VaM2 September and Early October Progress Update Video (Patreon)

This video shows some of what has been worked on in the last couple of months. There is a lot more to report on beyond what is shown, so I'll be typing up a longer text-only progress update and get that out soon. I didn't want to delay any further, so the video is coming first this time. I apologize for this taking longer than I promised. I ran into some bugs and usability problems while making the video. I decided to fix these immediately to make it easier to make the video, but also to produce a video mostly free of awkward issues.

The video highlights improvements and new features beyond what VaM was capable of. Please note that nothing shown is in final form.

Here are the caveats of this video you should be aware of:

• Physics realism will improve further from what is shown
• Rendering will improve further. Not all of the HDRP features are turned on or set to maximum quality, and the materials and textures and not final.
• The collision model here is very simple with just one simple collider per joint, which is far less accurate than VaM. This is not the new planned skin-accurate collision and soft-body system. This simple collision system is just enough to make basic posing easier.
• The clothing and hair shown is a stand-in for the real thing coming later. Some of the delay in getting the video out was getting this type of skinned clothing working to sync up with the underlying model skin. The video could not go on Youtube without putting some clothing on the model.
• Fingers and toes are not yet rigged up to physics so are stiff in this video. The pin posing and muscle system shown in the video will make creating finger poses very easy and natural without fooling with individual joint controls. Coming soon!

Here are the improvements from VaM we are trying to show off:

• All of the VaM2 character model work previously reported on along with some additional improvements since the last report. It shows a high-resolution Daz3d Genesis 8 model using dual quaternion skinning (DQS), high definition (HD) morphs, and joint controlled morphs (JCM) all actively working with low performance overhead and rendered in the new HDRP system from Unity. All of these are vast improvements over VaM.
• Improved body physics and dynamics. The VaM character body was quite bouncy and it took some wrangling to get it to react in a natural way. The new VaM2 physics model is still a work in progress, but it has much better stability than the VaM model, which will ultimately lead to better realism. The physics in VaM2 is more easily tunable thanks to the physics rig tools that have been worked on. These tools are not shown in the video. More info coming on this in the text update.
• New pin posing system. This pin system allows grabbing the model in the exact spot touched rather than being limited to fixed controls at joint origins like VaM had. Pins can be quickly added and removed as needed without the hassle of opening the UI. This makes posing orders of magnitude faster and easier than VaM.
• New muscle joint drive and posing system. This system can have "muscles" try to hold joints in specific positions with adjustable muscle power. This will make it easier to reuse poses as the character tries to hold a shape and not just hold body parts to specific points in space. These muscle based poses also react in a more realistic and less glitch-prone manner when other objects collide with the model.