PROTOWLF

Status Update - March 10

Game Asset Tools for Blender - 2.0 Update

Status Update - February 11

Tools to Control Normals in Unreal

Happy Holidays! And Status Update

kemorig v0.11 Release

Minor Note on Tier Benefits

Status Update - December 6

Wolf Skull Sculpt - High Res

Blender Add-On Update

New kemorig Docs - Converting other avatars from other apps, Motion Settings, etc

kemorig v0.10 Release

Status Update - October 3

kemorig v0.9.1 Release

kemorig IK Update Sneak Peak

Status Update - August 12

Status Update - July 30

kemorig v0.8 Release

kemorig Status Update - June 28

kemorig v0.7.2 (hotfix)

Pushing a quick update to fix a fur/hair crash one user was hitting.

Thanks everyone for your support and bug reports!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed crash related to fur/hair grooms streaming in with avatars and levels.

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DOWNLOAD LINK - password is "hands" (no quotes)

Content from v0.7.1 will work in v0.7.2. OLDER CONTENT MUST BE RE-EXPORTED FOR 0.7.2

UPGRADING YOUR EDITOR PROJECT

DOCUMENTATION

DISCORD

kemorig v0.7.1 Release

This update brings bug fixes and improvements to hand tracking!

I thought this would come sooner, but as I was fixing bugs I ended up discovering more and more issues that other users ran into with their avatars. Thanks so much for reaching out and bringing them to my attention on the Discord!

I also got in a minor new feature that helps tweak hand tracking in different stances.

New Features

• Expanded the system for offsetting the Hand Tracker position.

  • You can now specify a Hand Tracker offset in Tracking Settings (use this to adjust hand tracking per-stance).

  • Kemorig Tracking node now lets you specify translation, rotation, and scale offset to the Hand Tracker.

• Improved automatic detection of finger and thumb bone orientations. If you still experience issues, try adjusting the "Reference Pose Style" setting in the Kemorig Tracking node.

• The Manny default avatar now supports hand tracking.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed rare crash when an Ultraleap device is in use.

  • If you still experience crashes, please let me know on the Discord.

• Fixed mirrored Hand Tracking.

• Fixed auto-reconnect feature for tracking device not working.

• Fixed "Kemorig Tracking" node discarding morph target animation from Sequences earlier in the Anim Graph.

• Fixed hand tracking scale issues when using a character model exported from Blender's default FBX exporter.

• Fixed "Auto Wrist Rotation Offset" hand tracking feature not counter-rotating wrists the correct direction.

• Fixed Reset-To-Default button on Leap tracker position menu not saving changes.

• Fixed some cases of tracking settings not using the right blend/delay settings when changing stances.

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DOWNLOAD LINK - password is "hands" (no quotes)

CUSTOM CONTENT NEEDS TO BE RE-EXPORTED TO WORK IN v0.7.1

UPGRADING YOUR EDITOR PROJECT

DOCUMENTATION

DISCORD

Nomad Wolf Sculpt - High Res

I nearly forgot to post this! I finished another sculpting project, this time it's my first project with Nomad Sculpt, the 3d sculpting program for iPad.

I got my iPad this year to help myself get out of the house and force myself to keep up with art alongside my development work. This is the first result of that! I worked on this an average of 1 or 2 hours per week, sitting in coffee shops, four about 4 months. Took longer than I wanted! But I was also learning Nomad at the same time.

I'm very happy with Nomad Sculpt -- it's not quite as feature rich as ZBrush, but by and large it's capable of all the important stuff needed to sculpt characters. It's also much simpler than ZBrush, so I think it's a great choice for sculpts that are purely for renders, and not part of a gamedev pipeline.

I also wanted to try a different, more "realistic" method of scupting fur with this. Every time I sculpt a furry character I try new things with fur, and get a little bit better at it.

(I think the next sculpt I'm going to do is a more realistic animal as a study)

kemorig Status Update - May 27

Hi everyone, here's what's going on with kemorig!

Known Issues with Current Build

I've been using kemorig 0.7 on my stream for a few weeks now. Hand tracking has been a huge boon! But there are few issues myself and others have run into:

• Auto-reconnecting tracking devices doesn't work in the app (but does in the editor)

• The "Kemorig Tracking" animation node has an issue where it discards any morph target animation performed by Sequences earlier than it in the Anim Graph.

• There is a (rare!) crash bug in the app when a leap motion device is plugged-in on your PC.

  • (fun fact: I think this is the first crash in a kemorig release. Sad, but at least it's rare!)

• There is an edge case if your Leap rapidly detects/un-detects a hand, your avatar's hand won't smoothly blend and snaps back and forth.

  • (this is kind of hard/time consuming to improve and might not get a fix right away)

These issues are being targeted for the next kemorig release.

Next Features on the Horizon

Here is a shortlist of features that I'm targeting for releases in the near future:

Expressions System

This is the next big feature I want to do.

I'd like to make an "Expressions" system, where you can map your real-life face poses with canned facial animation. As in: smile at the camera, avatar plays a smile that you authored. This is especially useful for webcam tracking, due to rudimentary face tracking compared to ARKit.

I see it working like this:

• In the editor, you make a special Stance Group that is flagged as "Expressions". You can enter Morph Target name(s) or a Sequence to play. You can enter as many Expression Stances as you like, and give them any name you want.

• In the app, there will be a new "Expressions" menu, and your Stance Group will be detected and listed inside it. You can click a record button next to each Expression, and make a face at the camera from different angles.

• Then, the app will detect when faces you make are close to what you recorded, and blend between Expressions.

Again, this is a whole lot of work, but it's an important feature! I remember using VSeeFace's version of this back before I used ARKit.

More Hand Tracking Controls

I want to add more options to help polish hand tracking on avatars. Things like:

• boundaries for detecting hands (e.g. so you can put your hands down on your desk and kemorig always un-tracks them)

• boundaries the avatar's hands will not enter (e.g. so your avatar never tries to put its hands inside its torso or behind its back)

• more per-stance tweakables (e.g. modifying the origin of hand tracking for certain stances)

Twitch Integration

I haven't forgotten! However, Twitch Integration keeps getting kicked down the road because it's a) very complicated and b) very easy to use streamer.bot or SAMMI instead to integrate with Twitch. This will probably be one of the last features that gets put it before kemorig becomes 1.0.

What Do You Want To See Next?

Is there something I'm missing or overlooking? Got new ideas? Feel free to comment below with suggestions! I'm always open to hearing what is giving people trouble, and what people are hoping to see next.

Discord

Another reminder that if you want to share creations or get help, we have a kemorig section in the discord! Link here: DISCORD

-PROTO

kemorig v0.7 Release - Hand Tracking!

Hand Tracking is here!

With this release of kemorig, you can now use any Ultraleap device to track your hands. This is a big milestone, and it'll help take your avatars to the next level.

But that's not all! The update brings more quality of life, with the live app being better at remembering your last-set devices, and the editor now saving your testing settings.

New Features

• Leap Hand Tracking

  • Supports any Ultraleap hand tracking device, such as the Leap Motion 1 and 2 ( https://www.ultraleap.com/ )

  • Hand Tracking is relative to a bone you define on your avatar, making it work in any pose.

  • New menus in kemorig for positioning your hand tracking device around your avatar

  • Tracking Settings have options to let you blend Hand and Finger Tracking in or out independently. You can also set Hand Tracking to use an IK Pole Target bone if you need precise elbow placement.

  • New documentation for setting up Hand Tracking is here.

• Remembering last-set devices

  • kemorig is now much better at remembering your last-set tracking devices. Upon starting, it will keep refreshing to find the last device(s) you had set. No more having to re-set your iPhone each time you stream.

• Editor Saves Settings

  • The editor will now save (to .ini file) your testing settings. You will no longer have to re-set tracking modes or devices between testing.

Changes

• Various minor changes to editor field names and tooltips for better clarity.

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DOWNLOAD LINK - password is "wave" (no quotes)

CUSTOM CONTENT NEEDS TO BE RE-EXPORTED TO WORK IN v0.7

UPGRADING YOUR EDITOR PROJECT

DOCUMENTATION

DISCORD

Status Update - April 28 - Hand Tracking WIP

Hi everyone! Here's a progress report on what I'm up to:

For those who don't know, the next big new feature coming to kemorig is Leap Motion Hand Tracking. I was hoping to get this released in April, but it's gonna be early May :( It should definitely be out before May 8th.

I knew it would be a big feature, but I still underestimated how big. The amount of animation code in kemorig has more than doubled with the introduction of hand tracking!

More info about hand tracking:

• Hand tracking works in any pose. It does this by being relative to a bone you specify (e.g. the chest bone).

• You can blend between automatically-calculated elbow positioning, or animated bone pole targets in your model. This means you can have full range of elbow motion by default, or constrain it with your animations if you need to control where elbows go (with the recline pose above, I use this feature!)

• You can use stances to enable or disable hand tracking and finger tracking independently (per-hand). For example, if you have a stance where your avatar holds a prop you can keep hand tracking enabled but disable finger tracking.

• I had to write my own solution for IK arms to handle wrist and shoulder twist bones, and it supports any bone hierarchy in avatar models. Unreal's included IK solutions, turns out, are super rigid and couldn't handle Proto's skeleton! Kemorig's hand tracking will let you use twist bones (or not) and let you tweak how the arms twist as you move your wrist.

• I'm determined to make blending in/out of hand tracking look better than how it usually looks with vtubers (there's so much jank!). For starters, it supports different easing functions for blending in vs out, and handles interrupting blends in/out, so you should never see hands pop.

  • This last point turned out to be especially challenging! It's a big reason why the release is falling back to May.

Sorry for the wait! I think this update is going to be a pretty massive improvement to kemorig avatars. I can't wait to start using hand tracking on my own streams.

Status Update - March 31, Hand Tracking Progress

Hi everyone! Here's another status update focused on the hand tracking coming to kemorig.

Hand Tracking in kemorig

I've been hard at work implementing Ultraleap hand tracking in kemorig. The above video shows how it's looking so far on my PC. This is exciting!

This is a big feature and it's still not done. I'm determined to implement it right the first time, and make it easy to use and polished for its first release.

Ultraleap does provide an Unreal Engine plugin, which I'm thankful for, but it's far from plug-and-play. Just like every other tracking method so far, working with a new API is tricky and it takes a lot of work to turn the tracking data into something actually usable with custom avatars. Hands, arms, and fingers are fairly complex bits on a character -- this is really stretching my math chops with the animation code! But I like animation work; I've been posting some wacky animation results on my bluesky if you're interested.

Part of why this is tricky is because, unlike the existing head tracking, this requires a mix of local-space and component-space animation logic. Basically, some stuff moves bones relative to their parent (e.g. finger rotation), and some stuff moves bones freely in the world (moving the hands to a position, and having IK rotate the arm bones to follow).

I also want to keep kemorig easy to use, so all of this logic is getting put in the one "Kemorig Tracking" node you're used to. This requires doing some advanced stuff with Unreal animation nodes to put different types of animation logic all in one node.

Coming in April

The hand tracking update should be ready sometime in April! Hopefully it will have been worth the wait.

Thanks everyone. For reading this far here's a picture of proto playing Wii:

kemorig Documentation Update - March 13

Hi everyone, a BIG kemorig docs update is now live!

Now, I know that new documentation isn't necessarily the most exciting update. But maintaining the docs is very important, and makes your life easier. It takes a lot of my time to update it, but I strongly believe it's worth it.

The docs are available on the official site here: https://kemorig.com/documentation/

Here are the highlights:

New Pages:

• Avatar Blueprints - details how to use Avatar Blueprints to add logic to your avatars, and lists useful events and functions.

• Level Authoring Basics - how to make Levels

• Level Blueprints - details how to make and use Level Blueprints to add logic to your levels, and lists useful events and functions

• Camera Positions - how to use Camera Positions in avatars and levels

Updated Pages:

• Blender Help Section - updated with more information on issues I found with the Blender-to-Unreal pipeline. Now suggests the PROTO Game Asset Tools Blender add-on (made specifically to address these issues!). Updated for readability.

• Interactions - added info about Level Interactions, more info on how to use Interactions in Blueprints

• Stances - added info about Level Stances, more info on how to use Stances in Blueprints

• Examples - added info about the current examples included in the editor.

• Quick-Start Guide - updated images, and minor editing for readability

• Many Pages - updated images reflecting the current state of the app

Thanks again for your continued support!

kemorig v0.6 release

An overhaul of the camera system for avatars and levels! Plus, a whole bunch of minor features and clean-up for the new year.

Much of this update was driven by the pain-points I've experienced building my own avatar. For example, nice camera transitions per-stance used to take a lot of Blueprint script -- now it's supported out of the box!

Also, Base-Kun has new features to use as reference, including Camera Positions placed inside the Avatar Blueprint.

New Features

• Camera System Overhaul

  • Avatar Stances and Interactions can now set the camera to a given Camera Position in an avatar or level.

  • New transition system for Camera Positions. Camera Positions can set transitions in and out. Blueprint functions can override those transitions.

  • New Component version of Camera Positions that can be placed inside of Avatar Blueprints.

  • New Blueprint function suite for manipulating the camera (SetCameraPosition, SetCameraPositionComponent, SetManualCameraPosition, and SetDefaultCameraPosition).

• Priority system for Tracking Settings and Camera Positions

  • Stance Groups and Interactions can be given a priority, which is used for stacking Tracking Setting and Camera Position settings.

  • Higher priority Stances/Interactions will override lower priority ones. If a higher priority one stops overriding Tracking Settings or Camera Position, the next-highest one will automatically go back into effect.

  • When overriding Tracking Settings, overrides per-category will now layer independently. This means a higher priority source can override only some categories of Tracking Settings, and lower priority settings in other categories stay in effect.

• Object Launcher

  • The included Object Launcher now has a Component that can be placed inside of Avatar Blueprints.

  • Added various new options especially to support impact sounds.

  • Properties are organized better and are easier to setup.

• Stances

  • New option to flag a Stance as the 'Off' Stance of the group.

  • New option to automatically go to the group's 'Off' Stance when re-entering a Stance.

• Multi-Interactions

  • Added AutoToggleOffLastSubInteraction option. If true, when a sub interaction is triggered, the previous sub interaction will automatically be toggled-off (if they are a toggle interaction)

Changes

• Changed example level folder names to match the level names. The 2 example levels are "KemorigDefaultLevel" and "KemorigDay".

• KemorigDefaultLevel's invisible floor is now less-ugly in the editor.

• Removed "AddToggleOffInteractionToList" option for Multi-Interactions. Was a poorly thought-out feature.

• Fixed various bugs/unintuitive behavior with Multi-Interactions.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed blueprint camera position blending preventing the user from manually moving the camera.

• Fixed KemorigLevelBlueprint not allowing you to create a child class of it in the editor.

• Fixed various warnings that would output in the editor.

Documentation

As part of this update, I've been doing a ton of catch-up on updating the documentation. In the coming days there will be updates to the kemorig.com docs:

• Many new pages, and overhauls of existing pages

• Added Level Authoring section with information on creating custom Levels and Level Blueprints.

• Added Avatar Blueprints page with information on writing custom blueprint logic.

• Improved the Blender Help section, with more accurate information and links to the PROTO Game Asset Tools add-on.

• Quick-Start Guide updated with the current version of the app with Base-Kun.

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DOWNLOAD LINK - password is "layers" (no quotes)

CUSTOM CONTENT NEEDS TO BE RE-EXPORTED TO WORK IN v0.6

UPGRADING YOUR EDITOR PROJECT

DOCUMENTATION

DISCORD

I'm Back! What to Expect in 2025

Hi everyone, I'm back from Japan! Hope you're doing well, here's a little update.

Billing

As a reminder, billing for existing members is paused until Feb 12, and then things will be back to normal. Extra special thanks to everyone who joined as a paid member during the month off, your generosity has not gone unnoticed!

New Equipment

I bought some equipment in Japan. The income I'm getting from Patreon made it possible for me to do this comfortably. Thank you! ♥

The big purchases I made are an iPad and a Macbook (both used at a reasonable price, mind).

• The iPad is for art, both sculpting and illustrating. One problem I had last year was going long periods of time not doing art while working on kemorig.  This year I want to be more disciplined; I'm planning on taking the iPad out of my room to do a few hours of art, probably 3 or so days a week. Getting outside is going to help a lot I think.

• As for the Macbook, admittedly this is me getting out in front of the fact that laptops may get more expensive to buy soon in the US. I will be using it for times when I'm not at my workstation PC, but have non-gamedev work I need to do. Like writing, making Patreon posts, or things like that. I also want to use it to remote-desktop into my workstation to get gamedev done while away from home.

Goals for 2025

kemorig is still the primary project for me in 2025. Not a surprise! The big feature on the horizon is hand-tracking, which I expect to take a couple months to implement. I also want to keep working on included example content, documentation, bug fixes, and smaller features to make it easier for people to author cool avatars.

I want to post more art. Especially sculpts. I've started using Nomad Sculpt on iPad, and I really like it! I will also still be using ZBrush on my PC. I'd like to get to the point where I can create character sculpts fast enough that I can consistently put art out.

I want to develop illustration skills. Right now, I'm 100% a 3D artist, and I really don't have any traditional 2D art skills. I want this to change. Especially with my anime art style, it's really limiting not being able to illustrate! This is like a stretch goal for the year, but it's on my mind and I want to work on it.

Thank You

To the existing and new members, thank you! I hope 2025 is a good year!

As always, feel free to comment here or on the Discord. Is everything in this update what you expected? Do you have ideas for kemorig? Is there something I'm forgetting? Let me know!

Rudy Birthday Sculpt - Full Res

Wow, finally more art!

This zbrush sculpt is a birthday gift for RudyYEEN on twitch.

You can also see a turntable on bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/protowlf.bsky.social/post/3lg7dgzgqvk2q