VaM2 Progress Update

Hi all-

More details about what the video shows are further down in the post if you watched that before reading the post.

VaM2 Progress Update

We made a significant change in our VaM2 development work over the last few months which is why it has been a long time since the last progress update.

For those that are new to this project, VaM2 is the next generation VaM product that is currently in development. VaM has had a long life, but it was time to move forward into future technologies and assets, while also improving upon what VaM started. That is what VaM2 is. Please note VaM will still have a long life ahead while VaM2 is developed. We have stopped making updates and fixes to VaM so that we can put all focus into VaM2. VaM content continues to be created by our extremely amazing and active community (see https://hub.virtamate.com).

Here are the goals we have previously stated for VaM2, and these continue to be what drives us in development at every stage:

• 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.

What has changed? We were working pretty steadily on the VaM2 Core Application and were to the point that we were ready to make content to test the VaM2 Core Application with. As we started bringing in and making assets for testing, we realized we wanted to build all VaM2 content in the system we would eventually share with the community for making addon content. So we took a turn and started working on the VaM2 Addon Kit. This VaM2 Addon Kit is a Unity-based project that works separately from the VaM2 Core Application. The VaM2 Addon Kit serves the following purposes:

• Easy creation of content for the VaM2 Core Application.
• Easy deployment of created content for testing and for delivery to others
• Robust plug-and-play system that allows content to easily connect to other existing content
• Content that loads quickly in the VaM2 Core Application, and does not hang the application during load. Content should work as if natively built into the application.

The new VaM2 Addon Kit required significant work to accomplish. We did research into many different addon systems that are available, and ultimately built a custom system on top of a new asset system from Unity. This new custom addon system is now complete enough to build content for the VaM2 Core Application and meets all of the above goals. The primary VaM2 goals of improved usability and performance were met here as demonstrated in the video. In addition, this new VaM2 Addon Kit will allow creation of content that simply was not possible in VaM.

Video

The video linked here contains 2 parts.

The 1st part of the video shows the test application we created for testing content created with the VaM2 Addon Kit. Please note the interface and UI is just for testing and does not resemble what the VaM2 Core Application will look like or how it will function. All content shown loading in the test application in the video was created using the VaM2 Addon Kit. As you can see, load times are incredibly fast, and is reflective of how loading in the VaM2 Core Application will be as it will use the same system. The content streams in on a background thread so it does not hang the application while loading. And it streams in much, much faster than content did in VaM. The best part of all is community created content will use this same VaM2 Addon Kit and will have the same fast load times shown here. No more waiting minutes for scenes and textures to load as was a common experience in VaM.

The 2nd part of the video shows some examples of how the VaM2 Addon Kit works inside of Unity to create new addons. We will provide guides and tutorials on how to use this kit to make it as easy as possible. Hopefully the video captures how simple the process can be. And more complex addons, including fully rigged figures that can be animated and simulated with physics, can be built with this kit. The character models shown in the video were also created using this same kit.

The new VaM2 Addon Kit will be delivered to the community sometime after the 1st beta of the VaM2 Core Application. The first beta of VaM2 Core Application is our primary focus now and will include some content built using the VaM2 Addon Kit as shown here. We don't have a delivery date for the first VaM2 beta at this time. We stopped making estimates on delivery dates because we are always way off and we often change plans as we go that adds more time to development.

Thank you for your support and patience as VaM2 is developed. We could not be doing this without you!

Meshed and Team