hello! we're working on veadotube, and we have lots to bring to you this time <3 (no fools of april here. we had no time to work on a joke)

so what's new?

gonna start with the biggest one: remember Tube the deer the baby deer the fawn that's present in veadotube mini? well if you haven't seen it, they grew up in the full version! introducing adult Tube:

this will be one of the default avatars included in veadotube, demonstrating the capabilities of the new dynamic avatar editor :]

wait, the dynamic avatar editor?

that's the second biggest news yeah! the new avatar editor is finally ready to be used, and currently available in the early access. took us a while, and there's still lots to fix, but you can actually create entire avatars with veadotube using layers and nodes and whatnot.

here's a screenshot of the whole thing as of this current build:

the workflow is relatively straight-forward:

• you import images and then create layers based on them.
• you reorder your layers, group them, and add clipping and masking and blending effects to them.
• you add dynamics to your layres: ones that attach themselves to another layer, ones that do squash-and-stretch effects, and ones that expose movement control to the node editor.
• you create states for your avatar where you can override properties (layer visibility, position, etc) and then let the node editor control them.
• you create nodes that control state machines and positioning and rotating and connect them to states and layer dynamics.
• you expose some node inputs and anchors to the scene editor so that you can let the person using the avatar customise it further without having to edit the avatar file itself.
• you save your avatar as a .veado file, import it in the scene editor, reassign nodes as necessary, and stream it to the world.

because of the way the entire avatar is exposed to the node system, anything you can do with nodes you can redirect to your avatar. people in the early access right now are building insane setups that are honestly making me afraid of them. which is a good thing!

our next steps are focused on making the UI better and adding more nodes, which are the two things getting in the way of making even more complex avatars. UI-wise right now it's mostly ok but lacking in a few aspects that could make the lives of avatar creators better (e.g. multiple state selection, better tools for importing images like importing multiple layers at once, etc).

right now we're focusing on image detection nodes! this means that face tracking (and hopefully some hand tracking as well) will be available in future builds :] we're also working on integrating with OpenSeeFace (VSeeFace's own face tracker), and of course bring back Kinect support because now's the perfect opportunity for it.

once again, the editor is already available in the early access, with a new video tutorial and all that! these new nodes will also be available this month. and if you're not looking into supporting monetarily, soon we'll be sending new invites from the veadotube labs forms for people looking into testing the app with us and ensuring this thing works :] we were gonna do this sooner but life got in the way sorry.

any other veadotube news?

you may have noticed the veadotube website got a fresh new look! we aimed at the layout we used to have back in early 2022, with the two programs side-by-side, but now with fancy CSS animations instead of gifs <3

we also added a bunch of new docs in the website! not only new guides and tutorials but also more technicalities such as more on the .veado file format, the WebSocket API, lots of stuff honestly. do give it a look!

anything else?

that's it really! we're hard at work on getting veadotube the full version ready for release this year, so lots of bug-fixing and adjustments. thankfully we're finally pretty much feature complete, if not for the lack of nodes and quality-of-life stuff of course.

i think when things start to get more stable in the early access, we'll have more announcements to make in regards to the full version release, date and price and all that <3

this is also the monthly reminder that BELLA!, the creator of most of veadotube's default avatars including fawn Tube and now adult Tube, is taking commissions on VGen! give them some love in the form of money and they can create an entire new pngtuber for you! so cool

and that's it :] hope to see you guys in the lab, be it through the ko-fi early access or the forms.