Looks promising, keep it up! 

Found some messages with my actual journey, while my first learning resources were downloaded back then, my Unreal hands down experience was actually on:

Anyway this is another video I took a couple of weeks ago, at that point wanted to test if bone scaling was working properly.

So in its most basic implementation it looks like below.

Still not convinced if this will work in the final game and play nicely with other components, but hopefully there will be some kind of EASY solution to this.

I'm trying to build a PoC (proof of concept) interface for a pose editor, and I settled for a chibi body, now I wonder if this could be a good idea moving forward or should I set up separate control sliders/widgets for face and for the body.

For now it loks like this:

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36 minutes ago, x17 said:

I do wonder if maybe something like visual "heatmap" of morphs could be possible directly on skin (like layer that turns on as we select certain morph), possibly there are certain plugins that could help. This is actually the most intuitive and direct way to see what is affected on model... the other is some short animation in separate image, but I dont think thats optimal.

It is possible to know which vertices are affected by a morph, in fact Unreal uses this to minimize cycles and memory consumption on CPU size, it stores only vertices that has a delta value above a specific threshold. This is also required(not only useful) for GPU morphs I believe.

And it is possible to render materials using vertex color, if you set a vertex color based on morph inclusion, i guess it could be done.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Short day in the fun shop but still an update. Customizer window trying to be built as customizable as possible.

Details are loaded from YAML file. If you don't know what is the YAML file then is very simple, it is just just like a Json file only on steroids.  If you don't know what is a JSON file then don't worry, is just something awesome that some people would like to abuse.

No seriously, YAML is a text file, in a  human-readable format, used for configuration purposes, something very simple to understand. Very few rules, most important ones is that in YAML you need to keep the tabs/spacing indenting.

Below is the configuration YAML file, linking to some test icon that I took from Dark Theme released by @cr532. This should allow everyone to make their own Customizer window and easily arrange/sort/filter the way they wish.

Of course, with great powers come great responsibilities, so there should be checks in place to load a default/safe config file. 

Went a bit further and managed to do first control manipulation, for the main joint. This is a bit similar with selecting the Hip bone in TK17 while holding the Ctrl key pressed. Not the cleanest code (to be honest it looks like a spaghettis invasion) but should be able to go for the main bones control, hands, legs, head and the hip/root bone.

But can she pose? 

2 hours ago, HDiddy said:

Interesting.  So technically speaking you can add more bones for posing than TK17...which is cool.  Not sure what additional ones you would need.

It uses the same armature as TK17/VX and the same custom bodies I've used in TK17, with only a minor modification that is added/patched at export time. Unreal Engine likes to have something called a "root" bone (the name can be different, and in our case it should be different as the TK17 armature already has a bone named "root" ), that is the first bone in the armature and is supposed to be located at 0,0,0 coordinates (TK17 root bone can't qualify as it is positioned more like a hip bone).

There are multiple options to pick from:

- use native UE5 armature + extra bones for breasts, butt, etc.

- use Daz armature + extra bones for breasts, butt, etc.

- use TK17 armature

- use a new armature created from scratch

Honestly I don't know which would be the best approach, all have pros and cons, is debatable what I should use/implement. But for now I went with TK17 armature because I already have this rigged/weighted/ready for export. Went the quick path because I want to have something functional asap. Is never a problem adding extra bones, is more of a problem making it work properly, getting something useful out of it and being able to easily access/manipulate those bones.

Technically speaking it is possible to add more bones in TK17 as well. Here I've added a couple of extra bone tails to a custom body/custom armature.

But how fast your TK17 game install can get you from desktop to Pose Edit mode? 

Hi, @hfg2 I'm always impressed by your modding projects, but I wasn't ready for the: "Guys I cooked a really big turkey this year for Christmas, it was very long to cook. So while waiting I made a TK17 pose editor in Unreal 5."

Maybe we are assisting to the early days of TK18...

14 hours ago, Exiled_Vizir said:

... but I wasn't ready for the: "Guys I cooked a really big turkey this year for Christmas, it was very long to cook. So while waiting I made a TK17 pose editor in Unreal 5."

In a lack of a better explanation, that is exactly how pretty much went.

14 hours ago, Exiled_Vizir said:

Maybe we are assisting to the early days of TK18...

Why not? I got fed up of the engine issues/limitations and frequent crashes from my TK17 instance. So why not move forward since we can get pretty much everything we want from the wish list? Like better models, physics, collisions, PBR engine, RTX, 64bit, better interfaces, huge animations libraries, etc?

It only surprises me that I'm the one doing this, I was hopping for a more experienced programmer to do this, or maybe a full team. But I'm the one that did the step forward, I do have some aces in my sleeve, so I'll push with those instead. There is actual competition, there are alternatives, but not using TK17 as a direct target.

1 hour ago, hfg2 said:

 Why not? I got fed up of the engine issues/limitations and frequent crashes from my TK17 instance. So why not move forward since we can get pretty much everything we want from the wish list? Like better models, physics, collisions, PBR engine, RTX, 64bit, better interfaces, huge animations libraries, etc

Hi, yes I think you are completly right here, even with the Hook5 and a lot of clever mods the old engine is a limit for the creativity of vX users. And not because of functionalities because the base game, PE Mods, Xbody already offers a bunch of possibilities even without H5 but more with huge loading times, instabilities, crashes limitations like I have this single char pose that is good but I have to redone it if I want to use it with the 4th character; you want to use a creampie in sequencer with 1st and 3rd characters? Not possible. And so on for a lot of stuff.

1 hour ago, hfg2 said:

There is actual competition, there are alternatives, but not using TK17 as a direct target.

Yeah I think just for that your project is very interesting, but it's a huge target because even TK17 base game offers a lot of functionalities.

1 hour ago, hfg2 said:

It only surprises me that I'm the one doing this, I was hopping for a more experienced programmer to do this, or maybe a full team. 

Maybe there is some sort of dilemma here: ok the old engine is a big limitation but I got a lot of stuff and experience on it, on a new engine I will to redo a lot of things. We have seen this on the garden for the transition between v7.5 and vX, the vX rise only after Hook5 and some others had been ported on it.

Gave it a try and looks nice, I liked the customizer part (actually very much) and the smoothness of animations.

What I didn't like is the aggressive movement of the inertia soft bodies, the fact that you need to rub the mouse up and down to increase the excite level of the girl, the fact that you can apply a couple of morphs to get a different body which will instantly make it non-compatible with clothes, the lack of clothes (probably that is the reason).

Considering how advanced in development this game is, I don't understand why the graphics are so under-used.

Don't remember much about HS, but I remember the lack of the pose editor and all faces that looks like some specific hentai models. I think actually HS models are a special trend, is not possible to see a HS model and not recognize it.

A lot of games suffers from the same issues, those are built as some kind of erotic game, using premade/baked poses and not able to mod the way we please. In fact most games kinda sets the scene and lets you know what you can do and how you can do. This is what I would like to change.

 There are games that just duplicates the cloths based on the body counts, if the said game has 10 custom body morphs then it can release a cloth in 10 morphs to match each body.

This can be done, can be automated.

Is not  perfect approach (which approach is?!?) but it works at a decent level.

Unity is a great game engine, it is all about the developer skills, I've seen something similar to what I'm building in Unreal, that was done during modsgarden days by someone in Unity. On top of that, it was possible to load poses directly from pes files. I still have the project around.

In the end it all comes down to what the developer wants to achieve, maybe they want to build VAM, Honey Select, Wild Life, a massaging game or just a better look alike TK17.

9 hours ago, hfg2 said:

 There are games that just duplicates the cloths based on the body counts, if the said game has 10 custom body morphs then it can release a cloth in 10 morphs to match each body.

This can be done, can be automated.

Is not  perfect approach (which approach is?!?) but it works at a decent level.

Unity is a great game engine, it is all about the developer skills, I've seen something similar to what I'm building in Unreal, that was done during modsgarden days by someone in Unity. On top of that, it was possible to load poses directly from pes files. I still have the project around.

In the end it all comes down to what the developer wants to achieve, maybe they want to build VAM, Honey Select, Wild Life, a massaging game or just a better look alike TK17.

 

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Hi, @hfg2 this video is the project on Unity or is it a new build of your game?

That video was from someone (back in modsgarden days) that did it in Unity. He used the stock body/materials (had a Blender project) and I think also armature/weights. On top he added some ik functionality to control bones in Unity.

My project is based on Unreal Engine 5.

Yeah that's what I though the interface is too different of your previous vids. It's official now, your project is my new hype train, since the TK17 v11 express has self derailed and focus on high values concept like DRM and water mark. I'm waiting for your 1st public demo.

But can she dress?

On 1/5/2024 at 11:16 PM, hfg2 said:

But can she dress?

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Hi, you made these clothes just for your test or it's unreal content?