New Gripping/Equipping System, April Community Showcase, Steam Audio and more
Hello everyone, welcome back to the weekly update! This week we have a new addition to the Radiant UI, the new grip system! This new gripping system will allow you to define where you want your tools to be attached by default.
It also allows you to use your tools while simply gripping them. For our community highlights, we have showcased this month's creations in our monthly community showcase stream.
[h2]New Gripping / Equipping System[/h2]
The newest addition to our Radiant UI is our new gripping system, which will replace the old clunky method of repositioning tools, guns and other equippables every time you wish to use them. The new grip system allows you to predefine areas where your right or left hand would grip onto an item, such as a gun. Once positioned, the item will remember where it needs to be in the next hand that grabs it, without needing to adjust for different avatars.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Note: This is an earlier devlog video, the issues shown in the video have already been fixed in the latest builds
You can find the grip positions in the hierarchy of any attachable “tool”, labeled as Left/Right Grip Pose. Clicking on “ShowVisual” in the GripPoseReference component will show a hand to give you an idea of where this item will go when gripped. You can adjust this hand visual using the inspector.
We have also added a very quick way to adjust those by turning on Edit Mode, gripping and repositioning the tool with the opposite hand. This makes it easy and quick to upgrade existing items and tools to the new system, particularly when the heuristics doesn’t detect proper gripping poses.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Changing the size of the Grip Pose reference will cause the item to change size when gripped, so avatars with hands that are big or small will have the item adjust to their hand size dynamically.
This will ultimately lead to a smooth and easy usage of equippable tools for avatars of any size. The use cases for this are vast, as it allows users in many gaming scenarios to quickly grab items and weapons appropriately without having to reposition them.
The grabbing mechanism was changed up as well. Grabbing an item with your hand is now always considered a physical grab, so your joystick/touchpad won’t get overridden for rotating/moving the grabbed item. This functionality is now only used when you grab the object with your laser.
Overall these changes are designed to reduce the number of steps and necessary interaction mechanisms for common interactions in Neos, making it into a smoother and less frustrating experience.
As we go, we’ll keep expanding the system and making it more powerful to help you better express how different items and objects align with the avatar's hands and make sure your creations work well for other players out of the box.
[h2]Steam Audio, New Icons, smaller additions, tweaks and bugfixes[/h2]
This week we have finally switched back to the Steam Audio as our main spatializer thanks to the release of beta 18, which fixed the audio popping bug that forced us to switch to the lower quality MS HRTF spatializer. Steam Audio should provide a lot better audio quality as well as many more options to expose and fine tune in the future.
Continuing with the graphical update more new icons have been added, both for more tools and for the app itself (Neos, Launcher and the Headless).
And as usual, lots of smaller things were added, tweaked or fixed. PBS Triplanar got dual sided support, crashes in Steam Networking Sockets were mitigated, meter tooltip is now more reliable and easier to use and more. Check out #neos-updates on our Discord server to see all the things that have changed!
[h2]Beginner Crash Course 3 - Building tools, particle systems, brushes, new gripping system[/h2]
In this week’s beginner crash course livestream we have looked at the basic building and creation tools in Neos as well as the new gripping system. We have also covered how to quickly make your own particle systems and use brushes and other art tools.
If you missed the stream you can watch the recording here. Make sure to follow us on Twitch if you want to catch us live and ask any questions!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]April Community Showcase Livestream[/h2]
We have our monthly showcase on the last friday of every month, where we show off the most interesting and fun creations made by our community members. Nexulan hosts the stream as usual for our Friday streams.
If you want to see all the amazing stuff that our community has built over the past month, give it a watch! We went to many beautiful worlds and showed a lot of fun items that you can find inside of Neos.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]What’s Next?[/h2]
hand/interaction system with the new Radiant UI, following the new context menu and gripping system. These combined will form a full interaction system, designed to be much sleeker and significantly less frustrating than the old one, as well as more powerful going forward.
After the laser is done we’ll focus on the Facet system and the new dash, which will be the main backbone of the Radiant UI. There’s a lot of exciting stuff coming, so stay tuned! And as always, thanks so much for reading the weekly update and supporting the project, you’re awesome!
It also allows you to use your tools while simply gripping them. For our community highlights, we have showcased this month's creations in our monthly community showcase stream.
[h2]New Gripping / Equipping System[/h2]
The newest addition to our Radiant UI is our new gripping system, which will replace the old clunky method of repositioning tools, guns and other equippables every time you wish to use them. The new grip system allows you to predefine areas where your right or left hand would grip onto an item, such as a gun. Once positioned, the item will remember where it needs to be in the next hand that grabs it, without needing to adjust for different avatars.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Note: This is an earlier devlog video, the issues shown in the video have already been fixed in the latest builds
You can find the grip positions in the hierarchy of any attachable “tool”, labeled as Left/Right Grip Pose. Clicking on “ShowVisual” in the GripPoseReference component will show a hand to give you an idea of where this item will go when gripped. You can adjust this hand visual using the inspector.
We have also added a very quick way to adjust those by turning on Edit Mode, gripping and repositioning the tool with the opposite hand. This makes it easy and quick to upgrade existing items and tools to the new system, particularly when the heuristics doesn’t detect proper gripping poses.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Changing the size of the Grip Pose reference will cause the item to change size when gripped, so avatars with hands that are big or small will have the item adjust to their hand size dynamically.
This will ultimately lead to a smooth and easy usage of equippable tools for avatars of any size. The use cases for this are vast, as it allows users in many gaming scenarios to quickly grab items and weapons appropriately without having to reposition them.
The grabbing mechanism was changed up as well. Grabbing an item with your hand is now always considered a physical grab, so your joystick/touchpad won’t get overridden for rotating/moving the grabbed item. This functionality is now only used when you grab the object with your laser.
Overall these changes are designed to reduce the number of steps and necessary interaction mechanisms for common interactions in Neos, making it into a smoother and less frustrating experience.
As we go, we’ll keep expanding the system and making it more powerful to help you better express how different items and objects align with the avatar's hands and make sure your creations work well for other players out of the box.
[h2]Steam Audio, New Icons, smaller additions, tweaks and bugfixes[/h2]
This week we have finally switched back to the Steam Audio as our main spatializer thanks to the release of beta 18, which fixed the audio popping bug that forced us to switch to the lower quality MS HRTF spatializer. Steam Audio should provide a lot better audio quality as well as many more options to expose and fine tune in the future.
Continuing with the graphical update more new icons have been added, both for more tools and for the app itself (Neos, Launcher and the Headless).
And as usual, lots of smaller things were added, tweaked or fixed. PBS Triplanar got dual sided support, crashes in Steam Networking Sockets were mitigated, meter tooltip is now more reliable and easier to use and more. Check out #neos-updates on our Discord server to see all the things that have changed!
[h2]Beginner Crash Course 3 - Building tools, particle systems, brushes, new gripping system[/h2]
In this week’s beginner crash course livestream we have looked at the basic building and creation tools in Neos as well as the new gripping system. We have also covered how to quickly make your own particle systems and use brushes and other art tools.
If you missed the stream you can watch the recording here. Make sure to follow us on Twitch if you want to catch us live and ask any questions!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]April Community Showcase Livestream[/h2]
We have our monthly showcase on the last friday of every month, where we show off the most interesting and fun creations made by our community members. Nexulan hosts the stream as usual for our Friday streams.
If you want to see all the amazing stuff that our community has built over the past month, give it a watch! We went to many beautiful worlds and showed a lot of fun items that you can find inside of Neos.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]What’s Next?[/h2]
hand/interaction system with the new Radiant UI, following the new context menu and gripping system. These combined will form a full interaction system, designed to be much sleeker and significantly less frustrating than the old one, as well as more powerful going forward.
After the laser is done we’ll focus on the Facet system and the new dash, which will be the main backbone of the Radiant UI. There’s a lot of exciting stuff coming, so stay tuned! And as always, thanks so much for reading the weekly update and supporting the project, you’re awesome!