Posts by Lux

Words Matter: Spatial vs Immersive

- by Lux

By Lux (Flipside's CEO & Co-Founder)

There's an interesting effect in technology where platforms align themselves with certain terminology in order to try to differentiate from one another. But eventually, most companies converge on common words. Web 2.0, web3, cloud computing, edge computing, the list goes on.

In virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), these terms were coined long before the technology was ready for an industry to form around them. Then came the Oculus Rift which was dubbed a VR headset. But it could have just as easily been called a VR visor, or the more technical head-mounted display (HMD) that people sometimes use.

Then Microsoft came along and coined mixed reality (despite the fact that mixed reality meant something already) and branded their VR platform Windows MR. Other companies tried to coin a term that would encompass both AR and VR and came up with XR, as in extended reality.

Now Apple has entered the fray with the Apple Vision Pro (AVP) and is calling it a spatial computing device. They even go so far as to discourage app developers from referring to either AR or VR when describing their AVP apps.

Windows MR has since been abandoned, and many companies continue to use XR, but the influence Apple has on shaping industry perception is massive, so my prediction is that we'll all eventually converge around spatial computing, unless they pivot to something else.

But when talking about VR experiences, the word spatial leaves something to be desired. While yes, it does suggest a blend of both AR and VR, there's another word that I think might be lost in the shuffle: Immersive.

You see, spatial refers to the three-dimensionality of what's displayed, but immersive refers to the sensory experience of the user. One is technology-centric and the other is user-centric. Which is why you don't hear about spatial theatre groups, but you do hear about immersive theatre groups, and when users describe an experience they just had, they don't say how spatial it was, they say they felt immersed in it.

This split makes me think of Simon Sinek's TED talk about how people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. The word immersive touches on a why. Spatial just describes a piece of technology. Which is odd for Apple, who are the original company to say ay ahere's to the crazy onesss in their Think Different campaign.

Immersive speaks to one of the values of the experience the user has, and the implied belief that immersion offers something to the user experience that non-immersive content can't offer.

But we usually think of immersion as a VR thing, and not an AR thing. I think there are degrees of immersion, and AR still meets several of them. When you lose yourself in the experience, that's immersion, whether you can see the edges or a peek of the man behind the curtain.

In AR terms, this immersion can range from creating the effect that there are portals you can peer through in your room's physical walls, or the effect of of oskinningss your reality. Imagine an AR skin that makes your world look like Sin City, or The Walking Dead - that would surely be pretty immersive and yet is only augmenting your real world experience.

Projection mapping has become a common technique used by VJs to make stages and walls at festivals and raves feel more immersive, and a similar effect is employed by installations like the Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience. There are even immersive audio experiences like Darkfield Radio that immerse the user without using any visuals at all.

The key to immersion is helping the user get lost in the experience. When you lose yourself in something, you lose your sense of time, you forget about your outside cares, you take things in more fully, and you leave having had an experience that may have awed you or moved you in some way that you felt you were a part of. That's the magic of of ospatial computingutingu, not the technology.

 

Reflections on our first year in the Quest app store

- by Lux

It's been one year since we officially launched on the Meta Quest app store, and what a year it's been!

Our user base has grown to over 50,000 creators who've made over 160,000 spatial recordings. We're sincerely grateful for every one of our users as well as the positive reviews and messages of encouragement you've sent us. Those words and the content you're making and sharing keep our team motivated every day to make Flipside the best we can make it, so thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Here are some of the highlights we've had over the past year:

Flipside software updates

Since launch, we've released 14 software updates, including some major new features including:

  • AI script and dialog generator, powered by ChatGPT
  • AI set generator, powered by Blockade Labs
  • Speech-to-text for easier text input
  • Joystick-based walking
  • Flipside channels and publishing
  • Remixing posts and editing recordings
  • Direct messages and sharing posts
  • Flipside tokens and creator tips

Characters, props, and sets

We've substantially expanded the list of built-in characters, props, and sets to now include hundreds of options.

We launched with a library of 55 characters, 49 sets, and 330 props. We now have 111 characters, 69 sets, and too many props to count.

And of course, you can always create custom characters through our Ready Player Me integration, custom sets with our Blockade Labs integration, or use our Flipside Creator Tools plugin for Unity to import your own custom characters, sets, and props. Sky's the limit!

Launching on Pico VR

We've expanded beyond the Meta app stores to include support for Pico 4 headsets too.

Download Flipside on Pico VR

New direction

We've changed the name of our app from Flipside Studio to simply Flipside, emphasizing that Flipside is now a metaverse social media platform for next-gen creators to be able to share their spatial recordings directly with their fans.

Our vision is to build a metaverse powered by imagination, and to democratize the creation of spatial and immersive content so that anyone with an idea can bring that idea to life and share it with the world.

We believe this is the missing piece of the metaverse, enabling real-time content creation so that you just act things out and they're instantly ready to share.

Read more about this new direction here

Content highlights

As more and more creators publish to Flipside, we want to highlight some of our favourites here for you.

 

Flipside is a social media platform built on pure imagination

- by Lux

By Lux (Flipside's CEO & Co-Founder)

What if you were to combine social media with a virtual TV studio? The results would be a social media platform focused on pure imagination and hyper creativity. Sounds crazy, but it makes total sense in the metaverse.

And that is exactly what Flipside is, the first social media platform built on a foundation of pure imagination. You can think of it as the TikTok of immersive entertainment, or like stepping inside of a content creator’s mind.

Why the need for a new social media platform for the metaverse?

Because the thinking that’s gone into existing metaverses is too limited to the original vision of what a metaverse is, which makes great fodder for science fiction, but isn’t a complete vision of what that could look like. It’s missing real-time content creation at the heart of it all, which is exactly where Flipside comes in.

Spatial computing empowers a level of real-time content creation never seen before. Instead of animating frame by frame, or building interactivity in a game engine, now you just become a character on a virtual set, and your words and movements become the performance. When you press save, the recording is done. That fast.

Next-gen creators

We’re seeing the emergence of what we call next-gen creators. Creators who are XR native and spatial first. Who feel perfectly themselves embodying an avatar and who understand that identity is something that can shift and morph even from moment to moment. Who step through virtual worlds as fluidly as stepping through a door. The inventors and discoverers of what’s possible in this new spatial computing paradigm.

And we know audiences have been dreaming of the idea of being able to jump inside of the content they’re seeing, from Mary Poppins and gang jumping inside of a chalk drawing, or Alice falling down the rabbit hole long before that.

So here’s our tribute to next-gen creators and their fans. We’ll be there watching your creations and celebrating the vision you bring to the birth of a new space for imagination and endless creativity.

Welcome to Flipside.

 

Flipside Studio is dead, long live Flipside! The social media platform for next-gen creators and their fans

- by Lux

Flipside is so much more than a virtual TV studio – it’s the first social media platform built around pure creativity and imagination.

We’ve come a long way from being a virtual TV studio for spatial content creation. Today we’re announcing Flipside Studio is now simply called Flipside.

With creator channels and social sharing features built right in, Flipside is now a full-blown metaverse social media platform where next-gen creators can post their spatial recordings to their channels to share with their fans.

We’ve heard from many Flipside creators, and the message is clear: Creators need a way to reach their fans directly, not just on other social platforms, where they can only show a window into their spatial creations.

Today, we’re saying loud and clear: We hear you, and that’s exactly what Flipside is moving forward.

To be clear, all of the Flipside Studio features like our camera switcher are sticking around. Flipside will always excel at producing 2D content for cross-promotion on other platforms, but our vision is to help creators build a following that can interact directly with their spatial and immersive content.

Introducing Flipside tokens

Tokens are the virtual currency of Flipside. They provide a way to pay for virtual goods or premium features, but more importantly, they provide a way for creators to generate revenue from their Flipside content.

Our mission is to help creators build sustainable channels where they can earn real money from their content. That’s why we’re introducing creator payouts from day 1 in our token system. When you reach the payout threshold, visit the Flipside Creator Portal and click on the Request Payout button. It’s that easy.

Tokens are currently limited to paying for our AI integrations and sending tips to your favourite channels, but we will be expanding the program to include many new ways for creators to earn tokens over time.

Click here to learn more about our Flipside token program


Download the newest version now for your Meta Quest 2 and 3, Rift S, and Pico 4 VR headsets!

Quest Store   Pico Store

📚Flipside for Education

It's back-to-school time, and we know that instructors are getting geared up to provide future innovators with the skills they need to succeed. Are you an educator interested in using Flipside in the classroom? Join our educators' mailing list and let us know.


🙌Thanks For Your Feedback

Thanks to everyone who notified us of bugs and shared feature requests! We love the ideas and appreciate when you share your feedback.

CLICK HERE TO FILE A BUG REPORT 🐛

MAKE A FEATURE REQUEST 💡


🔌Connect with community

We’d love to welcome you to the Flipside Studio Community Discord channel where you can connect with other creators, share your #MadeInFlipside creations, submit feature requests, and share bug reports.

Join the Community
 

Flipside Studio 2021.1 introduces motion capture export, video renderer, stand-ins, and more

- by Lux

Flipside Studio

We're excited to finally take the wraps off of the new version of Flipside Studio, which includes a number of major improvements and new features.

This is also the first version of Flipside Studio to offer paid subscription plans for added functionality. All of the existing functionality of Flipside Studio remains free for everyone, but the watermark removal and some of the new features below will be paid-only.

Visit our pricing page to learn more.

Motion capture data export

Flipside Studio 2021.1 adds the ability to export motion capture data, making Flipside Studio the easiest way to record multiplayer motion capture sessions for use in any animation software or video game. Motion capture data can be exported in the following ways:

  1. Raw BVH files for use anywhere
  2. Unity animations, imported via Flipside Creator Tools
  3. Blender animations, imported via a new Flipside plugin for Blender

How it works is you record your characters with just your VR headset and controllers, and Flipside Studio exports the full-body character movements. If you have Vive Trackers, you can also do full-body motion capture!

Note: Motion capture data export is a paid feature.

Video renderer

Flipside Studio 2021.1 adds a powerful new video renderer for exporting footage of your Flipside Studio recordings.


Features include:

  • Capture multiple cameras in one render pass
  • Queue multiple renders to run back-to-back
  • Resolutions: 180 (Preview), 720, 1080, 2K, 4K
  • Output formats:
    • PNG or EXR image sequence
    • MP4 video
    • WAV audio (separate tracks for each actor)
    • Depth map
  • Adjustable frame rate
  • Adjustable video encoding settings
  • Adjustable anti-aliasing settings

Note: The video renderer is a paid feature.

Improved movement retargeting

Retargeting is the process of converting an actor's movement to the shape and dimensions of the character. Flipside Studio's retargeting system was rewritten from scratch for 2021.1 and the result is a massive improvement to the way characters move.

In our old retargeting system, the larger the difference there was between the actor and the character's dimensions, the less natural their movement would feel. In the new system, actors still control characters just by moving their bodies, but the movement of the character is more true to the character's dimensions. This means the actor and character hands won't always line up, but what the cameras see will be more accurate and look better.

The new retargeting system should be applied automatically, but if your character's movements feel off, you may need to recalibrate to fix it.

Introducing stand-ins

We've added a new feature we call stand-ins which adds the ability to freeze your character poses so they can be used as stand-in references when setting up your shots, and as actor marks during your shoot. Point your teleporter at a stand-in and your teleporter will lock onto it. Teleport into it and you'll automatically teleport to your mark for the shoot and change into the right character too if you weren't already.

And just like Flipside's current actor mark props, you can move them to adjust their positions or remove them individually by grabbing them in Set Builder mode.

While this feature is experimental, you'll find it on the underside of the Characters palette under the Stand-Ins heading. Press the Pose button and you'll be given a 3-second countdown. At the end of the countdown, a stand-in will appear for each user who's in character at the time.

Other improvements

  • Flipside Studio now supports full-hand tracking using the Valve Index controllers.
  • Ambient Occlusion can now be enabled under Settings > Output for improved lighting and shadows. Note that there is a performance cost to enabling Ambient Occlusion.
  • There's a new Microphone tab in the settings which includes several new features to fine-tune Flipside's voice recording and lip-syncing, including:
    • Lip sync gain to amplify your voice for more exaggerated lip-syncing
    • Lip sync noise gate to filter out unwanted background noise
    • Compression settings including attack time, threshold, compression ratio, and compression gain
    • Option to specify whether compression applies only to the recorded voice, only to lip-sync input, or both
  • The teleprompter now supports a few additional character sets, including Greek, Cyrillic, Thai, and Tamil. More will be added in future updates.

Flipside Creator Tools

In addition to the new BVH to Unity animation converter that works alongside the new motion capture data export feature of Flipside Studio, we've also added the following new features to the Flipside Creator Tools:

FaceMirror lets you animate faces on anything

This release introduces a new FaceMirror component that lets you animate faces on non-character objects in sets, such as props or otherwise inanimate objects.

We've included an example scene under FlipsideCreatorTools/Examples/Example-FaceMirror where you can see how it works and how it's setup. Just attach a FaceMirror to any object, then attach additional FacialExpressionReference components to power the elements of the disembodied face.

FaceMirror-powered faces work over multiplayer in Flipside Studio and can be recorded and played back complete with recorded voices.

More sophisticated animated expressions

We've added a new character expression type called AnimationParameters, which lets you control Unity animation parameters to achieve more sophisticated animated expressions.

Publish directly in Unity

You can now publish your custom characters and sets to Flipside Studio directly in Unity through a unified "Build & Publish" button in the Flipside Creator Tools window. This helps reduce iteration time and eliminates the need to hunt down your bundle files or open a separate browser window, enabling one-click publishing. Just reload the character or set in Flipside Studio to see your changes instantly in VR.

Click here to download the latest version of the Flipside Creator Tools 2021.1.

 

Flipside Studio 2020.1 is now available

- by Lux

Today we are celebrating the launch of Flipside Studio 2020.1, along with a completely updated brand and website refresh.

With over 32,000 recordings, a 48-episode comedy show produced live by Caffeine Studios, and a kid's show streaming on Super RTL, the largest private broadcaster in Germany, all made with Flipside Studio, we couldn't be more excited to be rolling out tons of new features and seeing what our users will create with them.

Choose between a peer-to-peer or server-based multiplayer connections

Flipside Studio now supports not only one type of multiplayer, but two (is that another first in VR?!). Now you can choose the best type of connection for your productions.

Here's a handy reference to help you choose:

  • Peer-to-peer is best when all users are physically closer to each other, like in the same local area network or the same city. Peer-to-peer will give you the lowest latency multiplayer in these cases.
  • Server is best when users are farther apart from each other. Server-based connections will give you lower latency as well as more stable connections over greater distances.

Body physics on characters for more realistic interactions

We've added the ability to add physics colliders on characters so that their interactions with the environment feel more realistic. You can generate colliders for a character in the Flipside Creator Tools with a single click, and then tweak them to suit your needs.

Note that body physics can be very performance intensive, so we recommend going through the generated colliders and removing ones that aren't necessary to achieve the shots you need. Often you can get away with just a collider or two on the arms and midsection of the body, but it can scale all the way up to individual fingers if needed.

Expressions and blinking on texture-based faces

We've added a new facial expression mode that lets you add blinking and expressions to texture-based faces, which lets your characters have more expressiveness while recreating that classic cartoon style. You can also mix and match styles now too, so part of your face can be animated with textures and another can be animated with blend shapes or even Unity animations. The possibilities are pretty much endless.

Stream directly to Zoom using Flipside Studio as a virtual camera device

Flipside Studio can now appear as a virtual camera device that apps like Zoom, Skype, etc. can use as your video source. To enable it, go to Settings > Output on the desktop camera switcher interface and look for the DirectShow settings.

Redesigned auto-scrolling teleprompter with adjustable speed

The teleprompter controller has been revamped to include auto-scrolling with a slider to adjust the scroll speed.

More realistic eye movement

We've made a number of improvements to how eyes move on characters in Flipside Studio, including improved idle movement with simulated saccades and world-space points of interest, more natural blinking, and improved range of motion when eyes lock onto targets of interest.

Trigger effects from interactions with your Twitch chat

We've added a TwitchActions component to the Flipside Creator Tools that lets you define custom Twitch chat commands that users can type which then trigger actions in your custom sets. This can be used for anything from triggering sounds and visual effects to voting on the direction the show's narrative should take.

Over a dozen new types of interactive elements to build your sets

We've added a ton of new interactive functionality to the Flipside Creator Tools, letting you build sets with interactions as complex as games. There's even a scoreboard element that keeps score for everyone in the scene.

Build your own guns (or pea-shooters!), choose-your-own-adventure stories, and more with over a dozen new components. The best part is you can hit Play in Unity and test them all in VR without having to build and upload your sets, making the Flipside Creator Tools a very powerful tool for crafting interactive VR experiences.

VR camera switcher now supports unlimited camera previews

We've added support for an unlimited number of camaras in the VR camera switcher, which is now found under the Show Tools menu, and you can have as many VR camera switchers as you need too.

Improved audio quality and playback performance

We've increased the recorded and multiplayer audio quality in Flipside Studio from 16 kHz (the standard for VoIP) to 24 kHz, which noticeably improves the voice quality particularly in frequencies between 8-12 kHz. We did this while also improving our audio playback performance!

We've finished the migration from Unity 2017 to 2019

With this release, we have now completed our upgrade from Unity 2017 to 2019, meaning all assets should be made using Unity 2019 from now on. This was our first major Unity upgrade since supporting user-uploaded assets and taught us a lot about how to migrate successfully when users also have to update their assets.

If you're still making assets in Unity 2017, now's the time to head over to the Flipside Creator Tools page to find the new version of Unity to use and update those assets! We've done a lot to make it backwards compatible with 2017 assets, but some compatibility issues couldn't be solved automatically.

Bug fixes and improvements since 2020.1.0-rc2

Flipside Studio

  • DirectShow settings can be found under the Settings > Output tab to enable/disable the Flipside Studio virtual camera device.
  • We've added usernames to the front of the ghost/build mode headsets so you can more easily see who's who at a glance.
  • Fixed an issue causing object positioning in hands to be slightly off in playback.
  • Fixed an issue causing embedded camera settings to appear different in set builder mode.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause audio to go out of sync when switching between acting and ghost mode while recording.
  • Fixed not being able to switch out of ghost mode after connecting over multiplayer.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed recorded parts to interact with the handheld camera.
  • Sitting handles feet with toes that don't point forward, such as hoofs.
  • Fixes for errors in DirectShow not working for some users.
  • Fixes for some users experiencing a broken teleprompter.

Flipside Creator Tools

  • Fixed a bug in the character importer that caused eyelids, lashes, and eyewear to be configured as eyes.
  • Fixed some fields not being editable in the Unity inspector window on the AvatarModelReferences component.
  • Improvements to our Daz character auto-importing.

Getting Flipside 2020.1

Flipside Studio 2020.1 is now the current stable release on Oculus Home and SteamVR, so those of you on the Beta channel that don't want the latest experimental features can access this release on the regular Stable channel now. We will be introducing a new beta with some exciting new features in the next few weeks, so feel free to stick to the Beta channel if you're interested in testing those out.

If you make your own custom characters and sets, you will also need to upgrade to the Flipside Creator Tools 2020.1, which can be downloaded from here.

Thank you!

From the Flipside XR team, we want to say a big thanks to all of our users who have helped shape this release by testing and and finding bugs for us to fix. You've all helped make Flipside what it is today.

Sincerely,
Team Flipside

 

Flipside Studio 2020.1 Release Candidate 2

- by Lux

Please note: This update includes some big changes which we wanted to give everyone time to test out safely and adapt to their projects, so to try it out you'll need to opt into our Beta release channel. Instructions on switching between release channels can be found here.

Flipside Studio

Improvements

  • Moved photos taken with the handheld camera to Documents/Flipside Studio/Photos.
  • Increased default gain value on lip syncing to increase expressiveness.
  • DirectShow stays enabled across sessions in the app instead of needing to press Alt+D each time.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed cancelling out of adding a part not stopping playback of the first part.
  • Fixed texture-based face animations over multiplayer.
  • Fixed OBS not connecting if the "Mix/Aux" input source was removed or renamed in OBS.
  • Fixed the virtual camera device not installing if the app isn't installed on C:.
  • Fixed error handling of sets with missing SetInfo component.
  • Fixed the NDI enable/disable option being disconnected.
  • Fixed a camera inconsistency bug caused by incorrectly cloning cameras.
  • Fixed recordings in ghost mode ending as soon as the last prop interaction happens.
  • Fixed handheld camera direction not changing over multiplayer.

Flipside Creator Tools

Click here to download the release candidate of the Flipside Creator Tools (2020.1.0-rc2).

Improvements

  • Added settings to specify multiple wrist twist bones in AvatarModelReferences.
  • Added the Flipside Creator Tools version number to the Flipside window so it's easier to see which version you're using.
  • Added automatic setup for Daz 3D characters (Genesis 8, older versions to follow), however first you'll need to manually fix the spine bones on the model so that the body settings match the following:


Bug fixes

  • Fixed internal inconsistencies between AvatarModelReferences and FacialExpressionReference.

A change to our version numbering

With this update, we're also moving to a new calendar versioning-based version numbering system, which is described in more detail here.

This release of both Flipside Studio and Flipside Creator Tools now share the version 2020.1.0-rc2.

 

Update #38 - Flipside Studio Release Candidate 1

- by Lux

Please note: This update includes some big changes which we wanted to give everyone time to test out safely and adapt to their projects, so to try it out you'll need to opt into our Beta release channel. Instructions on switching between release channels can be found here.

Flipside Studio

Release Candidate 1 is here

We're excited to announce that today's release on the Flipside Studio beta release channel is our first release candidate for a new stable version of Flipside Studio.

What this means is we're holding off on any major new features to focus on fixes and usability improvements until we feel it's ready to move over to the stable channel for everyone to use. If there are no major issues with this release, we'll move it over (along with any fixes we make in the meantime) to the stable channel after a couple weeks of general use.

Once we go stable, it will also complete our migration from Unity 2017 to 2019, so now's the time to update any assets that haven't been updated to Unity 2019 yet.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed remote users not unloading a recording when it's cartridge is removed from the player.
  • Fixed an error that could occur on users rejoining a multiplayer session.
  • Fixed remote users not always seeing new users in character on first joining.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause ToggleElement components not to properly record their current state at the start of a recording.
  • Fixed the Ghost Mode button not working on the camera switchers while in Set Builder mode.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the Recordings palette to disappear and not refresh itself with newly-added recordings.

Flipside Creator Tools

Click here to download the release candidate of the Flipside Creator Tools (2020.1.0-rc1).

Improvements

  • Added wrist settings to AvatarModelReferences so you can adjust the wrists to reduce twisting. The new settings let you adjust the Twist Weight, Parent-Child Crossfade, and Twist Angle Offset values. Assigning multiple twist bones is coming soon too.
  • Improvements to our Mixamo auto-import detection and our CC3 expressions.
  • CC3 importer auto-fixes the jaw bone hierarchy on imported models.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed a bug that was causing parts of faces with multiple blend shapes mapped to one expression not to move.

A change to our version numbering

With this update, we're also moving to a new calendar versioning-based version numbering system, which is described in more detail here.

This release of both Flipside Studio and Flipside Creator Tools now share the version 2020.1.0-rc1.

 

Update #37 - Stream directly to Zoom, Skype, etc.

- by Lux

Please note: This update includes some big changes which we wanted to give everyone time to test out safely and adapt to their projects, so to try it out you'll need to opt into our Beta release channel. Instructions on switching between release channels can be found here.

Flipside Studio

Stream directly to Zoom, Skype, etc.

We've added a plugin that creates a "Flipside Studio" virtual camera device in Windows, so you can select Flipside in your camera list in any video chat software, including Zoom, Skype, Slack, Whereby, etc.

To turn the virtual camera device on, press Alt+D in Flipside Studio. The first time you do, Windows will popup up a notice requesting administrative permission to install the virtual camera device. Give it permission and you should see "Flipside Studio" in your camera options the next time you launch your video chat software of choice.

Note: If you don't see "Flipside Studio" in your camera options, you may need to restart Windows for the change to take effect.

Also note that you will need to press Alt+D to enable the virtual camera each time you run Flipside Studio while this feature is still considered experimental and not enabled by default.

Improvements

  • Added a Re-Sync button under the Recordings palette menu which does a complete re-sync of your multiplayer session should things fall out of sync for any reason.
  • Improved default microphone selection logic when multiple microphone devices are available.
  • Improved audio playback performance.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed voices going out of sync on added parts.
  • Fixed a bug that caused eye rotations to go in the wrong direction.
  • Fixed a bug causing sets to fail to load if they share the same bundle name as the previously loaded set.
  • Fixed a bug in how character bundle version numbers are compared.

Flipside Creator Tools

Click here to download the latest version of the Flipside Creator Tools beta (v0.33).

Duplicate characters and sets

Duplicating the scene file for a character or set can lead to issues building bundles because Unity gets confused when more than one scene file has the same asset bundle label.


To make this less error-prone, we've added a new Duplicate Selected Scene menu option under the Flipside Creator Tools menu which duplicates the scene and also changes the asset bundle label at the same time, making it easy now to create alternate versions of characters and sets for testing.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed an orientation issue with the VR teleporter. It now behaves more consistently like Flipside Studio's teleporter.
  • Fixed a case where the Chair component wouldn't initialize properly for some users.
  • Fixed CC3 character importing to correctly map blend shapes based on names.
 

Update #36 - Auto-scrolling teleprompter, update saved setups

- by Lux

Please note: This update includes some big changes which we wanted to give everyone time to test out safely and adapt to their projects, so to try it out you'll need to opt into our Beta release channel. Instructions on switching between release channels can be found here.

Flipside Studio

Auto-scrolling teleprompter

We've revamped our teleprompter controller to support auto-scrolling with an adjustable speed slider. You can play, pause, rewind, fast-forward, or advance one screen of text at a time.

Saved setups are now editable

Last update we added the ability to delete your saved setups. This update adds the ability to update them as well, so you can now dress your sets exactly how you want them, save your setup, then come back and make further refinements at a later time.

Other improvements

  • Improved finger positioning when grabbing props with physics hands.
  • Added Unity's constraint components to the list of supported component you can use in custom characters and sets.
  • Further improvements to the expressiveness of lip syncing.
  • Improved error handling and reporting during initial load as well as character and set loading.
  • Your controllers now stay visible at all times instead of showing only when the user interface is visible.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed lighting issues going from sets with lightprobes to sets without lightprobes.
  • Prevented getting fingers into strange hold positions grabbing props with physics characters.
  • Fixed camera switcher not scaling with you in ghost mode.
  • Eye rotation fixes on additional characters.
  • Keep the "Press Esc to exit fullscreen" overlaytext hidden if any 3rd party capturing software is open (list includes: OBS, Streamlabs OBS, Xsplit, Twitch Studio, Mixer, Caffeine, VLC, Camtasia Studio, Bandicam, LIV Client, Mixcast).

Flipside Creator Tools

Improvements

  • Added resting position threshold to the Blink All setting on AvatarModelReferences to make the natural eyelid resting position customizable.
  • Added Unity's constraint components to the list of supported component you can use in custom characters and sets.
  • Initial support for auto-setup of imported characters from Character Creator.
  • Added a Resource Usage panel in the Inspector window for AvatarModelReferences and SetInfo components, giving visibility into the resources that your assets are using. The panel also includes recommended maximums for each resource for both PC and mobile. The mobile numbers are the current numbers we're targeting for Flipside Studio on Oculus Quest (still in closed beta testing).

Bug fixes

  • Fixed FlipsideActions.OnHide events not firing correctly.
  • TargetElement now works even if there's no ScoreboardElement in the scene.
  • Calls to FlipsideActions.ChangeSky(id) now change the skybox while testing in the Unity editor.
 

Older posts »