AR34X

2 hours ago, HDiddy said:

Site functionality has been back since last week.  Images in post that were PNGs unfortunately could not have their thumbnails rebuilt when we switched over to the CDN.  JPGs were rebuilt fine.  Users can easily rebuild any broken thumbnails by editing their post and adding the image back as they are still on the site.

Can confirm that it worked just fine placing back the images (jpgs) in my tutorial (only thing that was effected that I had, I think). No biggie. Thanks for the notification!

1 hour ago, f4ijunkie said:

Hmmm I thought about this too. I use my own custom maps and make sure they stay around 2k and the subsurface maps are always 512. I wonder if its my mismatched size, but I don't think so. I checked and I have a GPU memory of 11gig and the game uses just over 4gigs of video memory so I don't think I'm lagging because of that.

This problem only started happening on the latest versions of Hook5, I load up my old computer with a version from 2019 or 2018, and I do not have the slow down when up close, despite that computer having a MUCH slower CPU.

I think it might be some of the new Nvidia shaders causing it, no idea why. I can get 4 characters with 4k maps, and can see the maps are loaded full no LOD loss, then as soon as I zoom into the face my frames just drop like crazy.

I'll keep trying to enable and disable certain features in the Hook and see if I can narrow down the problem.

No, I don't think mismatched maps has anything to do with it either... 

I'm not completely certain on all things regarding VRAM, the game has a system memory cap at 4GB due to it being a 32-bit application, but I don't think such a limit is/have to be true when it comes to the GPU. Actual VRAM usage is a bit tricky as well because all applications that reports VRAM usage actually report how much the game has allocated (asked for/reserved) and not how much is actually being used (often far less). Gamers Nexus had a great piece on this a while back. Anyway, sounds like you're running a 1080ti so I can't imagine this game, even with H5 & ReShade etc., would make your GPU cry and yell please stop. If it's hardware related it has to be CPU, the game only uses 1 thread so the faster (core clock in conjunction IPC) the better, but that can only take you so far... 

But some shader / shader setting seems more likely unless you're rocking something like a Celeron  with such a decent GPU... 

Is it just the face when you zoom in or is it the same with other stuff/parts of the body as well? 

I tried and replicate the issue you're describing but I can't tell because I'm so GPU-bound (1050ti, 4GB), my CPU has it quite chill though I monitored CPU-usage for a while and it hovers around mostly around 60% with a 4 person animation going, occasionally peaking to 80-90% and sometimes dropping as low as 25%. But that would be the case when the CPU has to wait for that potato GPU to finish what it's doing.

Do you have texture tracking enabled? That makes it a real laggy hell for me at least?

2 hours ago, aardy said:

What I did with those was just to replace any jp2s

Ah, so that's what you did. Yeah, I've been going through older addons/AM-textures in general and replacing those jp2s with pngs, both textures and icons...

8 hours ago, arse22 said:

Yeah, this, hairs are kind of a problem. I know many just use HW exclusively. But would be nice to have. I dont know why the original 400 hair pack didnt include everything aside from the chance more hairs would be released on MG. Now its obvious no new hair was made for a while in 400-600~ range, so why not include it in a complete pack for vx. Or I guess a total pack part 2 is waht I was looking for.

Why it wasn't included probably had something to do with permission from original creators and that converting and testing/fixing hairs is really time consuming due to the sheer number of hairs... although, from personal experience, once you get past the R9-500-ish mark there's seem to be a lot less issues. Looking at my hair index files I see that @aardy fixed a bunch of NC-hairs (R9-400-range)... have you come across those?

On 5/12/2021 at 6:33 AM, HDiddy said:

I use NotePad++ with a User Defined Language I created to help organize things.

Yeah, me too... although I recently found out that if I edit a skin with the H5 GUI and press save it removes all the user defined formatting (or what should I call it). Anyway around that? I like using both the GUI and the "old school" text editor method It's much faster to copy+paste directly in the text editor when you want to copy some layers from one skin to another...

That Winmerge thing looks interesting...

10 minutes ago, Smoke said:

Also - remain on topic. This was about the storage issue and a chance for creators, artist, etc to talk and create ideas and suggestion and to not to come about it "why can't I download"

Yeah, I was actually going to write something along the lines of:

If one truly has a need for completely uncompressed images or such a high resolution that it wouldn't be possible to upload here couldn't that user just provide a link to some external image hosting site or a site specifically catering to images (DeviantArt?) with some kind explanation like "to view this and more in all its uncompressed glory visit my gallery in the link below"? I don't know...

Anyhow, the main issue was the videos right? But other than that I think I echo @Kraegar that 2k is a good compromise, keeping the upload limit & allowing for higher resolutions as @Smoke said is also a way to go. Though, I must say that I think keeping a resolution restriction when posting an image directly in a thread is a good idea (can't remember/find it now but it was something about it here in this thread already). It just takes up too much real estate when it's what's written that is at the heart of it... and it wears down my poor old scrolling finger . 

7 minutes ago, cybersx said:

By far one of the worst replies Ive ever read. Instead of warning me with a bunch of gibberish, you could've just said I have to have a min of 5 posts, etc. Still not sure if that's what you implied there w all that trash you just wrote WTF. 

Well, it explains there that you have to have a content count of 5 and it even gives you examples on how to achieve such a momentous task...

I quote:

"First, you will see this if you have not reached the required content count to unlock downloads.  That required count is 5.  Things like forum replies, reviews, gallery pictures, uploading downloads, etc. all count as content post.  Things you can do to get to 5 are:

• Introduce yourself in the Member Introductions (be sure to add an Avatar also)
• Let us know about your rig in the What Am I Running Thread
• Check out the Xile Points Giveaway to learn more about Points
• Post a sexy image in the Gallery
• Upload some great content in the Downloads Section

Second, you will also get this message if you do not have enough points to download an item. As we have mentioned in the Xiles Points Giveaway Post, Downloads work on a points system to detract from leeching.  Things you can do to get more points are:

• Grab the one time points giveaway in the member shop
• Respond to peoples questions in the site questions area
• Post more gallery content
• Post content to downloads.

"

Edit: furthermore your question was not exactly posted in the appropriate thread to begin with but I initially decided to not even mention it.

3 minutes ago, cybersx said:

Hello guys. I'm new here and I read all over the guidelines and somethings arent clear. Any reason why I dont have access to any downloads incl the free basic files? 

 

On 5/30/2021 at 11:48 AM, f4ijunkie said:

I wonder if anyone has encountered a bug where the closer you get to the models the more frames drop?

I'm guessing it's my settings in the main file, because it doesn't make sense. The further I zoom out and more objects and characters render the smoother it gets, but when I'm close up and less is being rendered I get serious frame drops.

I know it isn't my system build but perhaps it is? I'll keep investigating further and see if I can figure it out.

Well, it might have also something to do with the normal-/specular-/subsurface-maps (assuming that they're in .dds-format)...

Let's say you have high quality H5-maps for the bodies, like some of Hooties maps which are 8x resolution for normals/specular & then a subsurface map in 4x, then up close to the actors the maps are going to be rendered in full resolution but the further away you move the rendered quality will decrease (mipmaps: 1st mipmap will be half the full resolution, 2nd 1/4 etc.). The same is true for all objects in the room that has H5-maps so you might be seeing more but everything gets rendered at a lower resolution so the impact on performance might actually decrease even though more stuff gets rendered.

3 minutes ago, Drahzar said:

pretty much what I've been doing today for a bit in between work and home time.

 

I had started off going minimal and for some F reason the game still crashed and kept crashing. Now though, almost the same, removed some stuff and it's running smoothly. BTW, you've told me you launch the game in like a minute. WIth no add ons and no hook, my VX starts in 6 secons, now with hook 4 and very few add-ons, super minimal, still takes about a minute, I suspect the hairs are responsible, they always added significant amount of loading time, yes they're 7,5 hairs. The game runs super smooth now, for some reason I don't fully grasp, only crashed once on like 10 tries. I've started increasing the add ons, stuff I'm sure isn't bugged. Now as for the xbody, it seems to not really cause any problems, because as I said, for now it's smooth. I'm tempted to go try my old set up. And yeah I'll try those options you mentioned, just havn't got around that yet, I work most of the day during weekends.

 

Now, in the past, at times it was some add-ons conflicting with each other, but alone they work, very likely it's an add on problem, I might be too greedy having too much stuff lol.

Yeah, startup is about 1 minute with all my addons (500+ zips), H5 + ReShade. Reshade as well as Hook add some load time. My install is on a M.2 NVMe SSD which sure helps compared to a regular SATA SSD.

I have almost all R9hair400+ hairs as well as a bundled addons with all JU & RJ hairs and I haven't gotten the impression that it crashes for me because of hairs... in my case it has been older rooms, body-/face mods and clothing not to mention poses...

On 1/30/2021 at 1:18 PM, artoffreedoom07 said:

Where can i download it?.

Idk why but hook4 and hook5 are not working for me.

I want to try hook3.

I don't know if Hook 3 would even work with VX since it's quite old and I assume support for it has ended, not to mention that it can be hard to find content compatible with it. I remember for instance some update was needed for H5 to work with VX (a couple of years ago). That being said I've got Hook3a+Shoxx with installation instructions. PM me if you really wanna give it a go. I'm not going to upload it publicly since I think will just cause confusion and spawn a lot of threads named "why can't I get it to work" and so on. 

7 minutes ago, googoo11 said:

But if you just want to apply something to an existing texture (like tattoos or freckles), you could either use an existing texture and paint/copy on it directly with photoshop,
or use the "Hook5 Skin System" to place it with skin_definitions as layers on the body. Later, you can bake everything into a body-texture:

This would probably be the easiest & fastest way (especially if you already use H5$ and can use the GUI) if you just want a skin with certain layers baked on top since you can easily resize/reposition stuff, although I think quality might suffer compared to doing "the hard way" and you wouldn't learn that much of image manipulation either . I've yet to try the baked feature... 

Anyway, I think our combined efforts here should at least get dude/dudette started...

2 hours ago, Xalas said:

I want to get into creating skin textures of my own to share with the community. I was wondering are there any tutorials on how to create skin textures for models? If not, then how should I go about it? Another question is how can I add something to an existing skin texture? Example you know how some skin textures have panties already meshed onto the skin? I want to create a pantyhose skin texture but I want to learn how to do it by applying it to an existing skin. 

I haven't seen any tutorials around unfortunately...

First off (and kind of obvious) you'll need some kind of photo editor like GIMP (free), Photoshop, PaintShop Pro etc. Something that allows you to use multiple layers, has good selection tools, magic wand (or whatever its called in your application by choice) & effects/plugins (things spanning from simple brightness/contrast to more advanced stuff). Starting out I would say GIMP is a good choice if you don't use something else already.

In your example you could easily achieve that with GIMP. Just open up your body skin of choice then then take a already existing pantyhose texture (if you not going to create your own from scratch) and put that as a new layer on top and align it with the "base skin" to the bottom. You have to make sure that the base skin & the pantyhose texture you're using are in the same resolution. the you do the same with the feet skin... See spoiler for screenshot of GIMP using a 4x skin, one pantyhose texture from the 4xBodyMod & a 4x UV-map for the body (not visible, good to have when making cuts and positioning overlays).

Not all pantyhose/stockings texture are going to work but you can use the base game ones as a tool to align thing while your making your own.

As for more advanced stuff I'm not really sure where to begin... I learned basically by trial and error. The work I do revolves a lot around using multiple layers that do different things adding detail/features (like using high def. photos of real skin) and so on. I also create what I call "cutout templates" (a transparent layer that has a certain region in single color) which I can select using the Magic Wand (Fuzzy Select in GIMP) to make cutouts with various properties (feathering) and then go manually with the eraser tool using different brushes and thus make stuff blend in seamlessly. Adjusting Hue/Saturation/Brightness so that the overlay matches the base skin.

26 minutes ago, Drahzar said:

BTW, also find it weird, how I see many people use the Hdiddy dresses & outfits and in my log, they got many errors and make the game crash, could be some conflict with some 7.5 stuff I got

If you're not using this feature already you can enable "Use folder for disabled addons" in Options Manager (found under the addons tab /options) and make a new folder in your Addons-folder like "AddonsTempDisabled.disabled" and then you can use that folder to temporarily dump all but one addon into and just test that one a see if that changes anything. Then it's just to Cut+Paste the disabled addons back in the main folder when your done. That way it's easy to check things/different configs of addons.

On 6/2/2021 at 10:11 PM, Zbad123 said:

Yes and it did not help

Did you manage to get the issue resolved? I've got a merge of two different sets ("Textures.Body.Cum.H5" & SpermSet Hook 5) that work fine as far as I can see. Can't remember why I merged the two but I guess if it works why question decisions you've made, right? I remember I was having some issues but got it working. It works with H5$ & Basic.

23 hours ago, Drahzar said:

am I the only one who gets error logs from the Xbody add-ons?

That would be in "VX-addon.log", right? I sure can't find anything about XBody in my logs (running VX latest version).

23 hours ago, Drahzar said:

Aside logs, are there any other ways to check for errors? I feel like there's other ways, I can't help but to think the H4 isn't fully compatible with VX,

Well, I'm not familiar with H4 (I made the jump from 3 to 5)... but in my case looking in "mainfx_errors.txt" (Binaries-folder) I can see if H5 manages to launch properly. One useful thing is that it also shows you if there's some issue with normal/specular maps in the ActiveMod-folder. Like: "texture loading failed:" and the reason for the fail " ddsloader failed used ordinal function". Not sure if it's enough to cause a game crash but it's nice to be informed. For Example: I was wondering if H5 was compatible with DDS-BC7 compression and apparently it's not... no effect in game and an entry in "mainfx_errors.txt".  Also I think (can't remember it was some time ago) it was registering texture errors when I wasn't paying attention and installed some H4-stuff... (normal-/specular-maps are not compatible between H4/H5).

13 hours ago, MrOllyK said:

There are many reasons VX can crash, especially using old 7.5 addons, many of which are just incompatible and expect 3-model system instead of VX's 4.  Things like that can often have menu scripts and stuff in them that totally confuse the system.

Is something that would show up in the logs as well or is it more the silent but deadly type? 

Question:

I've noticed a couple of addons / part of addons that seems to get ignored due to "protected dir", usually the "Scripts\..." folder & "protected files". What's that about?

56 minutes ago, aardy said:

Those are full length pantaloons and not particularly ornate/lacy. And they have a bare arse . 

 

Ahahah, never actually installed the addon myself... I've been going through all the different addon archives I've got attempting to organize them a little better and happened to see that one. That bare arse feature surely speeds things up when you're about to get down and dirty. As you said: not exactly frilly/ornate/lacy...

On 6/3/2021 at 3:56 PM, aardy said:

Just an addon suggestion -

I'd love to see something like this in the game.

Any takers?  HDiddy? (just one step up from your Flash shorts )

Looks a bit like one of the clothing items from "The Grand Victorian Project"... Not exactly the same, I know, but in the ballpark.

Preview:

On 4/29/2021 at 2:15 PM, pes1972 said:

Hi,

 

Does anyone have any of the backpacks from old MG they could share I would be grateful.

I remember seeing some backpacks too. I think NC made something... I've been looking through my Addons & Texture archives but unfortunately I don't have it. 

On 5/5/2021 at 6:01 PM, footlover said:

Does anybody have dilated pupils textures in best case for Hook5?

I mean something like this, when the molly kicks in

Currently I´m trying to understand Gimp a bit. Maybe I´m wrong but if you can use Gimp it should be not so difficult to modfiy some Iris PNG files.

No, it's pretty straight forward. Just open up "eyeiris.png" and edit/enlarge the pupil size. Export as transparent .png and that should do it.

4 minutes ago, Oz70NYC said:

Access determines if a link goes dead. If the link isn't accessed in a certain amount of time (it varies depending on file host), the link is killed to conserve their own bandwidth.

1 minute ago, x17 said:

I think there are some limitations - for example, on MEGA, you have minimum 30 day period of time when someone must download any of your stuff on free account, or where you need to access your account at least once, to be treated as "active" account. Otherwise, if there is no activity at all in that one month - they will erase the account. However, I have for years content on MEGA, and never was anything erased from my content on it.

However, some other hosting sites, like for example Zippyshare, which was used sometimes on former MG, has tendency to surely delete your files after some time. Plus, Zippyshare is blocked in 4 countries (but that can be avoided with VPN, normally).

So, I would advise against some sites where deleting is a sure thing - because links are sure to become dead after some time and all needs to be reuploaded and updated.

I see...

9 minutes ago, x17 said:

its pointless to upload images in PNG format

Is there a need to actually have the option to upload PNGs (apart inside an Addon / ActiveMod archives)? I mean if it's .jpg/.gif or bust + a size limit then it's easier for the person who uploads as well (less options to choose from is sometimes a good thing .

1 hour ago, pes1972 said:

One solution would be to move the larger stuff, like most of the AM textures to external links like mega.

I'm not exactly expert when it comes to online storage and so on (never used had one myself, I keep all my stuff backed up on spare HDDs) but I've noticed that such links just seem have a tendency to go dead & seems to be dependent on the user who uploads to stay alive... or?

2 hours ago, onevision said:

Having the 'official' 400 pack revised would be the best option, I think. Some ppl (like me) have it disabled but still use the hair400 whitelist option in Config.

Even though I don't recall any causing crash. Conversion is implicit (they are all loose files in a zip folder).

Maybe for some there are problems with alphablend, that's true.

As for conflicts, yes, there are some. That's why I use the whitelist method.

 

Yeah, I use the whitelist as well... some of the built in Hair400 I have replaces for/don't use and so on. Anyway I think @arse22 was specifically asking for the R9Hairs not included in the built in pack, so those from 401-5xx (whatever the latest is). 

37 minutes ago, 827 said:

 " All you have to do is to launch options manager and enable "enable 4GB executable" and it's done! Next time you launch option manager the box will be checked."

when i do this and launch options manager again, the box is unchecked again. it's like it doesn't lock it in or something?

It might have something to do with that "external" 4GB that you've applied. I just guessing now but it might be that since you've already applied one version of the 4GB-patch Options Manager fails when it tries to apply the built in one and therefore can't "make a note of it" in whatever log-/Config-file it registers that in (I'm sure I've seen it but I can't seem to find it now) and thus when it launches the box is unchecked.

<-- If the above is not correct at least sounds logical, right? 

You can try temporarily removing that external 4GB-patch you've put in you Binaries-folder and see if you can apply the built in one but I doubt that's going to solve anything. You have no "un-patcher" for that one right? 

But the important question is can you use more than 2GB of RAM like this?

If you really want it properly fixed it might require a re-install or perhaps one can simply replace the patched executable with an unpatched one and then do it the options manager way... I've never tried that though. 

Disclaimer: If you try something like deleting/replacing files make backups of the original!