It's been a while (much longer than expected!), but here's a new update!

This update brings about a pretty big feature - Live Recording! You can now press the brand-new REC (record) button on the objects Info Box (the box that hovers above the object), and as long as you're grabbing a grab point, keyframes will be added (or edited) automatically! You can record over an existing animation, including recorded ones, allowing you to record an object with multiple passes (useful for animating characters).

It's currently a pretty basic implementation at the moment - keyframes will be automatically added every 0.25 seconds, or if it's close to an existing keyframe, it'll just update that one. In upcoming updates, you'll have the option to change how often the keyframes are added, use distance thresholds, or both, giving more options of how to live record.

Additionally in this update, there is now better support for Custom Controllers. As long as a controller is created properly, the trackpad will be replaced with a proper quad-button trackpad.
It won't update the controller if it changes model while the app is open, so you'll need to restart if you want that.

There was also a number of optimizations, as well as compatibility improvements. The Viewfinder is now created dynamically, which should fix it for anyone experiencing issues with it before.

And that's about it for this update. As always, let me know if you have any problems, questions, comments, etc.

As a reminder, if you experience any severe problems, you can roll-back to the last update in the app's settings in Steam (Let me know if you need to do this, so I can prioritize whatever bug might be causing it!)

This update brings about a nice little feature: Frame blending!

What is frame blending? It's a little hard to explain, but it basically smooths motion between 2 poses - no more sharp motion changes!
Here's a professional diagram showing off what it does:
And here's a basic demo that actually shows it off:
Before blending:
[i.imgur.com]After blending:
[i.imgur.com]So now you can make smoother transitions, from character motions to sweeping camera passes. There are currently a few limitations - a blend frame MUST be between TWO NON-BLEND FRAMES. Blend frames aren't affected by easing (this may or may not change).

Also added is a Delete Object button. THERE IS NO UNDO FEATURE YET, SO BE CAREFUL.
Clicking the Delete Object button will prompt you to delete (as a kind of confirmation). Changing the selected object or waiting 3 seconds will time out the delete prompt, so you'll have to press it again to initiate again.

REGARDING CUSTOM CONTROLLERS:
Custom controllers aren't supported. In the future, an app-specific controller will be used, but until then, it'll use whatever is your controller. As far as trackpad buttons go, they should still physically work, you just won't see them. Probably.
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND USING THE DEFAULT CONTROLLER FOR NOW.


So that's the features for this update! Took a lot longer than expected due to having to figure out complicated multi-dimensional mathematics (which I'm not too great at).
There have been some bug fixes (hopefully the viewfinder issue is finally fixed?), performance optimizations, and a bit of menu restructuring (though still pretty ugly).


Until next update!

Despite not being anywhere near an immediate goal, and despite my expectations of it taking weeks, if not months, VIRTUAnimator can now export your scene as a COLLADA DAE format file!

This means you can quickly and easily pose your characters, create the keyframes, then export it for fine-tuning in another application like 3DS Max.

There are some limitations, which I'll talk about right now:
No mesh or texture data is exported. Only transform data is exported. For a character model, this means only it's hierarchy is exported (though complete and intact); for a prop, it's position/rotation is exported.

The main reason for this is because I don't want to put myself in legal trouble if, say, someone puts their content on the Workshop, only to have someone else download it, export it, and use it in a way they didn't allow.

The second reason is that it would take a LONG time to do (I had to write a custom exporter, which I've never done before, for a format I've never used before, using concepts I've never heard of before). If I can figure out a way around the legally-messy stuff, I'll look at extending the exporter to include more stuff.

For the mean time, though, this makes it real easy for someone to bring in a model, pose it, export it, then add the animation to the source model via retargetting (I don't know 3D software, so I don't know the workflow for that). If retargetting in something like 3DS Max or Blender is similar to that in Unity with Mecanim, then it should work nicely. As with the app, this exporter is also in the early phases, so things might not work perfectly.

Moving on to the next feature (though much smaller), screenshots taken with the new Screenshot Tool will now also be saved as a Steam Screenshot, so you can share images of your creations easily with others.

Finally, there have been a few bug fixes to hopefully make things more stable/efficient. The viewfinder should also now work properly, though because I never had the non-render issue, I couldn't exactly track it down. If it still happens, let me know, and I'll look into it some more.

And that about covers it for this update!
Until next time.

First public update! Just a small one for now – some bug fixes, plus a new Screenshot tool, to allow easy single-shot capture, instead of setting up the camera to render a single frame.

The controller’s touchpad texture has been updated to show 4 buttons now, with the Camera button opening the new tool. With it active, you’ll see a small viewfinder atop your controller, and pulling the trigger will save its view.
The other button (an Eye) is unused for the moment – soon it’ll replace the Viewfinder object (or act as a second one).

The Desert Mountain scene has had its lighting fixed (to an extent). Objects will now be correctly lit, and shadows won’t be pitch-black. Terrain no longer (did it before?) casts shadows; the sheer size of the terrain messes with the lightmapping, and baking the shadows would take WAY too long on my li’l old PC (left it going for 30-60 minutes, and it wasn’t even ¼ of the way through!).

Muzzle flash was scaled down, and had its icon fixed.

Also there were some bug fixes, but I don’t think they affected anyone (which is always good).

That’s all for this update – things should start ramping up more in the coming days/weeks; if there's something you'd like to see added sooner (or at all), let me know, and I'll see what I can do.

Thanks to everyone for these first few days, it’s been pretty crazy!

Until next update!

We’re launched!
VIRTUAnimator is here, and it’s ready for you!
It's nearly here!

I’d like to take a moment to discuss the immediate development goals planned.
Firstly, some (hopefully) simple things to add:
- Screenshot tool (to take easy shots of your scene without having to render)
- Timeline Scaler (to get a better view of clumped keyframes)
- World Timeline (controls things like Time Scale (for slow motion), and any Scene events)

Then, probably less simple, is Frame Blending. At the moment, motion between keyframes is linear (or ramped up/down via Easing). This works fine for quick or direct motion, but for sweeping or curved motions, not so much. Frame Blending should allow for those smoother curves and transitions, but requires figuring out some crazy math, on top of the already crazy math of Easing.

Possibly even more difficult is the Automatic Keyframe tool; this will allow you to move an object/grab point, and after crossing a certain threshold, will automatically keyframe it. Most of the backend is there, but tying it together for use by everyone has been surprisingly difficult.

Lastly, an option to turn the rendered Image Sequence into an MP4 is something that’ll probably happen soon. Still working out the best way to go about doing that, but it’ll probably involve FFMPEG. In the meantime, if you want to edit your sequence, or turn it into a video, most decent video editors/compositors will have an ‘Import Image Sequence’ option. I prefer Adobe Premiere/After Effects (http://www.adobe.com/creativecloud.html), but a free (yet still powerful) alternative I’d recommend checking out is Hitfilm Express (https://hitfilm.com/express/).

There are also numerous little things to make usage easier.

With that out of the way, let me just say thanks for checking out VIRTUAnimator; if you have any comments, feedback, or ideas, let me know!