FurryVNE interaction release preparation (Patreon)

Hi all!

The much anticipated release of interactions is approaching. This release marks the culmination of years of hard work and dedication, finally ready to be shared with you.

There are a few things we want to point out before this official launch. First and foremost, we want to express our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has supported us throughout this journey. Through the toughest of times, you still showed confidence in our effort, which made us want to push even harder. Your feedback, encouragement, and patience have been invaluable.

We also want to express our deepest appreciation for the unwavering commitment and effort shown by our pre-alpha testers. Without the efforts of Blacky, MobiusScarf, Craket, Pegashis, Thirteeenth and Thiamine, this release would have been in a sorry state indeed. In the past two months, we've crushed more than 200+ bugs. Thank you for your exceptional work and for being an invaluable part of this journey.

As we count down to the release date, here are a few important things we want to highlight:

Release schedule

While not set in stone, we are aiming for a Feb 2 (Friday) release. Again, this is not 100% yet as there may be unexpected problems delaying this even further, but Friday is what we're aiming for.

Feature expectations

There are a lot of new features in this release, namely a new multi-threaded physical IK system, procedural coupling, GPU based penetration mechanics, particle fluids, soft body approximation engine, advanced shaft dynamics, physical balls, physical bones, new improved tit dynamics, SDF Collision system and a hand placement system. And then of course the actual interaction systems themselves, including scenes, a progression system (steps), keyframe editor (Timelines), timeline events & actions as well as drivers, to name the big new features.

That being said, there are still several features missing, such as the cloud for interactions component. We also want to point out that while we have designed this application with performance in mind throughout its implementation, we have focused on stability rather than performance for this release, meaning there are a lot of things that aren't as fast as they could be atm, so a lot of work still remains there.

Target audience

First and foremost, this release is targeted towards creative enthusiast of FurryVNE. E.g. creators of characters who want to adapt their content for interactions, as well as people interested in getting a head start into learning how interactions work. While consumers of content definitely would be able to get something out of this release as well, be aware that sharing content atm is more cumbersome than it will be in the future, considering the cloud for interactions hasn't been implemented yet. (Furthermore, since interactions depend on "compiled" character files, it makes sharing more complicated than simply sharing an interaction file.)

Sharing interactions

Interactions with characters added to it has a manifest. The characters in this manifest are required to be present in the cache for the interaction to load properly.

To see the manifest, click "Debug > Show manifest" in interactions. Each row in the manifest corresponds to a compiled character file present in the cache.

The cache can be found at:

%appdata%/FurryVNE/Cloud/Interaction/Characters

So when sharing an interaction file, make sure to also share the referenced character files.

These character files need to be placed in %appdata%/FurryVNE/Cloud/Interaction/Characters for the interaction to load properly.

Quick start

FurryVNE interactions will launch without a guide, so learning it will be a bit of an adventure. We've tried to make things as intuitive and easy as possible, but still it doesn't hurt to give some pointers to get you up and running quickly.

When starting the app the first time, you will need to convert your characters into a "compiled" format. To do this, go to the character editor and open your character file. Then, go to File > Export > For interactions to compile it.

Only compiled character files are possible to use in interactions.

Most characters will most likely require more setup, such as defining physical tail behavior. To do this, go into the part which you want to add physical behavior to, and check its "Physical" checkbox. Then, go into the newly revealed "Physics" object and alter its chains and properties.

NOTE! Physical editing is only possible for rigged models.

Final words

We're beyond excited to bring you interactions and can't wait to see what you will create using all these new features. Stay tuned for the final release announcement later in the week (hopefully).

All the best.

- FurryVNE Team