Changelog
  • PowerHandles: Position...
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I'm a bit confused about how your early access system is meant to work here. When one of your plugins is updated it goes in to early access and the HUB entry is moved from the Free section to the Paid section. What happens if I use a plugin in a scene and a plugin is updated, do users have to wait for it to become free again before they can use the scene?
 
Ahh yes I see. From a user perspective that seems a bit confusing though, at first glance it really looks like you need to pay for the plugin.

Can I suggest that it would be better to release the paid var yourself as a download on your Patreon and keep the free one where it is? It's up to you but I really wouldn't like to have this source of possible confusion for users in a big scene.
 
Spacedog said:
Can I suggest that it would be better to release the paid var yourself as a download on your Patreon and keep the free one where it is? It's up to you but I really wouldn't like to have this source of possible confusion for users in a big scene.
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When VaM downloads dependencies for the users, it does just work? But yeah, there is some confusion about how to install content, I see that.

The problem is that posting on Patreon only would not work either. Patreon allows adult content only behind a paywall, so every post has to be "Patreon only", even if the content would be free. I did that in the past, but Patreon has now some "AI" thing that detects adult posts. I prefer that my Patreons know what they will get before subscribing. Therefore I post every release post also here on the Hub, with posts on Discord and Twitter linking to the Hub post.

Another factor you need to consider is that the Hub has a LOT more reach than my little Patreon site. That's because there is of course the possiblity of being "Featured" (hand selected by a moderator to be displayed prominently), but also that users are automatically watching a resource they downloaded while being logged in. For example my Life plugin has some 70000 downloads, of course many will have downloaded it multiple times, but lets say its 10000 people who get a notification when I update the resource. And that's not random spam like posting on Reddit, its directly reaching people being interested in the resource.

A possible improvement would be adding a button to the resource page that allows downloading the latest free version next to the already existing download button. However, since only very few creators do this style of EarlyAccess where resources actually receive regular updates, I don't it makes sense for Meshed & Crew to waste time on this. I think Acid is the only other creator doing this.
 
Why not have free and paid Hub pages? The free can always points to the latest free version and the paid one to your latest patreon release?
 
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