MacGruber_Laboratory

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Monthly Report: July (and 50-100$ commission)

It's 23:50 here locally...so technically its still July! As you probably saw, I just released the second LogicBricks StateMachine tutorial. That should get you covered on the advanced features of that plugin. I expect that I will need two similar tutorials for IdlePoser (Basics + Advanced) until I can really cover the details of how IdlePoser and StateMachine interact with each other in the DoubleTrouble scene.However, as a side project, I was looking at PC components for upgrading my old machine. That made me browse through various forum t...

Tutorial: LogicBricks: StateMachine Advanced

Here is the next LogicBricks StateMachine tutorial, this one covering the advanced settings. How to save the scene properly, switching states through trigger, syncing with animations, using cooldowns, disabling states and the multiple choice system. With a full 30 minutes it's by far the longest tutorial produced in this series so far.LogicBricks: StateMachine - Advanced (30:13) Covering the advanced settings of the LogicBricks StateMachine. How to save the scene, switching states through trigger, syncing with animations, using cooldo...

Tutorial: LogicBricks: StateMachine Basics

Finally finished the first of the StateMachine tutorials and it has been added to the LogicBricks tutorial playlist. It's introducing you to the very powerful and flexible LogicBricks StateMachine. Control and coordinate your scene through States. This covers only the bare basics of what is possible with this plugin, more will follow in later tutorials.Figuring out how to explain what a StateMachine is was not easy. I was tinkering around the with the PowerPoint slides for weeks. For people like me its a simple programming concept I have...

Essentials v10: Maintenance update (free)

Your most essential MacGruber tools in a convenient single VAR package. Just a quick maintenance update for PowerHandles.Changelog PowerHandles: Fixed handles not working when "Only Show Targets and Overlays When Menu Open" is disabled in VaM's UserPreferences and the UI is closed. Thx Carcosa for reporting it.Download https://hub.virtamate.com/resources/macgruber-essentials.160/ Download is available for free under CC BY-SA license. You are allowed to reference this package in your own VAR packages, even if they are paid or use a d...

Monthly Report: June

This month I was able to release 5 tutorials in total. Covering basics on the VaM triggers and two LogicBricks tutorials touching the bare basics. The two part tutorial on how to record video from VaM was kind of unplanned, I decided it was needed after having a long chat with Captain Varghoss about the correct settings that should be used.The plan is still to spend more time on making video tutorials. The LogicBricks StateMachine and also IdlePoser desperately need multiple tutorials to get across all the cool stuff you can use them for. I&#39...

Video Tutorials: Video Capture - Part 1 and 2

As already spoilered a few days ago, I have just added two new tutorials to my VaM Basics playlist on Youtube. The topic this time is how to capture smooth video from VaM and how to animate/move the camera.VaM Basics: Video Capture - Part 1 (12:23) This first part of the tutorial focuses on the settings needed to capture smooth video from VaM. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_Tbrv2lzSY&list=PL9_cy8iozaJv_4bPYbjaQMVhbp47gZErX&index=2VaM Basics: Video Capture - Part 2 (10:57) In this second part of the tutorial I'm talking about ...

Essentials v9: Maintenance update (free)

Your most essential MacGruber tools in a convenient single VAR package. Just a quick maintenance update for SuperShot and SuperVideo. The last few days I was working on a tutorial for how to properly make video captures of VaM, but I noticed some issues with SuperVideo that are now fixed :)Changelog SuperVideo: Changes to address issues introduced by the VaM 1.20.77.2 update: Fixed aspect ratio (of your VaM window) not being applied to preview display and HUD preview. Fixed "Preview UI Scale" slider not being applied to preview display....

Video Tutorials: Triggers and LogicBricks

As said in my Monthly Report, I started producing video tutorials. The first 3 cover a bit of LogicBricks as well as a more generic introduction to VaM's trigger system, which is kind of a requirement to understand LogicBricks.As you know, I like to experiment. Since three patrons commented on the Monthly Report that these tutorials should NOT be EarlyAccess and nobody objected...I'm trying something different. It's a "Pay after watching, IF you liked it!" concept now. I agree that these tutorials should be free to have as l...

Monthly Report: May

Another busy month. As detailed in last months report, this month was mostly focused on LogicBricks, with one major and two minor releases as well as a fancy demo scene named CyberNight. Then there was of course the SpeechRecognition package with its own little demo, and last but not least two minor guides focused on using VaM efficiently.The long-term plan I mentioned last time was to focus on tutorials. My plugins are no good to anyone without knowing what to use them for and how. The important decision is of course what format such tutorials...

Keybindings Profile for IdlePoser

For anyone interested, I just uploaded my profile setup for Acid Bubbles Keybindings plugin. This includes settings for IdlePoser. I think it will be helpful for creators who work mostly from Desktop mode. Obviously I use this in combination with my own PowerHandles plugin. I can't do productive work in VaM without these two plugins anymore.https://hub.virtamate.com/resources/macgrubers-keybindings-profile.7072/

VaM Command Line Parameters

Just a quick free guide how to use command line parameters when launching VaM to quickly switch resolution or window size. Maybe because you want to record video with a particular resolution or aspect ratio? How about making a side-by-side comparison video where you need to run VaM at weird 960x1080 resolution so you can combine two videos to 1920x1080?Sounds useful?Check here: https://hub.virtamate.com/resources/vam-command-line-parameters.7067/

LogicBricks v9 and CyberNight maintenance

LogicBricks and CyberNight reached the end of their two week EarlyAccess and are now free! I used the chance for some maintenance.Changelog for LogicBricks v9 StateMachine: Added UI toggle "Show Advanced Options". This hopefully makes this very versatile plugin less intimidating to use, if the more complex options are hidden by default. First I considered releasing a "SimpleMachine" variant of this brick, but a toggle takes less long-term maintenance effort and also you can switch easily at any time. The label turns red if you h...

SpeechRecognition and EvilCorpHQ demo scene

A few weeks back I promised to look into speech recognition, as it would be an obvious good addition for LogicBricks. This can recognize simple keyword lists as well as more complex grammar using Windows 10 and Unity's speech recognition features. When starting with this project the assumption was I can wrap the simple looking API in a plugin and build a simple demo scene in just a few hours. However, making a reasonable plugin UI, implementing error handling and necessary performance features as well as circumvent VaM quirks with file depe...

LogicBricks v8: Maintenance release

Just a quick maintenance release.Changelog StateMachine: Fixed SetStateDisabled trigger not resetting. EventSceneLoad: Added options to trigger only for VR/Desktop mode. Allows you to do different things depending on whether you are in VR or Desktop.Known Issues EventSceneLoad: When have not yet given LogicBricks permission to run when loading a scene, the plugin will not trigger properly. Other plugins might have similar issues anyway. To make sure everything is working as intended, simply reload the scene again once all permissions are grante...

LogicBricks v7 and CyberNight demo scene

LogicBricks is a collection of now 27 reusable logic plugins to quickly build simple logic without coding. These go from a simple Relaythat just groups triggers via Counterand Blendto more complex bricks for RandomChoiceand a very powerful StateMachinebrick. There are three demo scenes with altogether 24 examples to spawn some ideas.Additionally there is now a new more elaborate separate demo scene named CyberNight that shows how to build branching multiple-choice dialogs. Please excuse the poor dialog, I'm a coder, not a Hollywood writer. ...

Monthly Report: April

This time of the month again, time for another monthly report!The DoubleTrouble scene I had been working on continuously since December has now finally been released two weeks ago. This brought various improvements and fixes for LogicBricks and IdlePoser, but also with the PowerHandles release back in January it would not have been possible to build this scene. PowerHandles just says SO MUCH time and allows you to work almost entirely in Desktop mode, which is less exhausting than wearing a VR headset for hours upon hours. Anyway, it's alwa...

Introducing Tiers, why?

Hi! I have just enabled tiers for my Patreon site. Note that there is absolutely no difference between the 3 tiers or between choosing a tier-less custom pledge.My reasoning is that currently about 2/3 of my Patreons pledge 1€ or less. The assumption here is that this is not mainly a lack of perceived value of my content, but rather simply the fact that Patreon sets "1" of whatever your local currency as the default. Don't misunderstand me here, I'm absolutely fine with you pledging 1€, it's still worth 100x more than a ...

DoubleTrouble scene (Major Release)

The power of random combinations...not knowing what will happen next. This is the main idea behind using multiple animation layers acting independently at random. If each layer has a number of variations, the number of possible combinations basically explode. Linear animation is what you see in most scenes these days, because it's easy to do. While looking nice when done properly, it is more like a video. It will be boring after playing the scene once or twice, because you know what will happen next. However, not knowing exactly what will h...

Life v13: Compatibility with AcidBubbles Glance (free)

This update helps with making the Gaze plugin more compatible with AcidBubbles Glance plugin. I have also added a demo scene that shows how Glance and Gaze can be used together to make characters look around randomly. See video above. Obviously the goal here is to use this kind of plugin setup in my DoubleTrouble scene.Thanks to AcidBubbles for his fabulous Glance plugin and his patience with me demanding various bugfixes and changes :)Changelog Gaze: Option to freely set any control or bone as LookAt and/or Reference target. The only exception...

IdlePoser v9 (free)

IdlePoser is a state-based idle animation solution. States are essentially poses, but they can be anchored to body parts or even other characters. This makes it possible for different instances of IdlePoser to interact with each other, creating kind of procedural animation. Version 9 is a maintenance release with some tweaks and bug-fixes. It's directly released as free since it is needed by the demo scene shipped with the free Life.13 release.Changelog Fixed issue with morph reference into a VAR packages with ".latest" or ".min...

Monthly Report: March

Monthly Report is a bit late this month as all available VaM time in the last few weeks went into finishing the DoubleTrouble scene.DoubleTroubleCurrent plan is to spend a bit more time on polishing the scene as well as producing some video. I guess I need to explain better what this is actually is and why its not "just another scene". Might of course be because it was released late on a Monday, shortly before the end of the month and there is currently nice sunshine weather in Europe, but literally zero votes on Reddit might indicate p...

DoubleTrouble scene (Beta Release)

This is a beta release of my DoubleTrouble scene, that means there are likely still various animation glitches waiting to be found. However, I wanted to release the current state already for my loyal Patreons who waited patiently this long....originally this was supposed to be release end of December, maybe January after all. Well, time estimates are hard when half the plugin tech has to be invented first.The scene is intended as a major tech-demo for IdlePoser and LogicBricks. Currently there are 6 main action poses: 4 different handjobs, fles...

IdlePoser v8

IdlePoser is a state-based idle animation solution. States are essentially poses, but they can be anchored to body parts or even other characters. This makes it possible for different instances of IdlePoser to interact with each other, creating kind of procedural animation. Version 8 adds support for AcidBubbles Keybindings plugin, an extremely useful Duplicate button as well some minor tweaks and bug-fixes.Changelog Exposing bindings for AcidBubbles Keybindings plugin. Added button to duplicate selected state. Duplicates all settings like tran...

[WIP] State Madness...

Still working almost every day on my upcoming scene. Currently there are 5 main action poses: 3 different handjobs, fleshlight and riding crop. Each of those comes with lots of variations and seamless transitions between each other. Altogether I'm currently at 247 animations, many of which are parented/anchored to other animations/poses. There are 10 IdlePoser (5 per girl) and one central StateMachine coordinating it all, with help of various LogicBricks, of course.Still lots of work to do! I want to add at least one more main action, not s...

Connect v3

Connect is a plugin that allows you to control audio-driven E-Stim devices. The package also includes VirtualLock, a plugin for virtual self-bondage in VR. In combination that means, if you do not behave, your dominatrix will punish you...in real life!More details how it works and what hardware is needed on the Hub post. Scene works of course also without the E-Stim stuff. Made a quick video as well.Changelog Making the Connect plugin working again under the new VaM security restrictions. Thanks @ brycerer for reporting the issue, as I only tes...

IdlePoser v7

IdlePoser is a state-based idle animation solution. States are essentially poses, but they can be anchored to body parts or even other characters. This makes it possible for different instances of IdlePoser to interact with each other, creating kind of procedural animation. Version 7 brings new features for better control of transitions, as well as various tweaks and bug-fixes. These changes, together with the updates of my LogicBricks and Essentials plugins are what made this video possible. That particular scene is still very much work in pro...

LogicBricks v6

LogicBricks is a collection of now 25 reusable logic plugins to quickly build simple logic without coding. These go from a simple Relaythat just groups triggers via Counterand Blendto more complex bricks for RandomChoiceand a very powerful StateMachinebrick. There are now three demo scenes with altogether 23 examples to spawn some ideas.Changelog New ValueUpDown brick: This provides a value that ping-pongs between 0 and 1. You can smoothly adjust the speed and through triggers you can have it smoothly stop at exactly 0 or 1, causing a trigger s...

Essentials v8: ParentHoldLink

Your most essential MacGruber tools in a convenient single VAR package. Version 8 adds a toggle to the ParentHoldLink plugin to change its behavior, making it possible for characters to pick up and put down objects, like in this video.Changelog ParentHoldLink: Added option to prevent the plugin from resetting it's relative position/rotation when it is deactivated and then reactivated. This makes the atom snap into position when turned on, but it prevents unintentional drift/misalignment when doing crazy things like picking up a toy, playing...

Monthly Report: February

Another busy month! I'm still working on that scene! However, I think now finally have most of the tech needed for this project together. This required a long list of improvements for IdlePoser and LogicBricks as well as some tweaks to ParentHoldLink, which is part of Essentials. Check out this preview video of seamlessly swapping between two handjob modes and using a fleshlight toy by B3liar. What you are seeing are 5 IdlePoser plugins coordinated through a central StateMachine and various helper LogicBricks. The other girl will also use a...

[WIP] Math stuff...

Working on IdlePoser, figuring out how to better smooth the transition between states. Instead of the fixed Smoothstep curve I want to use quadratic ease in/out curves with a linear part in the middle. Parameters a and b are the ease in/out times in seconds, while d is the overall duration of the transition, also in seconds. The tricky part is to calculate the curves in a way that the derivative of the combined curve, which corresponds to the movement speed of the animation, is continuous and has the desired linear acceleration/deceleration at ...