Animaze News

Happy update day, Animaze Community!

Looking for an easier way to make your avatar nod, shake their head, or better follow what you are doing on screen? Look no further as today’s update has prepared a solution for you! Update now and have fun with our new Follow Mouse Cursor behavior, optimized Quickscenes switch times, and newly implemented portrait aspect ratio virtual camera output.

Here is a breakdown of today’s new features:

• Follow Cursor behavior: added Follow Mouse Cursor behavior (Settings > Advanced Tracking Configurations > Overrides > Follow Mouse Cursor) which makes the avatar’s head and eyes follow the mouse cursor.
  
• Optimized Quickscenes switch times and Emotes preloading
• Virtual camera output now supports portrait aspect ratio
• Animaze Recordings (.anmz files) now capture emotes triggers and the camera transform
  

This update also brings you the following bug fixes and improvements:

• virtual camera broadcasting is now saved session to session
  
• fixed rotation bug in Animaze Recordings (.anmz files)
  
• added Animaze Editor shortcut (Profile > Shortcuts > Animaze Editor)
  
• Axis Perception Neuron now doesn’t auto-connect when enabling the tracker
  
• Floor Prop in Axis Perception Neuron tracker disables when the tracker is toggled off
  
• fixed record video preview timer visual cue error
  
• refined tongue movement behavior when using gamepad. Before this, left stick wasn’t doing anything
  
• updated hands animations (used with Ultraleap tracking) on Personas
  

We are working to solve the following known issues:

• Due to an update made on the iPhone ARkit bridge, some temporary issues might occur around connecting iPhones as a tracking device. This should automatically be solved in a couple of days while the AppStore rolls out the new version of iOS Animaze. A workaround is to try reinstalling the iOS app or contact us at support [@] animaze.us
  

As always, we love hearing what you think about the new content and Animaze! Tell us what you’d like to see added to Animaze on our Discord server, email us at support[@]animaze[.]us, or message us on Twitter!

Happy Streaming With Animaze 1.0!

Happy release day, folks!



We can tell today's streams are going to be purrfect as we release our new avatars, 4 lovely cats designed by our collaborators, BOSi Art Studios

Update Animaze and tag us, we'd love to see the cats out in the wild!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

As always, we love hearing what you think about the new content and Animaze! Tell us what you’d like to see added to Animaze on our Discord server, email us at support[@]animaze[.]us, or message us on Twitter!

Happy Streaming,
The Holotech Team

Hello again, Animaze Community!

Get the party started with Animaze as you can now make your avatar dance! Check out our new Standardized Full Body Animation Support which will make your avatar dance with the push of a button. Here’s more about the feature and a sneak peek at what you can do with it:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

• Standardized Full Body Animation Support: Dust off your dance move as Animaze is ready to party with this new feature that works on this set of Animaze originals: Danny The Wolf, Manny The Fox, Midori, Taj, Fifi, Lethal Flake, Tallah The Mage, Count Fang, Skyler, Fluffo, Sir Pecks'a'lot, Frank the Brown Bear, Nox The Puppet, Trump, Male & Female Personas and all TF2 avatars. The feature will soon be available on all avatars! Also, VRM and Ready Player Me avatars support dances out of the box! Find out more about how to use it in our specialized guide here

Adding dances to your custom avatar (imported from *.fbx file) is explained in this guide


As always, we love hearing what you think about the new content and Animaze! Tell us what you’d like to see added to Animaze on our Discord server, email us at support[@]animaze[.]us, or message us on Twitter!

Happy Streaming With Animaze 1.0!

Happy update day, Animaze community!

Get your creativity flowing with our new update! Animaze now supports the use of props along .VRM and Ready Player Me avatars. Read below all the information about the feature and all the other improvements we’re bringing your way.

Here’s a breakdown of the Animaze’s new features:

• Prop slots for .VRM and Ready Player Me: Get creative with the new Animaze ability to attach props to your .VRM and Ready Player Me characters.
  
• An Optimized iPhone Bridge: Take advantage of the best tracking there is by using your iPhone as a tracker in your streams, which now is available through an optimized iPhone Bridge network code.
  
• Language Update: The app has been updated in all of its available languages: Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Korean.

We have also worked on the following bug fixes and improvements:

• Minor optimizations added to audio and video capture systems
  
• Tweaked Ultraleap animation-based retargeting smooth return and hold time
  
• Fixed issue with disappearing background in the gallery when importing a custom picture
  

We have also included the following updates for the Animaze Editor:

• added Empty Node type in items hierarchy, a type of item that is not saved on disk and it serves the role of grouping other items
  
• migrated all user configuration files from AppData to Editor’s installation Data folder, this allows multiple Editor installs with different configurations (e.g. working directories).
  
• on FBX import blendshape normals are also generated if mesh normals have been generated, previously, system tried to import blendshape normals directly.
  
• fixed attach bone selection bug for Emotes (it always reverted to BipHead)
  
• added new Visemes (S and TH) to Avatar Puppeteering > Visemes
  
• added support for retargeting overrides for 3D avatars (in avatar inspector), allowing you to map tracking inputs to: specific blendshapes, specific skeletal animations, texture tiling, and offset
  
• moved retargeting overrides for 2D avatars from Live2D Options to the main avatar inspector.
  
• fixed crashes caused by Perception Neuron, Leap Motion and Animation Retargeting configurators.
  
• added Bone Mesh Contraints (in avatar inspector) enabling bones (skeletal joints) to projected to the surface of a mesh. Note that this operation is resource-intensive and should be used with care.
  
• fixed issue with avatar inspector being empty on avatar load.
  
• added material copy/paste support.
  
• optimized iPhone Bridge network code
  

As always, we love hearing what you think about the new content and Animaze! Tell us what you’d like to see added to Animaze on our Discord server, email us at support[@]animaze[.]us, or message us on Twitter!

Happy Streaming With Animaze 1.0!

Happy update day, Animaze community!

We’re excited to present an update that will take your avatar’s expressivity to another level through Animaze’s ARKit interpretation improvements! This update also offers you a customizable intensity for the avatar’s idle pose and much more!

Update now and enjoy the following:

• ARKit Interpretation Improvements: Update the Animaze iOS app, connect your iPhone as a tracker in Animaze and get the most out of your avatar’s expressivity! Our new update will offer you avatar a smoother lip movement. If you decide to go back to the old settings, this can easily be done through Settings > Tracking Profile.
  Here’s a sneak peak of the tracking improvements:
  
  [previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
  
  
• Inferred Body Yaw from Head Yaw movement: we have added an override option that infers the body yaw movement from the head yaw movement, to compensate the fact that camera based face-trackers do not track shoulder or upper body yaw movement. Go to Settings > Advanced Tracking Configurations > Overrides and locate Inferred Body Yaw option
  
  
  
  
• Customizable Intensity for Avatar Idle Animation: controls the movement amplitude applied by the avatar’s idle animation. On Live2D avatars, the intensity factor will be applied on the idle animation as well as on the procedural breathing parameters (ParamBreath).
  

We have also worked on the following bug fixes and improvements:

• Added support for a separate audio track for Video Exporter, currently, there’s no preview function.
  
• fixed issues with emotes placement on VRM and RPM avatars
  
• tweaks to RPM avatar retargeting
  
• added pitch rotation movement controls
  
• updated Ultraleap SDK
  

We are working on the following known issues:

• Ultraleap neutral position (no hands detected) has the palms orientated forward
  
• Only retexturing a prior customized persona will not prompt a save pop-up when saving
  
• There’s a random bug that empties the background gallery after saving a light setup. Restarting the app will solve the issue.
  
• While using Axis Perception Neuron tracker on Personas, some beards don’t properly retarget
  

As always, we love hearing what you think about the new content and Animaze! Tell us what you’d like to see added to Animaze on our Discord server, email us at support[@]animaze[.]us, or message us on Twitter!

Happy Streaming With Animaze 1.0!