VaM2 Progress Update (Patreon)

Hi all-

I’m here to give an update on VaM2 progress. VaM2 is the next generation of VaM. VaM2 and Hub improvements are all that we are working on these days. The original VaM is no longer being developed and is in the loving hands of the community for further improvements. Check out the Hub ( https://hub.virtamate.com ) to see all the amazing creations and addons the community has come up with. Due to our amazing community, VaM still has a lot of life left in it while VaM2 continues to be developed. Your support here now directly funds VaM2 development, running the Hub, and making improvements to the Hub. We are also planning Hub2 for VaM2 since assets will not be directly compatible between VaM and VaM2. To avoid confusion, we need a dedicated space for VaM2 content. Therefore, your support on Patreon also funds the development of Hub2. I want to say a huge thank you to everyone for continuing to support this project while there has been a big lull in between product releases and progress updates. VaM2 has taken a considerable effort to get off the ground. VaM took a similar effort, but a lot of this work was completed before the Patreon project was started. VaM2 has instead been developed while the Patreon project is active.

Today we are giving a succinct overall update. We are planning to give a more detailed update about a more specific completed major feature in a later post. The later post will include screenshots and be more “show-off” style. I am hoping to do more frequent “show-off” posts as we check more things off our feature list going into the 1st beta release. A lot of the work done in 2023 didn’t lend itself to “show-off” style which is why I haven’t done a progress post in a long time. There is a lot of momentum getting items to completion now, so it should be easier to provide more frequent progress updates going forward.

We expect to release 1 or more beta versions of VaM2 this year (2024).

We track overall task completion towards beta releases on our Trello board here:

https://trello.com/b/KByJdWtA/vam2-public-roadmap

The Trello board is not the entire story because we don’t track % completion on each item. We don’t mark an item complete until it is 100%. Much work has been done on most of the things listed on the roadmap for beta1. Below is a more detailed overview of that:

• (Character Model System) This system is 95% done. All that remains is GPU acceleration to improve performance. The next post on Patreon will be a “show-off” of this system in more detail.
• (Runtime Engine) Redo of the parameter system to merge best of previous VaM2 work and more recent VaM improvements to the parameter system. An undo/redo system is a part of this and is now functional. A parameter recording system is also part of this which can be used for real-time capture of parameter changes for later playback. This makes it easy to animate anything in a more analog fashion, like expressions. Additional rework was done to match up with the new modular UI system. The parameter system is now about 90% complete. The undo/redo system is also about 90% complete. The save/load system relies heavily on the parameter system which already includes this functionality, so the save/load system is also nearing completion. The preferences system is also built on the parameter system, and therefore is mostly complete.
• (Runtime Engine) Investigated best options for plugin support. We are close to deciding on this. We are likely to use a much improved version of the system used in the original VaM.
• (Addon Kit) The addon kit is what will be used to build all content (character models, environments, props, plugins, etc.) for VaM2. This kit will be released to the community and is also what we use internally for making everything you see in VaM2. The major work completed is the blend shape (morph) import system and the combined model (multiple detail levels and automatic level-of-detail system) import system. The next post on Patreon will also “show-off” this system along with the Character Model System.
• (Content) We investigated genital graft choices for the models further. We finalized this decision recently after solving some technical issues with the top choice.
• (Content) Work continues on several Genesis 8 female texture sets. As soon as we get the new updated Addon Kit to our artists with the finalized genital grafts we will make much more progress on this front and mark these items complete. We plan to include multiple texture sets for everyone to use and/or modify to their liking to make additional textures for VaM2 models.
• (Tech updates) We continue to move forward Unity versions and update everything as needed. We plan to stay on the cutting edge of Unity releases as much as possible.

Next steps:

• Clean up addon kit and get it in form it will be in for sharing with everyone.
• Share the new version of the addon kit with our internal team for development of official assets (character models, textures, morphs, etc.)
• Complete the GPU acceleration item on Character Model System card and declare that item 100% completed.
• Post another Patreon update that shows off the completed Character Model System and the portions of the Addon Kit that are complete.

Thank you again for your tremendous support! We are excited to get VaM2 into your hands in 2024!

I would also encourage everyone to join our Discord server. I am much more active on the #vam2 channel there.  You can connect to Discord here: Settings | Patreon

Meshed and Team