Hey gamers!

Just wanted to give a small update on what I've been up to with this project since I haven't released any changes over the past few months.

The next major version has several changes that have required an abundant number of modifications to meshes, bones, and other various setups. It's a large performance optimization pass to make use of VRCFury for attachments. The primary goal of these changes is to better allow me to make assets and accessories that can easily be added to the avatar by simply dragging and dropping prefabs on top of the base. 

There are some other changes to go along with this. I've updated all of the hair meshes to slightly (or greatly, in some cases) reduce their poly count. I've made a similar change to the horns as well. In addition to mesh optimization, I adjusted the neck of the avatar, which props the head up a bit more. With VRCFury now in use, the hair will now also be affected by the neck bone, which will allow me to make hair styles that go further down the back rather than being attached only to the head. 

This update will also include tweaks to the hoodie and warmers and how they attach to the body. Prior to using VRCFury, the hoodie was baked into the avatar base, which made removing it a pain. With VRCFury, it's now an optional attachment. This required me to make a bunch of changes to how the hood animations work. The warmers received a similar treatment, and you will no longer need to do manual bone placement thanks to VRCFury's armature linking. 

One other thing that I'm going to be testing out with this release involves using the UV Tile Dissolve in the Poiyomi shader to hide certain parts of the body. For example, when the arm warmers are active the geometry underneath them will hide. This should result in needing less precise weight painting for accessories that cover an entire section of the avatar. This is a pretty large change and I'm still working out the bugs in it. 

One other major optimization note is that, aside from VRCFury, the next version will highly recommend using the D4rkAvatarOptimizer due to how the meshes are now configured. I have been using this tool for a few months now, and it's a great way to combine materials and skinned meshes to improve avatar performance in VRChat.  

The updated Takopoi will also be included in the next release. The features of those can be seen on their standalone page. 

Thanks for a great year and for all of the support. Happy New Year!

-Takoma