Hi Everyone,

Here's a quick update about the current state of things.

I'm almost done with the model importer script.
I'm working on implementing proper threading so the importing doesn't take too long, even though in reality you will only need to use it a couple of times (when you download a new clothing mod or when you first run the mod).

After this is done there's only a few things that need to be done, such as

• saving where all of the files are located (so the next time you start the mod it will load a lot quicker)
  
• creating a view tree so you can individually load all of the clothes, to see if they're correct (and if not modify it)
  
• add in a way to modify said clothing and a way to fix individual clothes
  
• a way to export the models (should be easy, as I already found a proper way to export them into PZ)
  
• a way to export only specific models

And that should be it.

Hi Everyone,

A quick update:

I'm still working on this mod, but it's been pretty slow in the past couple of weeks. Sorry about that.

Here is a video on where we are currently with the mod.

https://youtu.be/k9rFdzMSPGM

As you can see there's still a lot to do, but we're getting there. (the timer and the box underneath it is not part of the mod, it's only there to show which mod is being loaded, and how many models were found for them.)


I am almost done with the model importer, (sadly I put too much time into trying to make it use Unity's job system, which would have enabled the mod to load multiple mods at the same time, effectively decreasing the mod load time by quite a bit, assuming the player keeps the mods on an SSD) oh well, I can try to implement it in the next version.

For now aside from showing the loaded models (with their mod names and available textures) on the left panel, and converting the fbx models into the proper format which Unity can read in (I already have coded this though), and a way to store and load in the already imported in clothing (so the slow search algorithm doesn't have to run every time you start the mod), we should be done with the import part.

Next should be converting the code that currently modifies the body, and apply it to the imported clothing, which should be really easy, as I already have the workflow for that, I just gotta automate it.

Aside from this I will also need to add in a way to move (and rotate) the camera around the body, because right now you can only see the front of the character, so a lot of the options are a guesswork.

And then only the exporting is left, which I also have a working workflow for, so that should be relatively easy as well. For this I will also need to recreate a way to store the models into their correct folders (inside my own mod, not their old location) and we should be done.

Again, so sorry for how slow this has been.

Hi Everyone,

Quick update,

I have been able to import models into Unity during runtime.
Sadly I spent way too much time trying to make this work for free,
and instead of trying for longer I decided to just buy another Unity addon that will ultimately fix this problem once and for all.
(So far it looks like we're still compatible with Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. I will try to keep it this way)

https://youtu.be/mJrIb_NOBW4

As you can see this is an extremely early demo with it, I still got to fix the location, rotation, and the scale of the imported clothes (which should be relatively easily as we also import the skeleton of the model), and hide them when the model actually loads. (We only want to see the models that were selected in the treeview panel, otherwise we won't be able to see anything from the sheer amount of models). Not to mention we still need to actually apply the textures that we found.

We also have to do some pre-processing of the fbx files before we can import them and modify them (and save these modifications so loading them later on will be much faster), this is the folder structure you see in the File Explorer on the left side of the video. This is (for now) completed, but we will be saving an xml file with all of the modifications for said specific clothing (with an incremental name, so the user can have multiple versions for a clothing)

You might have noticed on the left side of the video some of the model's name come up more than once, currently the mod loads the models multiple times (depending on how many textures it has), this later on will change and we will only swap out the actual texture, when the user wants to see a different version of the same clothes.


Next step will be fixing the above mentioned problems, and finishing the model load implementation.

Hi Everyone,

We're nearing to the end.

I added in the ability to finally change clothing, which is the main part of the mod.

https://youtu.be/FmKkrjsZdkY

As you can see in the mod the model importing works, same with the shapekeys, which are added to the model dynamically during runtime, which ensures that this mod will work with any other clothing mods.

At the ending of the video I show off a couple of problems currently,

Some clothing are really low resolution, meaning they wont look good when they're initially imported into the mod, however next I will add in the option to "inflate" and "deflate" parts of the clothing, which will help the user to fit the clothing onto the body better. By itself this won't fix the problem, I'm also adding in a way to increase the resolution of the clothing, which in combination with inflation will make sure that any kind of clothes will fit.

This is however not the last of the problem, in the video the jacket turns a darker shade when a shapekey is applied, this happens because the original model is turned inside out. Usually recalculating the normal fixes this problem, however it won't always solve the problem (as we can see in the video). In this case I'm not exactly sure what can be done (aside from manually flipping them in Blender, or maybe in this mod (later))

Hi Everyone,

Short update as I didn't really have the patience to work on the mod for the last 2 weeks,

I've finished the camera movement, so now if the cursor is over the interface, then the camera movement will be blocked (except if we already started moving, then we will continue to do so, so the cursor going over the UI won't stop our camera rotation), the user just won't be able to initiate camera movements through the UI, which is good.

I also added in a number field next to the body sliders where we can add in the percentage by hand, for more precision, we're also able to add in numbers less than 0, or more than 100, if we want to go beyond the current limit (currently going above 100 is a bit tricky, because of the way the trigger is set up (it resets it to 100, unless if you play around with it, interestingly this doesn't happen when we go beyond the lower bound, only with the upper bound), so I'll have to fix that)

Here's a short video (now with the mouse controls on the screen, so you guys can have an idea on how to move the camera in the mod (I'm planning on adding a short text tutorial about it, as well.))

I also started to look into the TreeView component in UI Toolkit in Unity, which for some reason is a lot more harder to use than I initially thought. It also shares it's name with the Unity Editor's component, which most of the online tutorials are made for (and by most I mean so far I have only found 1 that talks about the runtime version), so I'm basically stuck trying to figure it out on my own, which I no longer find fun in.

Anyways enough of my ramblings, here's the video:

https://youtu.be/50hRLvQkP1c

Hi Everyone!

A really short update, I'm finishing up the Model Tree View panel (there's still a couple of problems), But I wanted to share what we have so far.

https://youtu.be/zprioyVbpJk


Apparently Nvidia's own recording software doesn't like it when I change my screen resolution (from 21:9 to 16:9 aspect ratio) so in the video my cursor is shifted to the left side, but I'm too tired to re-record the video for the 5th time, so yeah. Sorry about any of the confusion this might have caused)

During the import you can see that all of the models quickly load into the editor, and then slowly vanish, in the final version I want to make it so the models load in the background (currently the mod slows down by a pretty noticeable margin because of all of the vertices we load at once)

In the end I had to create my own Tree View, as I was unable to figure out how to implement their version, but it works well enough I suppose.

I was on the fence on creating this devlog update as it's still not completely ready, but I also didn't want to leave you guys without any life-sign from the mod's side.

as I'm sure you noticed most of the clothing were not correctly placed, or just simply too big, so this will be the next thing I want to tackle. (which I have some ideas on how to do it)

before the first version is released, I want to add in a way to move the clothing's vertices from inside the mod (some of the clothes I showed off were not perfectly fitted onto the character, this would give the user a way to fix these mistakes)
And being able to modify some of the options (like where PZ is stored, so the export process can be as simple as pressing the export button, and then turning the mod on inside PZ)

and a way to export only a selected amount of clothes (from a list, or the ones enabled in the TreeView) or every clothing, or just a specific mod, or the models that are missing from the already exported mod

After the initial update I had some ideas about how I could implement a way to automatically check if any models intersect with the player's body (who has time to go through EVERY clothes to manually check if they're intersecting or not?)

Hi Everyone,

long time no.. updates.

For the past few weeks I've been really busy with life, partly because we had to take both of our cats in for surgery, which drained both our time and wallets (not to mention my mood), but at least they're doing much better now, which in the end is whats the most important.

But enough about my endless jabbering.

I've been working on the mod, I mostly fixed the import problem, now most of the mods I tested actually import in correctly (aside from 1 of them, which imports upside down, so I'm going to create a function where the user can re-import multiple / individual clothing, and change specific parameters while doing so, like Rotation, Location, and Scale)

I also got another plugin, which lets the user sculpt models (when importing clothing and applying shapes onto it they do not always match up with the base body model, so the user will need a way to fix these problems)
This actually had the unintended benefit of being able to modify the base character model inside the editor, which I didn't think about, but yes, the user will be able to create their own shapes, and apply these shapes to their clothing.

No videos this time as I'm still in between updates, but I wanted to let you guys know the mod's still alive and well.


If everything goes well I should be able to finish this during this week, and then aside from a couple of smaller things (like finishing the option panel, and creating a way to save the shape values), there is only the export function left, after which I'm going to release a public test version, I'm hoping I will be able to do this before the end of this month, but we'll see.

Hi Everyone,

I have good news! I finished it!

Well, sort of. The main part of the mod IS finished, but there are still some parts that I have to work out before I can release the first version, like adding the options (so the user can set PZ's location, and a cache location where the mod will be storing mesh for faster, and the ability to change the keyboard shortcuts (this might come later)), and much more importantly, currently if the built version is run it crashes during model import. So yeah that's definitely needs to be fixed.

In any case here is a video of the mod currently:

https://youtu.be/VByiWQSn43A

Oh right, I forgot to mention, I managed to get the sculpting tool to work, and created some icons for them. currently we have from left to right: Smooth tool, Inflate, Deflate, Grab, (directional lights toggle), subdivision*, UV flip, Vertex Weld*, Reverse tool, Undo

If you work in 3d then you have heard about most (if not all) of these. ( ok, maybe not the reverse tool) but for the ones who haven't here is a short description on what these are for:

• Smooth; as the name suggest, with this you can smooth out a mesh (in combination with
• subdivision, this is a very powerful tool to quickly "beautify" a model)
  
• Inflate & Deflate; these two tools will be the main way you will interact with the model, if some of the pixels in the model are stuck under the main character's mesh, you can use the inflate tool to "inflate" the mesh (push the mesh out** from the point you activated it on)
  
• grab; another important tool, you can grab parts of the mesh and move it
  
• light toggle; this toggles the directional light, turning it into a light that encompasses the whole model (so no more shadows),
  
• subdivision*; with subD you can "split the model into half" in such a way that will give you double of the model's resolution, while this is a good way to make models look good quickly,
  
• UV flip;this is useful if you can see into the "inside of the mesh", this can flip the model inside-out,
  
• Vertex Weld; when a model has multiple vertex on top of each other, with this you can join them together (as they should be)
  
• Reverse tool; This tool lets you take the vertexes back to their original position before you started the modification (if you modify the model, and leave from the sculpt tool, coming back will be your new "base", the reverse tool will bring you back to the new base, not the original one)
  
• Undo;with this you can reverse your actions (you can only do this up to 10 times currently, this will be changeable in the options pane)

* you are not able to reverse these actions, so be careful when applying them! (in there future there will be a popup for both, where you will also be able to change some of their options (how many levels of subD, how close should the vertex needs to be to get welded into one))

Well, it's almost 4:30 am, so I should go to sleep finally.

Hi Everyone,

I have some unfortunate news,

During the last week I've gotten incredibly sick, which stopped me from working on this mod in any way, so I'll have to push the release back by at least a week (Dec 10).

But I'm feeling a lot better now, but still far from 100%. I'll try to work on this mod during the weekend, as there is still a fair bit I need to do in order to get this mod release ready.

Hi Everyone,

Quick news today,

I've been working on a lot of new stuff for the initial release, and I hope you guys are gonna enjoy it!

Firstly I implemented a way to read in .X files, so from now on this mod will officially support all of the models* that currently exist on steam.

I also added in support for static models, so from now on we should also be able to modify those correctly as well (currently we're checking if the clothing xml contains an m_AttachBone tag with a valid bone name, if it does, then we handle it as if the whole clothing is static, and not skinned)

One small problem with the current .X precompile implementation is converting bigger armor mods does take a while with the current setup, so if I'll have time then I'll package the mod together with a more lightweight code, which doesn't have any UI associated with it, but IN theory should precompile the models faster, however without this the mod can still be used fully, the initial setup will just take longer. (I tested it with Britas armor mod, which is 250Mb+ , which in the Editor took over an hour to compile (it used over 20+ GB of ram!)**, do keep in mind the Editor is a lot slower than the released mod, as the Editor does more stuff in the background, slowing it down by a considerable chunk), this does also mean that mods that are over 250Mb cannot be loaded properly into the mod at once, so I came up with a better idea, we can load the models in when we actually need them, not during the initial setup, we just preprocess them.

*As far as I'm aware there's only .fbx and .X models are available for PZ, and these are supported now, (yes, this includes Brita's armor mod)

**after implementing the better way of importing clothes when we actually need it, this will most likely be a lot faster, but I still have to test this.

So far the only things I have left to do is fix the runtime error we're getting when we run the mod from outside the editor, creating the options panel, fixing a small rotational bug with static clothings, and changing the model implementation to hold off on importing until when we actually need it.

No videos this time either, as I'd rather spend 3 hours working on the mod, than create a silent film!

Hi Everyone,

Very small update this time (I promise! and not just because it's 5 am! )

• I fixed the rotational problem that static objects had,
  
• I created the options panel (there is still a small bug where resetting certain keys aren't saved properly, but that should be an easy, quick fix),
  
• And I just finished changing the model implementation,

Preprocessing Britas Armor Mod (which before took over an hour to process), now it takes about a minute, which is extremely good, because this time my PC didn't even freeze up once, with the Editor, Spotify, and a recording going, last time the whole editor froze up just by itself. Oh and the RAM usage was at 5 GB, which is a lot better than that 20 GB we had last time, it's probably going to be less in the runtime version, but I won't be able to test that until I fix the last 2 points

One small note however, because we're not importing in the models as soon as they're processed, it does take some time to load them when the user selects the model they want, with smaller models this time isn't noticeable, but with most of Britas models, it does take a few seconds to import in the model, however throughout the whole process the editor doesn't freeze up, which is certainly a plus.

One extra note on this, currently the export function only runs on the models that are selected, I'm thinking of changing this and giving the user the option to choose if they want to export all of the clothing, or only the ones that are selected (or the ones that are actually loaded into the system, but not necessarily selected), but we'll see.



Currently I'm still running the mod from the editor, as there's 1 error left in the runtime version, which gonna take a little longer to fix. Aside from this single dumb error, and that other bug in the settings panel (and adding in the ability to save and load your character's shape values!), I think we're ready for the first version.

That sounds unbelievable even to me if I'm being honest, but here we are.

Hi Everyone!

I have some good news, and some not so good news.

Good news is that from the original checklist I fixed everything,

not so good news is I found some more pretty huge bugs which is rather annoying. (the problem is with certain .X models), But I'll try to fix it by the end of today.

I also found some older TODO things, which I fixed (for example adding PZ's own models to the mod creator, and replacing the female model with a better one (I had to recreate it in it's actual game resolution, as the high res was causing a lot of clothing to poke under the mesh, this way I'd say 90% of the models work correctly, plus I'm not exactly sure). )

I also improved on the load times of .X model by a lot, instead of waiting ~10 seconds or so for the model to load, it takes less than a second, but this did come with me needing to increase the first load time for .X mods, PZ and Britas together take about 5 minutes to load on my hardware

I will be sharing a test version of the mod when I can fix this error, and then release the first beta version. Currently I won't update this mod with the beta version, but rather share it on over discord, for the people who are interested in being the beta testers for it. (as I'm sure the first couple of versions will have a bunch of problems which I didn't even think about before.)
If you want to join the discord to try out the beta then here is a link for it.
https://discord.gg/bjFVybRp2z
(to everyone who already joined and got "kicked" sorry, I accidentally turned on Temporary Membership while creating the link..)