October Devlog - From Blender to Godot

Hello again, welcome to another devlog!

Last month I described my efforts to create the character models for Rockin' Resort and some effort I've done to bring the models into Godot. This month, that effort is paying off. I've managed to prepare 3D models for each of the main four girls and I've started work on porting them into Godot.

Let's go ahead and dive in!

Modelling the Band

Early this month, I made sure to knock out the monthly commission wave quickly so that I would have plenty of time to finish the modeling work needed for the Rockin' Resort girls. As a result, I've had plenty of time to get their clothes finished up and I've even started exploring options for rigging.

The Rockin' Resort girls all have swimsuits and full outfits along with their nude models which will all be used in the game. I may need to adjust the models for clipping issues and general polish, but they're all modeled and textured. Interestingly, my texture packing approach has worked out well for all four girls, meaning that each girl only has a single 1024x1024 texture for their entire model.

For rigging, I've been working on Amber. She's in the polishing stages but the process for her should work well for the other girls. Previously, I've always made my animation rigs by hand. I felt it was important to do so while I was learning how to make characters in 3D, but this time I've elected to ease the process through additional tools.

I've experimented a bit with Rigify (Blender's built-in auto-rig plugin) and Auto-Rig Pro (another Blender plugin which was free a bit ago). To be honest, I'm still exploring options (including manual rigging) but I'll likely be using Auto-Rig Pro for Rockin' Resorts first demo. There was a bit of trouble setting up the breasts jiggle bones but I managed to find a decent solution (I put the secondary bones outside of the mesh) after contacting the dev. These solutions require a lot of cleanup work and most of their features don't carry over to Godot so I may try different rigging options in the future.

Importing Into Godot

I've been working on updating and preparing common tools that I'll need for Rockin' Resort. I've been testing them with Eris's old model but I'm showcasing them with Amber here. Here's a few features:

• Head & Eye Follow

  I've written code for this before but my earlier attempts broke if the character wasn't upright. In previous games, I worked around the limitations but I decided to fix them and create a reusable node using Godot's new SkeletonModifier3D (big fan so far). This new solution also supports blinking and eye follow but I forgot to rig Amber's eyes (whoops).

• Jiggle Physics

  I've been exploring breast jiggle options for some time but my latest experiment has been with WiggleBone's dev branch. I've always patched this plugin in the past to not have issues at higher framerates (for VR for example) but this upcoming update appears to both produce better results and solve the framerate issues. They're also using Godot's new SkeletonModifier3D, so I'm hopeful that this new feature will lead to lots of good tools.

• Eye Shader

  My previous update for the eye whites didn't follow the head's transform. I've added a small node that fixes this.

These tools are just a start. I'll be adding systems to control the animations for the body and expressions soon to allow the visual novel and adventure systems to control the character models. Ideally, I'll be able to use the created systems in Catgirl Care but most of my work for this project going forward is going to be specific to Rockin' Resort.

Establishing a Visual Style (Feedback Wanted)

Given that the character models have taken this long to implement, I'm hesitant to include additional 3D characters in Rockin' Resort. That said, I feel that a resort without people would be too odd and limit the adventure game segments. So, instead of having everyone be 3D, I'm thinking that the adventure game sequences can have 2D characters in a 3D environment like I did with Lust Potions. Then, for dialogue, 2D characters can be displayed in boxes to allow them to not clash as hard with the 3D girls.

I'm going to be working on the look of Rockin' Resort for next month's update, so what do you all think? Is there another alternative you think I should consider or any pitfalls you think I should avoid with this approach?

What's Next?

When I made Date a Mink 3D, I only had one character to worry about modeling. This time, I've had 4 and a base model so it has taken a lot longer to develop everything. Fortunately, this isn't a process I'll need to repeat in the future, so I think I'll be able to focus on preparing a demo for Rockin' Resort!

I don't want to include any of the main story in the demo so I'm thinking I'll make a simple showcase for the various possibilities I have in mind for the new gameplay systems. Maybe I'll have Coral host a tour?

-

Creating high quality models is very time consuming but I wasn't expecting it to take several months like this. That said, I'm very happy with the progress I've made so far and I'm excited to finish the characters and put together a demo for you all to try out.

Thanks as always for supporting my work! I'm still amazed that I get to develop video games and draw cute girls for a living.