1.17 Release Progress Update (Patreon)

I'll be putting together a preview video in the next couple of days, but I realized it has been too long since I gave an update on progress, so I wanted to give a quick update here.

1.17 Release is going to bring several new exciting things:

• Custom clothing support! Supports both static wrap and simulated. This was a ton of work which is why I have been pretty quiet, but the work was well worth it! I originally planned on rolling out custom clothing over several releases, but I ultimately decided to put everything into 1.17. The possibilities will be pretty endless with this system. Import will happen by creating a DAZ Studio scene with the custom clothing item in it, and then selecting the DAZ scene file in a new custom clothing creator clothing item within VaM and clicking "Import". Texture and material import is fully automated, but materials can be tweaked before saving out as a new custom clothing item. Once created the item will show up in the new Custom clothing tab and can be used like regular clothing. Created items can be easily shared, but please keep in mind everything in the DAZ store is protected by copyright and license agreements so should not be shared. Before going crazy and buying a lot of DAZ store clothing items before the release, please also keep in mind some DAZ clothing is not suitable for real-time games as the polygon counts are too high and could make VaM run slow, especially if it is a simulated item. I'm looking into the possibility of adding a decimator option (not in 1.17) to the import process which can automatically reduce the mesh to a more suitable number of polygons for in-game use.
• Custom texture support for most clothing items and many atoms. The materials tab in the UI now has a Texture sub-tab that allows using custom textures on many things.  Some older clothing items and atoms are using an older texture system that is not 100% compatible, but support for these will be added over time.
• New sub-atom preset system. Currently the focus of this is materials and textures, but this will be expanded upon over time. Quickly save and restore material and texture selections to different presets. This system is fully integrated with the animation and plugin parameter system. 

I'll post another update in a couple of days with the preview video.

I expect the 1,17 release to take at least another week to complete. The custom clothing system was a lot of work and required a lot of changes to existing systems, including making all the import pipeline work at runtime. There is still a lot to wrap up, test, and debug before release is feasible.

Thanks for you patience and, as always, thanks for your support!

Meshed