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Some rigging and normal map issues.
Hoo boy, I've away for a while, haven't I? Summer always has me bouncing between locations for various family gatherings, so I haven't had much of a chance to touch YL2 lately. Now that I have a bit of a breather and did take a gander at what's new, I noticed a few aesthetic issues right off the bat.
First off, seems the f_athletic bodytype's legs don't straighten out too well with digitigrade legs, specifically at the knee:
As you can see, there's a rather unsightly line at the joint in question. Could use some more blending between the vertices each bone influences there. Also, been meaning to point this out for a while but couldn't find a good opportunity to do so, the ankle of the horse digitigrade model needs more definition, methinks. Especially straightened out, it pretty much disappears completely. It should look something like this instead:
Or like the new scalie digitigrade model, that's got a nice ankle to it. Could maybe use a less harsh bend at the front of the joint when transitioning from resting to straightened, though:
The plantigrade version's knee is alright, the digitigrade version needs to look more like it:
Also, I had a sneaking suspicion the knee rigging might be a widespread issue with other bodytypes' digitigrade legs in general, and unfortunately, that turned out to be the case:
None seems to be the only one that doesn't really suffer from it, and f_default's is not prominent enough to look bad, but the rest definitely need work.
Next up, m_athletic has some very noticeable seams in the normal map:
Hmm, let me turn up the metal and shine to make it look a bit more prominent...
The seam's only on this side of the back, and apparently also includes the transition from shoulder to arm.
At the front, a similar story:
Also, looks like polygons around the nipple don't blend smoothly like the rest. I'm guessing this is part of the same general normal map problem, so hopefully it won't need extra work.
That's all I've got for now. I'll try to get my characters uploaded to the cloud within a week, but every time I've tried to start work on optimizing them, something's come up and I've had to drop everything. Here's hoping the pattern doesn't repeat this time around.
First off, seems the f_athletic bodytype's legs don't straighten out too well with digitigrade legs, specifically at the knee:
As you can see, there's a rather unsightly line at the joint in question. Could use some more blending between the vertices each bone influences there. Also, been meaning to point this out for a while but couldn't find a good opportunity to do so, the ankle of the horse digitigrade model needs more definition, methinks. Especially straightened out, it pretty much disappears completely. It should look something like this instead:
Or like the new scalie digitigrade model, that's got a nice ankle to it. Could maybe use a less harsh bend at the front of the joint when transitioning from resting to straightened, though:
The plantigrade version's knee is alright, the digitigrade version needs to look more like it:
Also, I had a sneaking suspicion the knee rigging might be a widespread issue with other bodytypes' digitigrade legs in general, and unfortunately, that turned out to be the case:
None seems to be the only one that doesn't really suffer from it, and f_default's is not prominent enough to look bad, but the rest definitely need work.
Next up, m_athletic has some very noticeable seams in the normal map:
Hmm, let me turn up the metal and shine to make it look a bit more prominent...
The seam's only on this side of the back, and apparently also includes the transition from shoulder to arm.
At the front, a similar story:
Also, looks like polygons around the nipple don't blend smoothly like the rest. I'm guessing this is part of the same general normal map problem, so hopefully it won't need extra work.
That's all I've got for now. I'll try to get my characters uploaded to the cloud within a week, but every time I've tried to start work on optimizing them, something's come up and I've had to drop everything. Here's hoping the pattern doesn't repeat this time around.
Comments
In case you're thinking of updating some existing character, we're going to have character updating implemented for the next release.
This is bt_f_athletic with canine digitigrade.
It's definitely better than before, but still perhaps not perfect. It's what I can do with automatic algorithms though. Perhaps it is good enough.
Just need to add a driver for this and it would be applied automatically as the leg approaches stretched state.
Nah, just uploading them in the first place. Part of the reason for me being so slow with that is the fact that they can't be updated, though, so they need to be polished up to the nth degree before they go live. Good to hear next release won't need such perfectionism from the user.
The kneecap sticks out a bit aggressively in the example, could be a bit smoother. Good for a quick stopgap solution, but could definitely use another look once more pressing feature implementations are dealt with. Ideally, the end product should have minimal deviation between the plantigrade and digitigrade versions.
Here I have added another filter on top of the previous operation to remove the pointy-ness of the knee:
Hopefully this is good enough.
Aye, that's much better. Good to know my eye for detail is good for something, because at times it just feels like a burden that slows me down, heh.