🌃 Summary

Hello!

I've gone through a lot of projects lately, and here's a summary of what has been happening.

My development time is divided between the maintenance of Free tools, Patreon exclusive tools, and the continuation of research.

(This page is a clone of the post published on Patreon)

Free tool updates 🌊

☀️ Animator As Code V1 has been released. This update brings Sub-State Machines, Blend Trees, support for non-VRChat projects, better integration with non-destructive workflows, integration with Modular Avatar, support for VRCAnimatorPlayAudio, and prettier support for VRCParameterDriver. The V1 API is now considered stable, and there will be no more breaking changes. (Read more)

☀️ Last month, I've released LetMeSee, a new tool that lets you see your content in VR, with the Unity Editor in Edit Mode. I had initially created this tool so that I could test VR toon shaders on a non-VRChat Unity project that uses the Universal Render Pipeline, but it works just as well for more traditional projects. (Read more)

⚙️ In Prefabulous Universal, Generate Twist Bones now creates VRC Constraints if the VRChat SDK is installed. In addition, Delete Polygons, Assign UV Tile, and Replace Textures should now run before VRCFury.

☀️ It is almost guaranteed that in the next few months, some complex clothing (i.e. kimonos and yukatas) will be sold with VRC Constraints directly in them. For this reason I've added a new component Convert VRC Constraints to Unity Constraints in order to provide options for users who wish to use avatars for other Unity applications, VTubing apps, or social VR platforms.

✨ Animation Viewer now supports CTRL-K, the Unity Search window. (Read more)

Patreon exclusive updates ⭐

✨ Double Hip Tracker is receiving an update in V1.3.0 that changes the behaviour of the double trackers. It's an option, default ON.

In short, we will measure the distance that separates the two trackers. If that distance changes too much, one of the trackers probably flew off. We will now try to detect that, in addition to the usual method. (Read more)

Also, when both trackers are lost, the double tracker will now freeze in place, instead of flying off.

There are other changes described in the full update post.

✨ Vixen is receiving a small update in V1.3.0 so that you can change the boundary values of PhysBones, Contacts, and OSC. This is especially useful to change the range of activation for a PhysBone angle, the range of a PhysBone squish, or permit using two different ranges using one proximity Contact. That, along with a few fixes. (Read more)

✨ In IconGen V1.1.0, you can now export all of your decorated icons to PNG, so that you can redistribute decorated icons to other users. (Learn how)

If you're a Patreon supporter, you should download them now!

• Double Hip Tracker, Vixen, IconGen
  (the newest versions are at the bottom of the list)

More updates are currently being worked on for FaceTra Shape Creator, Starmesh, and Vixen.

Research 🧪

🧪 Project H-View: I have shared on GitHub a personal project of an ImGui.NET application capable of displaying the entire Expressions Menu into a compact layout, and makes extensive use of OSCQuery. (Read more) (GitHub)

It also has an early implementation of that ImGui application being rendered directly into a SteamVR Overlay! (Video)

I've always wanted to try controlling tools like VRCLens and VirtualLens2 as an OSC application, and also learn how to build an ImGui overlay using the OpenVR API, so I'm happy having finally taken the time to do this.

If you are a C# developer, you may be able to make use of that project (it's under the MIT License).

🧪 Project Nochat: UdonSharp has been mainstream for so long, we may have forgotten that C# files (.cs) were never intended to be executed directly inside VRChat worlds. The ability to write C#, and have it work on VRChat worlds, is a feature that is entirely community-driven.

Therefore, VRChat prefabs that use UdonSharp do not depend on any of VRChat's intellectual property at all.

I've taken the opportunity to try running UdonSharp prefabs in a plain Unity project with VR controls, without VRChat. It works! Zero lines of executable code from VRChat needed, as Udon is completely unnecessary. (Video)

The fact that UdonSharp prefabs do not require VRChat to run is relevant as I want to create and enable experiences outside the limitations of the VRChat platform, so porting content could make it possible to experience content we're already familiar with, but with different virtual environment capabilities. I hope I'll be able to share more with you on this subject. (Read more)

🧪 Project Myrddin: This project is very similar to Project Nochat, however, this one is an attempt to run the VRChat SDK without Udon, with the option to run ClientSim with VR controls. UdonSharp components would run as C#, without the Udon VM. This way, one may be able to use traditional IDE debugging features directly on UdonSharp content (breakpoints, instruction stepping, hot code reload without leaving Play mode, etc.).

VR controls in-editor would let you grab world pickups with actual VR controllers and interact with them, opening the possibility of iterating faster on VR content just like a normal Unity game developer would. (Video)

Thank you ⭐

Your support makes it sustainable to continue the development of all these projects as a full-time occupation. Thank you so much! ⭐