Question So I made a scene that I'm proud of, and I'd like to share. Now what?

[vamurai]

Hey everyone. First time poster, long time user. Here. I've been using VaM for a little over a year. I spent early days just downloading content, then I started creating. I've finally created a scene I'm pretty proud of and would like to upload it for others to enjoy, but I have a few things I'm looking for advice on. I'll try to keep this brief:

First, a shoutout to ALL of the content creators out there for the hard work you do. This shiz is NOT easy. I'd especially like to thank the creators who specialize in utilities to make content creation easier. Big names like MacGruber and Acidbubbles, of course, but really anyone who's ever made anything to make other creators' lives easier. You guys ROCK.

So first problem, and I've seen a lot of threads on this, but am looking for fresh takes in the latest version: Dealing with dependencies. I walked through some tutorial stuff and was able to create a var file, then add that var file in the package manager and see the LONG list of dependencies. What's the best way to tackle the project of trimming this list down?

My second issue actually stems from the above. It turns out I am using a look called "Patricia" by Stenzelo, whom, until I started looking to wrap everything up and publish a package, I was unaware has had their content deleted. The message says "Stenzelo is permanently banned from posting resources." Sounds rough. My question is, what should I do about it? I really like the look, so I guess I could try and recreate it by hand. I assume publishing with something/someone who is banned from the Hub is no bueno. Trying to recreate this asset in my scene would be very difficult, and I'm just trying to figure out how best to do it.

Which leads nicely my to my next problem. The scene will be difficult to plop another look/model into because it is timed pretty meticulously to music, which means the size of a replacement would need to be VERY close. I used Acidbubbles' Timeline to build about four minutes of animations (funny how four minutes ends up being like a hundred hours of clicking around, as a newbie!) I have come across the plugin that keeps audio sync'd with your animations, but it doesn't seem to work with my Timeline animations. Is there a way to have the two work together, or do I need to do some sort of export of the animations to get it to work properly? Any help here would be appreciated!

Lastly, I'm curious about what the best way to make sure that others will have proper music timing with the animations would be. The syncing plugin should help, I think, but are there serious differences for other people based on their computer and their settings? I was tinkering around in settings, and I found that changing the "Physics Rate" definitely speeds up and slows down animation. Should I be publishing some settings with my scene as a guideline for others to follow?

Thank you in advance for any and all that you can help with. This is a great community, and I'm excited to start contributing more to it.

 

[MacGruber]

LONG list of dependencies. What's the best way to tackle the project of trimming this list down?

The best way is obviously to be careful about dependencies from the beginning. However, if you want to identify what you have a dependencies on a particular VAR, I would recommend to open the scene JSON for some text editor, for example Notepad++, and search for the name of the package. Then you see what's causing the dependency.

"Patricia" by Stenzelo, whom, until I started looking to wrap everything up and publish a package, I was unaware has had their content deleted. The message says "Stenzelo is permanently banned from posting resources." Sounds rough. My question is, what should I do about it?

Probably some copyright issue. But yeah, animations are tricky if the body changes. Maybe you can find a similar look? I guess you care mostly about general body shape/size rather than facial morphs for example? Maybe the morphs used in the look are available separately?

I was tinkering around in settings, and I found that changing the "Physics Rate" definitely speeds up and slows down animation

Physics speed is always the same, no matter the settings. However, if your CPU can't keep up, physics may run slower than realtime...which causes de-syncs with music as that will be realtime. So it depends on what CPUs people have.

 

[Syrinxo]

I just want to say that your name is awesome. Good luck with your first share!! Sounds ambitious!

In terms of dependencies - this is rough. In my experience, your best bet is to get really familiar with what you're putting into your scene to begin with, and where it comes from. Not going to happen on your first scene! Hovering over the little gear icon before loading something can help you see which package you got it in... if there is a package. But there are lots of ways to get morphs, for example, and they can be really messy to sort out and limit yourself when you're working on a look.

Stenzelo was banned for repeatedly flouting the rules on sharing paid copyrighted content as his own, not sure what. It can happen by accident, but I gather he did it repeatedly and blatantly after multiple warnings and earned himself the hammer. The only example I know of that happening, thankfully.
My recommendation is to break down the look - clothing, textures, hair, morphs - to see which parts you can legitimately share, and do your best to replace the rest.

If including paid morphs in your VAR is a concern, the "easy" solution is to use MorphMerger plugin on your girl to turn them all into a single morph, recreate the look with that morph, and share it with appropriate credit to Stenzelo. It's ethically questionable cheese, perhaps, but it does mean that whatever paid morphs are included aren't being shared in a reusable way. GL!

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Thanks for the nice words <3 I also tend to be very cautious about dependencies I use during scene building, even just when fiddling around because you never know, you might want to share it later When trying to package your var, you should be able see what you shouldn't need and go from there. Go in morphs, filter only used morphs, and reset the "purple" ones (from var references) and blue ones (from morphs in your Custom folder) that you don't _really_ need (also reset the range). At some point you can decide to be overzealous like me and keep the dependencies to a strict minimum, or at least ensure only packages available in Hub remains. That might force you to switch to another look. One way to keep proportions would be to load a new look in a scene alongside your Patricia look, and make morphs adjustments so they are close enough. Then you can save the appearance and replace it in your scene.

As for timing, I'm afraid there's no better solution than LFE's. Since VaM is heavily physics based and relies on a stable physics rate, it's very difficult to keep things in sync without having very good framerates. Eventually maybe something could be done to "break up" the music to slow it down, but I'm not sure if it would be "nice".

Looking forward to seeing your work

 

[vamurai]

Thank you everyone for your support! I really appreciate your advice.

I've begun the work of picking through the dependencies and trying to recreate what I can. I think I'm fortunate so far in that I don't have many assets in the scene, so it's just tracking down morphs and trying to reproduce them with the built-in stuff.

I think Acid Bubbles has already headed me down the path to finding the answer to my next question with the commend about the colored morphs: How on earth did these dependencies actually get there in the first place? For example, as I mentioned in my first post, I was tinkering with music timing by adding the LFE Soundtrack Audiosync which as noted, is probably the best way to do this. But then I removed the plugin. When I checked dependencies, it still showed this as one of them. Same with the Realtime Lipsync plugin - I tried it out before settling on making a custom audio bundle for MacGruber's Life (wow, by the way, that is a LONG process!) After removing it, package manager still thinks it needs it. What am I missing to get this removed from my list of dependencies?

Acid Bubbles - If as you say, LFE's solution is the best one, and I've built all of my animations in Timeline, what would you recommend I do to get LFE's plugin to work with my animations? It doesn't seem to recognize them as targets for syncing when I leave them in Timeline. Do I need to export them and then load them using VaM's built-in animation stuff?

Thank you again guys! I appreciate your knowledge here. I hope I'm able to get this shared soon!

 

[Syrinxo]

Sure thing! From my experience, there are a few morph packs that basically everyone has (or should have) - off the top of my head, those by Kemenate, Skymorph, TenStrip, SuperRioAmateur, and QBase (the latter posted on the hub by me, if you search for them).
So, by no means do you have to limit yourself to base game morphs, is my point here! It's just any copyrighted ones you may have collected that I'd try to replace. As Acidbubbles said, avoid the "blue ones", but if they're red then they come in a VAR and should make for an easy dependency.

 

[vamurai]

Alright, fortunately, it looks like Stenzelo used a a lot morphs from one of the MegaMorph packs out there, so I was able to replicate the look to about 99%. I only had to manually adjust a couple of animations, and I was able to recreate the hair by using one of the base hair packs without too much trouble. In fact, I'd say I might even like a little more than the original hair!

I'm still having trouble getting the package manager to recognize that I'm no longer using those packages. Like I said, I see that it still has references to plugins I added and then later removed. DO I need to manually modify the json or something to strip them out? Is there a utility somewhere that tries to reassess what's actually being used?

 

[vamurai]

A long, long update:

I think I finally have this down to a list I am okay with. It's longer than I expected, but I AM using a lot of plugins, so I'm okay with it. I figured I'd post what I ended up going through so anyone else that is looking for advice can know that misery loves company!

I started with the advice above: Filter morphs down to "Only Active" and trim out anything purple and blue you can find. Purple was easy: I didn't seem to have any. Blue was trickier. As I understand it, these are morphs that exist in your Custom folder somewhere (thanks for the explanation Syrinxo and Acid Bubbles, I never knew what the colors meant!) I found that I had a number of these, which I think means that I have a lot of decompressed var packages in my Custom folder. This makes sense, since in the beginning days of VaM, I really didn't install packages the right way. Yesterday's adventure in dependencies makes me want to reinstall the software and start CLEAN with nothing in my Custom folder.

Anyway, I got those cleaned up as best as possible, but still had a mean list of dependencies. That's when I came across some posts in other threads that pointed me in the right direction. Unsurprisingly, the three people above were all over those comments as well, and those posts helped a LOT here. When you build your package, the three files that helped me the most were the meta.json found at VaM_Install_Path\AddonPackagesBuilder\PackageName.var\ the actual scene.json file at VaM_Install_Path\AddonPackagesBuilder\PackageName.var\ Saves\scene\creator_name\ and the actual depend.txt file found with your package in the AddonPackages folder after creation.

I used the depend.txt file to first get my list of dependencies that were still there. I found a long list in a text file much easier to browse than the tiny scrolling box in the package builder. I would identify a package I didn't know or wanted to get rid of, then I would open the meta.json file. This file was GREAT because it actually shows the nested hierarchy of why the packages are included. In my case, I have a dependency on MacGruber's Life 12, but for some reason, I found that I also needed Life 10. I knew this was because something else had to be referencing it, but I just couldn't tell what. The meta.json helped me identify this. In the end, half of the dependencies ended up being down to three packages that each had a half dozen or more dependencies of their own.

Once I'd narrowed down which root package was causing the problem, then I needed to find out where I was referencing THAT package in my scene. This is where the build scene's json file helped, where doing a search by parts of the package name pointed to how it was being used in my scene. In this particular example, I had somehow gotten a belly button morph from a "Wolverine333.Barbie" package, and that package has a pile of its own dependencies, Life 10 being one of them. Keep in mind, some of these packages could be red in your morphs. Mine certainly were. It was just a matter of either zeroing them out, or finding another morph that I could use instead.

I went through each dependency I was trying to get rid of, found the culprit morph (don't forget to check ALL characters in your scene, like me, the dunce who forgot to.) I then went to it and followed the advice above (set to default, reset range, refresh "Only Active" checkbox to make sure it's gone.)

So that really was the process I went through. I had an additional tricky situation though that might be worth mentioning. Since I am Using Macgruber's Life for breathing animation, it was constantly adjusting the above-mentioned belly button morph. I am guessing that it looks at any morphs you have active with certain references that it uses for breathing (stomach/mouth/nose/etc) and then modifies them based on the algorithm he has in his code. Unfortunately, it makes those morphs difficult to get rid of once it has a hold of them. I tried just disabling the plugin and zeroing the morph, but as soon as I turned the plugin back on, it grabbed the morph again. I ended up just removing the plugin, wiping out the morph, then re-adding the Life plugin, and it didn't grab it again. I doubt this is considered a "bug," but it's worth noting that more "active" plugins might hold onto morphs that you may be trying to get rid of.

Edit: After digging deeper, I realized that the Life plugin's breathing animation was strong enough to move another part of the character's body that was being used by ANOTHER plugin. This other plugin had was capable of using a single morph, and THAT morph has a long list of another dozen dependencies. The plugin itself (Extra Auto Genitals) did not list any dependencies, but since it was modifying a morph that I had that DOES have a long list of dependencies, I was led down a long rabbit hole. I guess the takeaway here is investigate each and every plugin you use, even if they themselves don't have dependencies!

So there's my story. After going through the process, I can definitely say that all of the advice about keeping your dependency list short is very sound. That said, I think what might be lacking is just how to do that. The next time I make a scene with looks from other sources (and we all have a lot of them, I'm sure) the very first thing I will do is check that dependency list and trim it down. Before I pose anyone. Before I animate anything. Before I pick a custom Unity asset room to plop them into. If it isn't paid content and I intend to share my work when finished, trimming down dependency on any asset has to be job number one.

Thank you again to the people above for your help here, and in other people's threads on the same subject. I'm still not exactly sure how I am going to export my animations from Timeline for use with Soundtrack Sync, so if anyone has advice there, I would still appreciate it! But for the bigger, and harder questions around cleaning up dependencies and getting rid of content that I shouldn't use anymore, you three have been invaluable to this noob. I really appreciate all you do for this community!

 

[MacGruber]

So that really was the process I went through. I had an additional tricky situation though that might be worth mentioning. Since I am Using Macgruber's Life for breathing animation, it was constantly adjusting the above-mentioned belly button morph. I am guessing that it looks at any morphs you have active with certain references that it uses for breathing (stomach/mouth/nose/etc) and then modifies them based on the algorithm he has in his code. Unfortunately, it makes those morphs difficult to get rid of once it has a hold of them. I tried just disabling the plugin and zeroing the morph, but as soon as I turned the plugin back on, it grabbed the morph again. I ended up just removing the plugin, wiping out the morph, then re-adding the Life plugin, and it didn't grab it again. I doubt this is considered a "bug," but it's worth noting that more "active" plugins might hold onto morphs that you may be trying to get rid of

These morphs are included in the Life package. Obviously if you want breathing animation, which is the point of the plugin, you need those morphs. Assuming you are using a reasonably recent version of Life, at least version 10 which released back in August, used morphs are automatically reset if you remove the plugin. The plugin also automatically clears any morphs that might still be used from other versions of Life to ensure you only depend on the plugin version actually used. If it gives you trouble, just save the scene and load it again.

 

[vamurai]

These morphs are included in the Life package. Obviously if you want breathing animation, which is the point of the plugin, you need those morphs. Assuming you are using a reasonably recent version of Life, at least version 10 which released back in August, used morphs are automatically reset if you remove the plugin. The plugin also automatically clears any morphs that might still be used from other versions of Life to ensure you only depend on the plugin version actually used. If it gives you trouble, just save the scene and load it again.

Interesting. The one problem morph for me is the "Gen_Innie" morph. It seems like I have a few of these in my morph list. Digging a bit deeper here, it's not a belly button morph at all (belly button/innie... it made sense to me!) The morph actually appears to push/pull the clitoral hood in and out. I thought it was related to the breathing part of the life plugin, because I can watch the slider move up and down in time with breathing.

This is the slider moving around, and the offending morph:

Which causes this:

Which causes this:

 

[vamurai]

And here I am blaming the Life plugin...

I found a reference to it in LFE's ExtraAutoGenitals:

What I THINK was happening was the breathing, even with no other animation, was strong enough to move this person around JUST enough to move this morph, which made me blame the Breathing part of Life for it. I'll have to go update my post!

 

[vamurai]

Ha! The hits just keep on coming!

I got everything nice and tidy, built the package a few different ways, then installed a clean copy of VaM and dropped my package in the addonpackage folder so I could get close to seeing what it might look like when offered on the hub. Damarmau has a package that isn't hub hosted, which sucks, but isn't a deal breaker, and the Morph.Morphs_Mega_Pack isn't hub hosted either. The license on the Mega Pack seems to imply that I can wrap my whole look up with the MorphMerger plugin (maybe I should have just done that to begin with!) which should keep people from having to go to a 60MB Mega download.

The real problem is the environment that I've placed the scene in. I used Nyaacho's IndustrialRoom, found here: https://hub.virtamate.com/threads/industrial-room.4302/ - Haha, don't bother following the link, it deadends at a forum post that's no longer there. What are my options on this package? I don't see that it has any license type associated at all. Should I decompress the .var and just include it in my Hub upload? The file is 350ish MB, so I should come in under the 500MB limit.

Man, I promise to deeply investigate ALL of my assets before attempting to share another package in the future!

 

[Syrinxo]

You could ask Nyaacho, just look him/her up here and drop a DM.
I would avoid including the environment yourself if at all possible, if you don't know its copyright status, plus that's a very large scene to download.
If Nyaacho says it's good to go, I'd actually ask if I you could share the environment separately as a VAR for your scene to depend on, just to break it up and make the huge asset more available for people to reuse. Just how I'd approach it.

Sometimes I search for stuff on the Daz3D store just to see if it's a port directly from there ( https://www.daz3d.com/industrial-interior-modular-kit-1 ?), in which case it's a big no-no to share of course, but naturally that's not reliable.

 

[vamurai]

You could ask Nyaacho, just look him/her up here and drop a DM.
I would avoid including the environment yourself if at all possible, if you don't know its copyright status, plus that's a very large scene to download.
If Nyaacho says it's good to go, I'd actually ask if I you could share the environment separately as a VAR for your scene to depend on, just to break it up and make the huge asset more available for people to reuse. Just how I'd approach it.

Sometimes I search for stuff on the Daz3D store just to see if it's a port directly from there ( https://www.daz3d.com/industrial-interior-modular-kit-1 ?), in which case it's a big no-no to share of course, but naturally that's not reliable.

Good advice. Down the next rabbit hole I go! I really don't want to try and pull my scene out of this environment. I built everything around it! Haha

 

[Syrinxo]

Good advice. Down the next rabbit hole I go! I really don't want to try and pull my scene out of this environment. I built everything around it! Haha

I totally get that. Worst case scenario: It's not at all the same, but even if you can't share the scene itself, you can always make a movie of it to share with people. That way you get to show off what you've done, have a public product you're proud of.
I make movies as previews and hype for all my major releases, it's great content to share on Twitter and Discord, and the reaction sometimes gets me the extra ego boost I thirst for. But again, of course it's not at all the same experience as a full scene in VR!

 

[vamurai]

For sure. I will figure something out. I'm pretty in love with the environment, but I am sure I can find something that's close enough. I might do what you're saying and make some video or screen shots with the current environment, but ideally, I will get it worked into a new environment that's a bit easier for people to get their hands on.

Thanks again for the words of advice! I'll get this scene shared soon enough, haha.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

I have two unreleased scenes using this var too. You can also find it here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/36656065 by @oeshii but I don't think the license is actually OK for redistribution, you can read the comments in the post. So... better find another room Sad though, this was a high quality environment (but high quality is rarely free)

 

[Syrinxo]

I have two unreleased scenes using this var too. You can also find it here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/36656065 by @oeshii but I don't think the license is actually OK for redistribution, you can read the comments in the post. So... better find another room Sad though, this was a high quality environment (but high quality is rarely free)

So weird. My take on it is that if someone else distributes it on Open3DLab with a false copyright, that's on them. Their 4,800 downloads aren't your responsibility; if you got it from a legitimate-appearing source, that's all you can hope to do. And if someone ELSE takes it from that legit-appearing source and ports it and distributes it, then that's on THEM (Oeshii, whom I'd trust to know what he's doing).

But for all we know, the author him/herself is distributing it in multiple ways. Could be different versions with different copyrights, the light mapping seems to be different. Unity hasn't shut it down, after all, and I heard they're pretty litigious (though that could've been DAZ).

Morally speaking, no, it might not be right to use and further distribute content that "ArchVizPro" should get paid for. But someone else broke the dam a long time ago (again, possibly even the original creator), may as well swim in the river. I think morally, we're in "didn't leave a tip" territory.

Ethically and legally speaking, I don't believe it's possible to get in trouble for this, if you do choose to share it in a scene with the VAM community.
Really, all Vamurai has to do is put the link to Oeshii's post as the dependency and not share the asset directly, and it resolves all questions.
Tell me if I'm missing something here!

 

[MacGruber]

So weird. My take on it is that if someone else distributes it on Open3DLab with a false copyright, that's on them

Open3DLab may have broken copyright here, yes. It was posted on that site under CC-BY-NC-ND, which is of course not compatible with an asset from the Unity store. Anyway, they made it NC and ND, that means non-commercial and non-derivative. Then it seems @oeshii "liberated" that copyright again by making derivative content (repacking as VAR, making screenshots) as well as using it commercially (he runs a Patereon site related to what he was doing) and releasing that package under yet another license, this time CC-BY-NC-SA...meaning the ND requirement was simply dropped. You can't just swap these around to whatever suits you. While there may have been deals in the background to allow these things....it seems unlikely. Of course, oeshii is not the only one in this community making these kind of mistakes, there are far worse offenders.

 

[MacGruber]

Oh...and @Syrinxo, of course you operate a Patreon site, at least its linked in your Hub profile, so if you (or myself) would be using that asset it would be commercial again, breaking even oeshii's far relaxed licence requirements.

 

[oeshii]

Of course, oeshii is not the only one in this community making these kind of mistakes, there are far worse offenders.

You mean like you yourself selling Unity post-processing code through your Patreon, rebranded as Post-Magic ? You checked with Unity if its ok for you to make money from that?

But on a serious note, yes in hindsight, looking back at it one year after, that particular asset was a mistake to work with. In all honesty though, i only found out about the possible copyright issue of the Open3DLab when my own tedious work on it was complete, and a mod on r/VamScenes pointed it out to me as i was sharing it there. I of course removed all my sharing posts etc. immedeatly, but i did leave it on my Patreon for the occasional lost soul to stumble upon, just because i really did put alot of effort (at the time, one year ago, it was alot of effort for me atleast!) into making it look good in VAM.

What i did was never a paid asset, so accusing me for making money off it, purposely manipulating licenses and what not, and on top of it all - insinuating that this would be some kind of regular practice of mine, is a bit of low blow to be honest. If you have some problem with what i do, come talk to me, im open for discussion, no need to smear another creators name in public like what youre doing.

To the OP, if youre using my Industrial Room asset, you probably should not share that. Sorry for any inconvinience this ordeal might have caused for you.

 

[Syrinxo]

Yeah, I definitely don't agree with that interpretation of "NC"; if you're releasing your content for free then it's almost certainly not commercial. Having a Patreon "tip jar" (like I do) or having paywalled other content doesn't mean that the free content's NC clause is violated. Unless you're using it to advertise your paid content, or something, I fail to see how it has a "commercial purpose."

It's a shame that the asset is so controversial, though. I was looking forward to seeing Vamurai's scene, after all this!

 

[MacGruber]

You mean like you yourself selling Unity post-processing code through your Patreon, rebranded as Post-Magic ? You checked with Unity if its ok for you to make money from that?

PostMagic does not contain any Unity code, its only exposing hidden features contained in VaM and VaM is using it legally. However, for convenience of the user, it does indeed contain a number of Unity textures like the neutral LUT textures, some lens dirt, etc. Technically I would have to include a link and instructions "get the textures from there".

@oeshii Sorry, if this was understood as "smear your name in public", that was not my the intention. I only pointed out that its technically commerical use, even if it is free. I made similar mistakes myself with the original SecretRoom release. Some textures there could not be used in the way I used them, that's why SecretRoom 3 got all new textures from a CC0 site.

 

[Syrinxo]

I only pointed out that its technically commerical use, even if it is free.

This is blowing my mind. I've read https://creativecommons.org/faq/#does-my-use-violate-the-noncommercial-clause-of-the-licenses and https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/NonCommercial_interpretation carefully and I still cannot see how releasing free content is "technically commercial" as you say, or as the clause states, "primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or monetary compensation."

Even if there's, say, a tip jar, that's still not its primary purpose; they even say it's intentionally flexible to allow for things like that. Can you please explain how this free content is "technically commercial"? If that's true, then it affects a lot of my content.

 

[oeshii]

Sorry, if this was understood as "smear your name in public", that was not my the intention.

Well the wording of your post certainly had a bit of an accusatory tone there, but yeah no worries and all good then if there was no such intent.