VaM2 Tech Alpha 1 is Released! (Patreon)

The first VaM2 alpha has been released! VaM2 is the next generation version of VaM. This first alpha is meant as an experimental tech demo to showcase most of what has been worked on for VaM2 to date. The UI and control scheme used in this alpha is just for this alpha and does not represent what will be in the beta or final versions of VaM2. This alpha is available to all current Patreon backers. Download the zip using the link below, and extract to a new folder where you want to install it.

The zip is password protected as it is only meant for current backers. Please do not share or redistribute.

Link: https://cdn2.virtamate.com/Release/VaM2X_Alpha_1.zip

Password: 2live

This is some of what this alpha showcases:

• HD Skinning and Morph System. Smoother and more detailed models are possible with this system than the VaM system.
• Joint-Controlled-Morph (JCM) system. This system makes the models look better when joints are bent. The included Kala 8 model shows off both base corrective morphs and Kala 8 specific corrective morphs. The other included models only use the base  corrective morphs.
• HDRP lighting and rendering system. This system is much more advanced and capable than the VaM lighting and rendering system. This system also includes a built-in post-process effect system, some of which is shown in this alpha.
• Improved body physics and dynamics. The VaM2 character physics rig is much more stable and less bouncy than the VaM rig. This will continue to be improved upon, and in the future users will be able to tweak further and use the physics rigging system to  create custom models and attachments.
• New experimental pin posing system. The intent of this system is to allow faster and easier posing without fooling with the UI. Give it a try and give us some feedback!
• New experimental muscle pose system. This type of pose allows the model to hold joint rotations rather than hold body parts to control positions and rotations in space. These new muscle poses work better when interacting with the model or when the model  collides with other objects. The new muscle system should allow for even more interesting body dynamics and automation in the future (pushing, kicking, jumping, balance, etc.). Traditional control-based poses are not included in this alpha, but will be in future releases as they are still useful for holding a body part to specific position and rotation in space (e.g. hand on wall).
• Finger and toe posing. Use the pin system to manipulate fingers and toes and save as a muscle pose to hold the  position. The full version will allow creating, saving, and restoring independent gesture poses. Animation and automation between poses is  also planned to give hands and feet some life.

Known issues and limits of this alpha:

• Inaccurate collision. Only a basic collision model is included here. Accurate collision will come once the skin physics system is completed.
• Some of the included texture sets are not high enough quality for VaM standards, especially for VaM2 and HDRP. All of the shown textures sets are unmodified textures from Daz3d store models. The best included texture set is the Kala 8 model. The other sets each have one or more issues like low detail resolution, unrealistic tones, lighting baked into textures, seams, etc. We are planning to develop better built-in textures ourselves, and we know the community will make amazing texture sets once that is enabled.
• Mesh normals and tangents are not currently recalculated after the model is posed. This can result in inaccurate lighting. Future releases will have real-time normal and tangent recalculation (VaM already does this).
• Some of the ambient occlusion texture maps are baked too dark in certain areas. An example is the armpits. Combined with the normal recalculation issue it can result in the armpits being dark when arms are raised.
• The point light has a shadowing issue that can create false shadows in some cases. This is an issue with Unity's current soft-shadow system that will hopefully be resolved in the future.
• The included static hair is quite expensive to render due to a sub-optimal shader. An option to turn hair off has been included to show this.
• The model skinning is all done on the CPU  currently. This is especially expensive on the Edie HD 16X model. Future versions will move the skinning to the GPU for the final HD skin rendering which should improve performance.
• Shimmering of controls when DLSS is turned on
• Pulling pins or controls too far from model can cause other joints to bend in weird ways. This is a Physx artifact that we will hopefully be able to fix in future release.
• XR (VR) mode is limited. There is no UI, but you can move around and interact with the model. To run XR, start the program. On the UI, click the XR button. Once your VR system starts up it should be working.

Thank you to everyone for your patience as VaM2 gets developed. This is a huge undertaking and will require time to develop in a well planned and thought out manner. Many things on VaM were rushed and we do not wish to repeat that mistake as it leads to long term issues and limitations. These are the main goals we have previously stated for VaM2 and they are unchanged as we have moved forward:

• Improve visual rendering to next-gen AAA quality.
• Improve physics. Improve collision accuracy. Improve realism of skin, body, clothing, and hair physics.
• Improve performance. Scale better with high-core-count CPUs. Offer more performance options that allow VaM to run on lower-end hardware and still be enjoyable.
• Improve usability.

We will outline the next steps for VaM2 in a future post. Again, thank you to all backers and community contributors! VaM would not exist without you! We wish everyone happy holidays and new year as we move on to the next stage for VaM2!