meshedvr

VaM2 August 2024 Progress Update

Added 2024-08-31 20:49:07 +0000 UTC

Here is the latest VaM2 progress report. A lot of time was spent on the reorganization and automation of the VaM2 Addon Kit to make it much easier to use. The VaM2 Addon Kit is the primary way to add new content to VaM2 and it is what we also use internally to create all the assets within VaM2, including the character models. The Addon Kit will be very powerful and allow many things that were impossible or difficult to do in VaM1. An example of just one possibility out of endless possibilities:

Another item that took a lot of work was the GPU acceleration of all the compute-intensive operations like skinning. In addition, we decided to add GPU accelerated normal and tangent recalculation for more accurate lighting on deformable models.

In the last post, I promised more “show off” posts. Because of the amount of work done since that post, this post will also just be an overview to keep the size of this post reasonable. Instead, I have also posted the first post of a series of posts that shows off some of the work in more detail and includes screenshots and videos. These posts will be spread out over time since it would be a lot to consume all at once. Each of these types of posts will only feature a specific topic. The first post in the series is titled "(Feature Highlight) VaM2 Addon Kit and Character Models" https://www.patreon.com/posts/feature-vam2-kit-111164820

VaM2 Beta: We are still working towards releasing the first VaM2 beta before the end of this year. More information and overall task completion is tracked on our Trello board here:

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

As previously mentioned, we don’t track % completion on each item on the Trello board. We expect many things in the Runtime Engine section to be completed in the next couple of months as work shifts back to that and away from the VaM2 Addon Kit and to the game engine. Many of the items listed in that section are near completion.

Work completed since last progress update post:

(Addon Kit) Completed reorganization. Lots of work to get the kit ready for public consumption.
(Addon Kit) Automated most of the import tasks to make using the addon kit as simple as possible. Things that used to be dozens or hundreds of manual steps are now just a few button clicks.
(Addon Kit) Improved skin texture and material addon system. Materials are now stackable. Now works properly with level-of-detail (LOD) system. Now supports other mesh groups besides just the primary one (necessary for eyelashes, etc.).
(Addon Kit) Improved blend shape import. Added group property. Added automated prefix stripping so blend shapes get proper name.
(Addon Kit) Added a light rig system for easy testing of models in varying lighting conditions within the editor.
(Addon Kit) Added more addon examples.
(Addon Kit) Delivered addon kit to internal team for work on skins and blend shapes.
(Addon Tester) Added support for unloading of loaded objects and attachments.
(Addon Tester) Added system to allow changing parameter values of selected object.
(Character Model System) Created a completely new skin shader. Used Unity’s digital human package shader from the Enemies demo as a reference. New shader very closely matches this reference shader. Added the Enemies model to the addon kit to use as a reference for skin texture development.
(Character Model System) Completed GPU acceleration of skinning engine which enables high performance on high poly-count models.
(Character Model System) Added realtime normal and tangent recalculation system (both CPU and GPU options) for much more accurate lighting with morphed and posed models.
(Character Model System) Optimized bounds calculation by only calculating on low-poly LOD and copying to higher LODs.
(Character Model System) Added lightweight blend shape (morph) system which removes calculation of normal and tangents for improved performance and memory usage. Must be used in conjunction with the normal/tangent recalculation system.
(Everything) Updated to Unity 2022.3.