veadotube is a project coded by myself with the help of a few friends from time to time. as such, it’s impossible for me to support every platform out there. but i try my best! as the intention of the project is to make these digital puppets accessible for anyone.
before anything, make sure you’re on the latest version of the app! if unsure, try redownloading it.
note: the app is being developed in Unity, a game engine (that i can’t really recommend). most limitations veadotube has are linked to Unity limitations, and that’s the explanation i’ll have for most bugs, honestly :p
quick note: this page will be redesigned at some point with better guides and screenshots. i don’t have time for that right now! so i’m just slowly filling it with the most information i can gather.
just click on “No thanks, just take me to the downloads” and you can download the files just fine.
the app is free to use! donations are appreciated though.
first make sure you install all requirements for windows; follow this guide for that.
the general steps to run on windows are:
note that you have to fully extract the zip file, it won’t work if you just open the app from inside the zip.
if the 64-bit version won’t run for you, try the 32-bit one :]
there’s a chance your computer will think veadotube is a virus; if you get a screen saying that windows protected your PC, click the “More info” button, and then “Run anyway”. this also varies depending on if you have some other anti-virus installed.
sometimes running as administrator might help in certain cases!
note that veadotube requires at least High Sierra (10.13). any version below that won’t work. i can’t do anything about this, it’s Unity’s fault.
the general steps to run on mac are:
if it says the app is damaged or anything similar when you try to open it, follow this guide.
the general steps to run on linux are:
.x86_64 extension.note that you have to fully extract the zip file, it won’t work if you just open the app from inside the zip.
if that file won’t open for you, you might have to chmod it somehow. you might also have to run it as root so that everything works. if you’re on linux i’m assuming you know what these words mean!
read here for that!
if it says the app is damaged or anything similar when you try to open it, here are the steps to fix it:
xattr -cr /Applications/veadotube\ mini.app, press return.xattr -cr /Applications/veadotube.app, press return.if it doesn’t work for you, google about it! it’s a common error in mac apps.
fun fact: this happens because i’m not an official Apple Developer, and if i were to be, i’d have to pay Apple $99 a year, for some reason.
that’s usually a graphics card issue. some old computers simply don’t like veadotube.
on windows & linux, make sure your graphics card driver is up to date!
on windows, also make sure you have DirectX updated; follow this guide for that.
also on windows, you can try applying specific DirectX commands to veadotube. check this section for the instructions.
includes issues such as:
the Unity engine is awful at doing microphone stuff. on windows they use an older microphone system that sometimes doesn’t support USB microphones; on linux i have no idea what they’re doing but it’s certainly broken under root. (on mac it’s mostly fine though?)
i’m working on an alternative microphone system that works better throughout all platforms, but this takes time, of course! for now, here are some tricks that tend to fix things sometimes:
veadotube doesn’t have any noise suppression features, because that’s way too complicated for me to deal with right now. it’s definitely planned, just not now.
there should be programs that do that for you though :]
on windows, it could be a plugin issue that happens if you don’t have vc_redist installed; follow this guide to fix it. also, OBS and a few other games are known to capture the user’s hotkeys before veadotube can use them, and so the hotkeys won’t work properly. keeping OBS minimised and running veadotube as administrator tends to fix that though!
on mac, make sure to allow the app to use keyboard input! it’s somewhere in settings. the first time you try to setup a hotkey it might pop up a window asking you to give permissions for that, too.
on linux, make sure to run the app as root to get hotkeys to work! on most systems that’s the sudo command, i’m assuming you know how to use it if you’re on linux.
sometimes the app freezes/crashes or doesn’t detect hotkeys at all, otherwise. that’s a known bug and it’ll be fixed eventually.
veadohook is the plugin that does all the hotkey things, and its source code is available here. if you have any clue on what could be breaking, feel free to collaborate :] i’m not an expert at these things, i just made them work as i could.
this is a catch-all section for streaming issues.
on OBS, add a Game Capture (or Window Capture if it doesn’t work), set it to capture a specific window, and select the veadotube window. toggle the transparency option to use the transparent (grey) background on veadotube.
i don’t know about other apps, but in general it should be a similar approach.
if you’re on windows using Game Capture, that’s because you forgot to check the Allow Transparency option! if you don’t have an option for that, you’ll have to go with a chroma key effect on your streaming software.
that’s an issue with OBS and laptop graphics cards, apparently. check out this topic from their forums: https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/laptop-black-screen-when-capturing-read-here-first.5965/
try maximizing the veadotube window!
that’s both on OBS not knowing how to capture Unity screens and on Unity not knowing how to import images tbh. this will be fixed at some point!
known bug, their fault.
veadotube was made in a game engine, and computers sometimes don’t understand how to run two “games” at once.
on windows, you can try the DirectX trick.
it might do that, yeah! images on RAM are decompressed, which means that a lightweight GIF file will be turned into raw textures on memory, one for each frame, a few bytes for each pixel.
this will be optimised in the future though, but for now that’s sort of how it goes. sorry!
one tip is to resize your avatar to be smaller, depending on what you’re doing! most of the time you don’t need to use 2048x2048 images.
on windows, you might have to install vc_redist; follow this guide for that.
on mac, if you’re on one of the newer machines (with the Apple Silicon processor), try running veadotube with Rosetta 2. if you’re on an older machine, then that’s a mystery for me too; i tried everything i could to fix that.
try using the expression buttons on the top to load images instead of the file buttons on the left!
the top buttons are for images, and the left ones are for .veadomini files, which are collections of images (aka complete avatars).
this includes:
if the image looks like it has a weird outline, that’s a known bug (thanks Unity), and will be fixed soon.
do note that veadotube won’t load images if they’re larger than 2048x2048; read more on that over this section.
otherwise, if your image loads on any other program but not on veadotube, that’s a bug with the image importers! that’s a very rare scenario though.
quick note: i recommend creating your animated GIFs and PNGs on ezgif! it tends to create files that veadotube likes.
first make sure you’re on the latest version. older versions of mini cannot load files from newer versions. otherwise, the file is probably corrupt :[
veadotube has a 2048x2048 limit for images, because you don’t need more than that, honestly! images when loaded to RAM tend to be heavy, and honestly no one will notice anything larger than that; you’re likely streaming at 1080p anyway, but even at 4K it’s unnoticeable.
if you work on a large canvas and you got an image that’s larger than the limit, don’t be afraid of resizing it! you can try a few different ways of doing that on your art program until it looks good enough for you.
as for best image size, that depends! the default avatars are roughly at 900x900, and i tend to recommend 1024x1024 whenever i get asked that question.
PC (windows, mac and linux) is the main platform for veadotube. if you’re using a chromebook, you might be able to install the linux version on it; i have no idea how that works though! you’ll have to google that one.
i have ideas for a mobile app but i can’t assure you it’s gonna happen, certainly not anytime soon! sorry about that.
if you’re looking to do stuff like Discord Reactive Images with veadotube, do note that it’s not natively supported! that’ll eventually be a feature on the full version, not sure about mini yet.
if it helps, a user over our discord server made a guide for that, using external apps, that you can check out by clicking here.
probably not! mini is meant to be simple, and i don’t wanna ruin that simplicity. if you’re looking for more features, the full version will certainly cover it at some point.
Unity apparently needs two funny little guys for the app to run. chances are you won’t need to install these, as they’re often already installed automatically by other apps/games such as Steam, but if you’re having issues with veadotube then these might help you.
this can help conflicts with other games, and it can also help your app to run at all. that’s Unity’s fault, btw
first make sure that DirectX is up to date with this guide.
-force-d3d12 to the end of the target, with a space before it. the target should look like "...veadotube.exe" -force-d3d12depending on your computer, you can also try switching -force-d3d12 to -force-d3d11 and -force-d3d10.
the log file is this weird text file that says what’s going on behind the scenes, and what’s exactly happening when something fails to work or straight up crashes.
Unity hides its log files in weird places inside your computer, so here’s a quick guide on how to find it.
open the Run window. you can do that by pressing Windows + R, or by right-clicking the start button and selecting Run.
now paste one of these on the dialog box, depending on which app you’re using:
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\olmewe\veadotube mini%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\olmewe\veadotubepress enter. a folder should open, and the file Player.log is the log file! (it might be called just Player depending on your machine.)
open Finder and open the Go to Folder window. you can do that by pressing Command + Shift + G, or by going to the menu bar (the one with the apple logo), selecting Go, and then Go to Folder.
now paste one of these on the dialog box, depending on which app you’re using:
~/Library/Logs/olmewe/veadotube mini~/Library/Logs/olmewe/veadotubepress return. a folder should open, and the file Player.log is the log file! (it might be called just Player depending on your machine.)
the file is at one of these paths, depending on which app you’re using:
~/.config/unity3d/olmewe/veadotube mini/Player.log~/.config/unity3d/olmewe/veadotube/Player.logif you’re a linux user i’m assuming you know how to get there :]
get in touch with the community about it! our discord server has a bunch of people willing to help you, the invite is at the home page.