this is an old guide for mini 1.4 – if you’re using a more recent version, please refer to the current guide.

if you wanna learn how to use veadotube mini 1.4, this is the guide for you!

overview

when opening the app for the first time, you’ll be greeted with Tube the deer as the default avatar :] you’ll be able to put your own images soon.

the interface is divided in three main sections:

• by the right, the list of states in the currently loaded avatar;
• by the top, the current state’s images and settings;
• by the left, general app settings that are not saved with the avatar.

starting off with the app settings section, we have:

• save and load buttons that let you import and export avatars as .veadomini files;
• a display settings button , so you can change a few settings such as:
  • background colour, that cycles between green, blue, pink, and grey;
  • image mode, that alternates between smooth and sharp (pixelated);
  • spout stream (Windows 64-bit only), that turns on and off a Spout2 stream of mini’s window;
  • hide interface, which lets you hide the entire UI until you click on mini’s screen again.
• a microphone selection button that lets you switch between different connected microphones;
• the left, green microphone slider , that sets how loud the microphone must be to activate open-mouth images;
• the right, purple microphone slider , that sets how long should the images remain open-mouthed before returning to closed-mouth state.

by the top, you can find the main avatar-building features:

• four image buttons , each for a different mouth-blink state;
• two motion buttons , for different animation patterns your avatar can have, for closed- and open-mouth states;
• a transition button , to set how the avatar will animate during mouth state changes;
• the hotkey button , which lets you configure which key on your keyboard (or mouse, or MIDI device, so on) activates the currently selected state;
• the hotkey mode button , which lets you configure how exactly the state will be entered and exited with the current hotkey.

by the right, along with the list the states:

• an add button that adds a new state by copying the currently selected state and adding it to the bottom of the list;
• a delete button that deletes the currently selected state.

creating an avatar with all that

first, make sure your images are ready for mini! in special, make sure their resolution doesn’t go beyond 2048x2048.

to add them to the app, use the image buttons on the top for each state.

blinking images are optional, as well as the open-mouth one ; to remove them, simply click on them and select remove image.

to add motion to your avatar, use the three motion icons to set how it’ll behave when close-mouthed, open-mouthed, and when transitioning between these two, respectively.

in this scenario, you’re changing the currently selected state, as you can see on the state list by the right; you can add new states, and set different images and motion settings for each!

to change between states without having to click on them, you can set a hotkey for a state to activate it; the app will tell you which devices it supports as hotkeys, but for most machines, that’ll include mouse & keyboard buttons, MIDI devices, and XInput controllers.

the app also provides more advanced control over how hotkeys are handled; the hotkey mode button provides two modes:

• enter a state when the hotkey is active ;
• enter a state when the hotkey is active, but return to the previous state as soon as the hotkey is released .

with the second mode, you should be able to add complex behaviours to your avatar :] it should also work with multiple hotkeys active, mini will do its best to keep track of the previous states.

the app should automatically save your avatar with all the other app settings when it closes, but it might not work at all times, so make sure to save your avatar after building it!

with the .veadomini file, you can even share it with other people, so it’s easy to do veadotube mini commissions, for example. all the images are saved together with the .veadomini file so you don’t have to worry about them.

if your avatar seems too blurry, or more specifically you’re working with a pixel art avatar and it looks scaled in a way that looks blurry, be sure to change the image mode under the display settings from smooth to sharp, so things look more pixelated. this is not saved with the avatar!