Animaze News

Introducing the newest sensation in the Animaze world: Malicious Rangar!

Prepare to bug out with this mischievous critter who's ready to turn your virtual world upside down!

Get ready to dance like nobody's watching, laugh like you've never laughed before, and embrace the crazy with Malicious Rangar!

[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 awesome folks,

We are releasing an update that enables you to add a LOT more ready-made custom animations to your avatar.
You can now directly import any of the thousands of Mixamo animations to use on any mannequin-compatible avatar in Animaze! This should also work with any other animation creation pipeline that can export fbx animations for the Mixamo rig, like Move.ai.
You are now also able to use blendshape face tracking input from any VMC tracker!
Based on your feedback, we've reworked key bindings for Special Actions, Special Poses, and Idle Animations.
Because of the keybind system changes, switching to previous-version branch and back to the main will revert all keybind mappings to default.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


[h3]Full Changelog[/h3]

• added Mixamo generic mannequin that allows for Mixamo rigged animations to be loaded and applied on virtually all 3D avatars (VRM and Ready Player Me work out of the box and most Holotech Originals).
  
• added a direct Mixamo animation import option (.fbx files), enabling you to add animations directly from the Mixamo website (or other Mixamo-compatible sources) to your Avatar in Animaze.
  
• added support to receive blendshapes face data on VMC tracker (the VMC tracker is no longer body-only)
  • ARKit/PerfectSync/MediaPipe blendshapes are interpreted and retargeted on all avatars.
    
  • for VRoid expression blendshapes (joy, surprise, sad, etc.) which aren’t retargeted, we’ve added a Direct Expression Mapping option that will directly apply the incoming blendshapes on the VRM model.
    
  • Direct Expression Mapping can also be used with ARKit/PerfectSync/MediaPipe blendshapes if the avatar model supports it (e.g. Ready Player Me avatars support the standard by default).
    
  • added options to accept/reject incoming VMC data, currently three main channels: body transforms, camera transform, and blendshapes.
• fixed and tweaked some special actions and idle animation interactions.
  
• reworked the special actions, poses, and idles keybinding system to allow for easier rebinding. We’ve added the option to keep the keybindings specific to the avatar, so you can have different special actions keybindings per avatar. When using the “Keybinds saved to avatar instance“ option, you can do key rebinding directly from the Animations drawer.
  
• fixed issue with using Spout2 sources on props.

Known issues

• The switch between generic Mannequin and Mixamo animations is snappy.

[h3]Editor Changelog[/h3]

• fixed the crash that occurs when calling Save item on items without models.

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 animazing community,

We are releasing a Next-version branch update which enables you to add a LOT more ready-made custom animations to your avatar!
You can now directly import any of the thousands of Mixamo animations to use on any mannequin-compatible avatar in Animaze! This should also work with any other animation creation pipeline that can export fbx animations for the Mixamo rig.

You are now also able to use blendshape face tracking input from any VMC tracker!
Based on your feedback, we've reworked key bindings for Special Actions, Special Poses, and Idle Animations.
Disclaimer. Switching to next-version branch and back to default will revert all keybind mappings to default. You can back up your preferences by saving the /Data/AppPreferences.json file separately and when switching back to default branch, overwriting it with the saved file.

For info on how to change build branches please check: Navigate branches

[h3]Desktop Changelog[/h3]

• added support to receive blendshapes data on VMC tracker
  
  
  • ARKit/PerfectSync/MediaPipe blendshapes are interpreted and retargeted on all avatars.
    
    
  • for VRoid expression blendshapes (joy, surprise, sad, etc.) which aren’t retargeted, we’ve added a Direct Expression Mapping option that will directly apply the incoming blendshapes on the VRM model.
    
    
  • Direct Expression Mapping can also be used with ARKit/PerfectSync/MediaPipe blendshapes if the avatar model supports it (e.g. Ready Player Me avatars support the standard by default).
  
  
  
• added options to accept/reject incoming VMC data, currently three main channels: body transforms, camera transform, and blendshapes.
  
  
• added Mixamo generic mannequin that allows for Mixamo rigged animations to be applied on virtually all 3D avatars (VRM and Ready Player Me work out of the box and most Holotech Originals).
  
  
• added a direct Mixamo animation import option (.fbx files), enabling you to add animations directly from the Mixamo website (or other Mixamo-compatible sources) to your Avatar in Animaze.
  
  
• fixed and tweaked some special actions and idle animation interactions.
  
  
• reworked the special actions, poses, and idles keybinding system to allow for easier rebinding. We’ve added the option to keep the keybindings specific to the avatar, so you can have different special actions keybindings per avatar. When using the “Keybinds saved to avatar instance“ option, you can do key rebinding directly from the Animations drawer.
  
  
• fixed issue with using Spout2 sources on props.
  

Known issues

• the switch between generic Mannequin and Mixamo animations is snappy.

[h3]Editor Changelog[/h3]

• fixed the crash that occurs when calling Save item on items without models.

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 animazing community,

We're excited to bring to you Animaze with an improved webcam face-tracking library from Visage Technologies. What you'll likely notice right away is that it has less jitter and requires less smoothing, allowing you to enable a snappier mo-cap experience from your advanced tracking settings.

We are also applying what we have learned with auto-generating avatar motions and gestures on Chatpal, to enable an improved "no-cam" mode for streamers that want to drive things with just their voice.

[h3]Desktop Changelog[/h3]

• updated the default webcam face tracker Visage SDK, which significantly reduces tracking jitter.
  
• Animaze ChatPal updates
  
  • fixed issue with the start of talking behavior on cloud voices which activated too early, the behavior should start at the right time now.
    
  • fixed gestures and emotions being ignored if they are at the very start of the phrase, on very short phrases with single gesture/emotion.
    
• updated the MToon shader for VRM 1.0, newly imported VRM 1.0 avatars should be shaded correctly now.
  
• disabled texture resizing when importing user images (for any type of customization); before, textures were clamped to the application render size.
  
• fixed Ultraleap freezing issue if you use general special actions and interrupt them with the avatar's dedicated idle.
  
• for VRM and GLB models, on import, we are removing ARKit eyes look-at blendshapes (e.g. EyeLookDownLeft) specifically for the meshes that are skinned by the eyeLeft/eyeRight joints. For VRM and GLB-sourced avatars, the eyes are animated procedurally by rotating the eye joints, applying blendshapes over this would only apply a double transform and make the end result inaccurate and/or distorted.
  
• added Animaze Webcamless Face & Body Extension (activable from Settings > Advanced Tracking Configuration > Select Trackers) which adds dynamic facial expressions and body movements to your avatar without the need for face or body trackers. Some movements are derived or applied based on the audio tracker. Effectively, we’ve added the Animaze Chatpal procedural behaviors for real-time use with audio tracking.
  

[h3]Editor Changelog[/h3]

• updated the MToon shader for VRM 1.0, newly imported VRM 1.0 avatars should be shaded correctly now.
  

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 animazing community,

We are releasing an Animaze preview build on the "next-version" beta branch with an improved webcam face-tracking library from Visage Technologies. What you'll likely notice right away is that it has less jitter and requires less smoothing, allowing you to enable a snappier mo-cap experience from your advanced tracking settings.

We are also applying what we have learned with auto-generating avatar motions and gestures on Chatpal, to enable an improved "no-cam" mode for streamers that want to drive things with just their voice.

We appreciate your feedback about all of it before we push it to the main branch next week.
For info on how to change build branches please check: Navigate branches

[h3]Desktop Changelog[/h3]

• updated the default webcam face tracker Visage SDK, which significantly reduces tracking jitter.
  
• Animaze ChatPal updates
  
  • fixed issue with the start of talking behavior on cloud voices which activated too early, the behavior should start at the right time now.
    
  • fixed gestures and emotions being ignored if they are at the very start of the phrase, on very short phrases with single gesture/emotion.
    
• updated the MToon shader for VRM 1.0, newly imported VRM 1.0 avatars should be shaded correctly now.
  
• disabled texture resizing when importing user images (for any type of customization); before, textures were clamped to the application render size.
  
• fixed Ultraleap freezing issue if you use general special actions and interrupt them with the avatar's dedicated idle.
  
• for VRM and GLB models, on import, we are removing ARKit eyes look-at blendshapes (e.g. EyeLookDownLeft) specifically for the meshes that are skinned by the eyeLeft/eyeRight joints. For VRM and GLB-sourced avatars, the eyes are animated procedurally by rotating the eye joints, applying blendshapes over this would only apply a double transform and make the end result inaccurate and/or distorted.
  
• added Animaze Webcamless Face & Body Extension (activable from Settings > Advanced Tracking Configuration > Select Trackers) which adds dynamic facial expressions and body movements to your avatar without the need for face or body trackers. Some movements are derived or applied based on the audio tracker. Effectively, we’ve added the Animaze Chatpal procedural behaviors for real-time use with audio tracking.
  

[h3]Editor Changelog[/h3]

• updated the MToon shader for VRM 1.0, newly imported VRM 1.0 avatars should be shaded correctly now.
  

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