Hello Awesome Folks!
Animaze 1.27.12653 is here, now on the default branch.
Those of you who were playing on the Next Version beta branch this weekend know some of this already.
We have a new improved webcam tracker experience for face and hands, new historical snapshots in the form of the Steam Animaze 2024 DLCs, and news about the old Animaze 2022 and Animaze 2023.
Here are the highlights:
Hand tracking with just a webcam.
The hand tracking released this Friday on Next-Version went through several new improvements and is now live, no beta switch branch is required.
You can re-read the original details in the Friday announcement here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1364390/view/4459219696814653458
Core face tracking changes for the webcam face tracker.
The Google Mediapipe Tracker has been getting better and better over the last year.
That is why it is now the new default tracker for Animaze webcam, not just for hands but for face as well. Please update your settings accordingly.
If you want to still use the old face tracker version in a transitional period, you can always use the Previous Version branch, or, if you want to use it forever, it will still be there for you in the 2022 and 2023 historical DLCs.
Yearly Historical Licenses
For those of you who prefer getting one of the periodic pay-once-use forever license versions of Animaze rather than supporting its continuous evolution via an ongoing sub, the 2024 yearly snapshots are now live. They do include the new hand tracking, and, as always, the subscribers on Steam who are on an active yearly sub now will get the equivalent historical DLC for free (if you trust you qualify and are not seeing it yet in your ownership, do not worry, please allow a few days for this auto-award process to complete).
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3325940/Animaze_Plus_2024__Lifetime_License/
and
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3325930/Animaze_Pro_2024__Lifetime_License/
An important note for those of you who are not subscribers, and are using Animaze 2023 historical DLCs or older: remember that starting now, to use your historical snapshot license you will have to instruct Steam to run your separate historical Animaze executable, that does not require a connection to any Animaze servers.
To do so, in the Steam client right right-click on the Animaze software, go to General, select Launch options, and select your historical license executable (2022 or 2023).
You will likely also want to migrate your settings and custom content to the Animaze 2023-specific data sub-folder. The new hand animation support that we have built and are releasing today is, like most 2024 features, not part of the 2023 historical license.
Thank you for being a part of our community, and for supporting indie engines for Avatars and VTubing.
The Holotech Team,
Alex, Catalin and Dragos.