JULY STATUS POST!

July Status Update

Hi!

As you may have noticed I was a bit absent last month...

Basically, I was recently deported to El Salvador due to a small misunderstanding regarding some memes on my phone, and only recently managed to sneak back home. Ok, no, but what happened is that I had planned to render a bunch of art for the 'physical encouragement' skill. I felt this was a good time to polish up the models a little bit before starting, a quick 20 minute 3D adventure, but uh.

I went down a very deep rabbit-hole of 3D tutorials and anatomy studies, and only recently returned to reality. I should probably have posted a status update to explain what I was up to, but I got kinda locked in and didn't want to until I had something to show, probably due to some type of personality disorder.

Before moving on I should mention 0.57.6 is now out.
There's a weird scene with Priestess involving a lock and pick, and lots of writing fixes.

In any case, let me show you some of the results of the "study break".

I guess we can start with the "shader", which is the color/material/texture for skin and hair and such.

Basically after a lot of experimenting with stylized looks, but being unhappy with most of them, I tried mixing normal PBR (= Physically based rendering) image textures with a 'shader to rgb' setup in Blender. You avoid the 'plastic fantastic' 3d look, without fully committing to NPR (= non-photo realistic rendering, think Anime). The method is maybe kinda dumb, I think people usually pick one or the other, but imo the result is great and suits the overall style of the game.

Going for a full cartoon/anime-style could've been cool too, but it comes with some other drawbacks.

Here's what the node tree can look like if anyone cares.

Second are just general improvements to the topology. If you don't know what that is just imagine a model being made of a net of dots.

Actually, you don't have to imagine, here's an image.

Depending on how the "net" is built, a model can look good when being animated, or like complete shit. After a lot of tinkering, areas like the mouth, eyes and and hips/groin should now 'deform' better than before.

Third, is the rig. 3D models have bones, just like you, that move their parts around, and depending on how you place these bones a model can look good when being animated, or like complete shit.

I made some serious improvements in this area. First of all, the base skeleton is now following UE5 standards, mainly because UE5 is so popular so most programs have compatibility options for this type of skeleton (like Cascadeur). And then I've made some 'enhancements' of my own, e.g. to chest and butt, and other special areas. But also to things like the shoulders and hips.

You can see Goblin Layer here, the green bones simulate the pec muscles (but very simplified). Previously the shoulder & chest would not react when you lifted an arm. Check yourself out in a mirror (while topless) and you'll see that this isn't very realistic. Well, I'm not going for hyper-realism, but still, small tweaks like this can improve the overall animation.

Of course the women received improvements as well. The butt is a little 'edgy' in this example, cause I didn't turn on SubDiv. (During actual rendering, the model will have circa 4 times more detail/smoothness).

Additionally, I "stole" a technique from some Vtuber animator person, I need to look up the name*, where you use supporting bones to set up skin folds. So you can have fat rolls now... I actually think its attractive... Like I don't mean "my 600lb** life"-tier rolls, but a little squish in certain positions is nice.

*Edit: I looked up the name, it was 'Createll'
**that's 272.15 kg

Also fixed a bunch of general mistakes. For example, I had placed the thigh bones way to high previously, turns out they're lower than you think...

By using shapekeys, we can also sculpt some funnier facial expressions.

In addition to the Characters themselves, I've also set up clothes/hair etc to be anim-able. I learned the skirt-rig from one of Pierrick Picaut vids on youtube, and made a few tweaks of my own.

The hat uses a similiar technique to the skirt.

Finally, I mostly used Priestess as an example here, but naturally I've been tinkering with the rest of the cast too, so everyone else is getting improved as well.

Anyway, while I'm very happy about the results, for a player I'm guessing its more exciting to get a post with new 'content', quests, scenes... rather than tech upgrades, so I'll do my best to provide that this month, and avoid distractions. And sorry about being a bit anti-social in June.