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Some thoughts on the first build
in Suggestions
I have been playing around with the first build, and while I had a lot of fun discovering the possibilities I noticed some things:
1) Using the texture builder is fun and once you get the hang of it, pretty versatile. However, I (and probably many others) have no experience in making actual textures or decals (or normal maps for that matter) and trying to get some details right, like the inside of the mouth together with the teeth, the contours of the vagina or eyeliner/shadow is very tedious. I think it would be great to have some presets for teeth, female genitals and maybe makeup, so that you can easily pick their color similar to the eyecolor.
I know that for the bunny example the mouth/teeth texture is given, and I am sure that once the cloud goes online one could extract assets from the works of the very talented people using the creator, but it would still be very much a QoL function for the less technically inclined. The same goes for more hairstyles, but I assume that there will be more models to chose from in future builds (or once the cloud is up).
2) The fluff appendages look very nice when applied thoughtfully (although I miss the furshaders from YL1 a bit), but it would be nice to not have to apply every single fluff instance seperately. What I am thinking of is a "brush" function that you can paint an adjustable density of fluff onto the character.
3) Regarding facial expressions, I can understand that they are not implemented in this first build (apart from one smile setting for the bunny). I have to say though, the reason I like YL1 so much is the sheer number of possible expression you can give your characters (or some characters at least), so I hope this aspect is not forgotten in future builds. I am a bit concerned because of how eyebrows are only implemented as decals, as opposed to YL1, where they were built into the characters and could be directly manipulated through expression settings.
4) This is more of an observation, but the breast physics seem hella wonky when trying to pose a character. I assume that has to do with (unfinished?) collisions, because it only happens in the nature environment. When I lay a character on the ground there, the breasts get squished in random directions.
Other than that, YL2 looks to be the start of a solid product (apart from bugs which are completely understandable for how early it is in the games lifetime), and I look forward to how this develops.
Comments
The only things I feel tempted to add are these:
1) It would be really nice if we could see the UV maps of the models for the purposes of making our own masks. The models seem to be bundled, and it's not obvious to me how we can extract them and see their UV layouts.
2) While making a scalie character, I found myself wanting to add a normal-map/depth-map to get the texture of scales. I don't currently see a way to do this, but perhaps I'm missing something, and I'm not sure what would be the ideal way to implement this.
3) It doesn't seem to be possible to modify the texture of model appendages beyond changing the color. (For example, I don't see shininess or metalness.) Perhaps this is an intentional omission? If I want to add a more sophisticated texture to, say, claws, do they need to be parts instead of being appendages? When exactly are you supposed to use appendages instead of parts? What's their purpose? It seems like that could be clarified.
4) In some of the patreon demos, I saw genitals and orifices being attached and moved around freely, but I can't see how to do that here. Is this in fact possible, and I'm just missing something?
WRT my fourth point, I think I may have just misunderstood some of your developer posts. I saw clips of you guys moving around the penis, anus, and maybe also the vagina, demonstrating how the parts are automatically blended into the body. I assumed we'd be able to do that too, so we could, for example, give a reptile character multiple hemipenises or something like that.
4) Ah, I think you're thinking about the mesh blending tech. Currently, that tech is activated for anuses and the balls/sheath mesh. That's all it's used for though.
That's an interesting idea with rewards for contribution. Naturally, karma for uploading characters and such is something we're already intending to do, but we hadn't thought of something like that for tutorials. Maybe something like steam guides could be implemented?
That said, I did notice quite a few issues. Nothing gamebreaking, but definitely annoying and frustrating. Let's start with the most obvious one:
Turns out it's quite easy to make a character too tall for the standard ground clearance to cover. Sure, you can switch to one of the HDRI environments where there's no ground to worry about, but I find the lighting conditions in all of them to be far from optimal, and the Celestial environment's mirror floor doesn't play nicely with the dither fade:
As you can see, the top refuses to yield to anything other than clipping through it, and while the bottom and sides work, they tend to be rather temperamental about it too:
Especially looking directly upwards at the bottom fails to trigger the effect, I found.
Would it be too much to ask to be able to reposition the character in edit mode? Would also help a little with posing, since as it stands now, if I want to put a character on the Nature scene's bridge, for example, I have to hoof it back to the forest road if I need to tweak something.
Next up, bone scaling doesn't play nicely with the colour masks and attachments:
Here's Bunny, in her normal size of 0.8, but watch what happens when we screw with that value:
Oh dear, looks like her eyeshadow ended up on her collarbones, and she's developed a sudden case of whitefoot and hairshrink. It also works in the opposite direction:
That wig's way too big for you, short-stuff-with-the-big-ears.
Speaking of troubles with extra parts, the mirroring doesn't quite work:
So far, so good. Let's see what happens if we try to pose her...
Well shit, all it took was a press of the Pose Mode button for that to happen. Everyone's got issues with their hair today, it seems. Tried both point-on-mesh and point-on-skeleton attachment modes, but nope, the mirrored object wants to blindly follow its parent like the existentially confused clone that it is.
Oh, quick note on editing the parts; any chance we could copy-paste existing parts or at least their properties (masks and colours and such) in future? Would improve quality of life significantly, seeing as it is a bit of a pain in the ass to apply two masks and tweak the colours for 14 different hair objects (especially if you later have regrets and want to change them), not to mention the hassle of actually placing them to begin with, rather than just copying it and moving it a little bit.
Turns out screwing with the head's transform bones has some hidden caveats:
Why yes, I do like long muzzles, why do you ask? Well, I also happen to like long necks, so what better way to emphasize that particular anatomical feature than by pointing her nose skywards?
...Huh. Why the short face? At first, I figured my sleep deprivation was getting to me, but further experimentation proved otherwise:
This sound effect comes to mind.
Curiously, though, the effect only pertains to the head bone. Twirling the neck bone has no such adverse consequences:
Mayhaps the head's bone deformation controllers are parented incorrectly? That'd be my guess.
Lastly, some texture bugs:
These become evident on shiny, metallic characters; unwrap seams on the breasts become noticeable and dots appear in various places. I'm guessing that the normal map texture or some such needs a bit of a clean up in the case of the dots, but the seams could prove tricky to deal with, based on what I've heard. Still, something worth looking into.
The sheath and balls model seems to not quite inherit the base fill colour correctly:
Also, there's the lack of that blending tech, but I see that was pointed out already. In case it isn't entirely clear from this picture, here's one with the smoothness turned up to chrome to make it very noticeable:
I didn't test if putting an additional mask on top of it would have helped, on account of the sun rising to scold me for being up way past my bedtime, heh.
Oh, one more thing; the digitigrade legs need work. Continuing with the theme of me liking long things, I also like long legs, naturally. I'm sure you can imagine my disappointment when I found out the only way to lengthen the digitigrade leg's "foot" without making it bigger all around is to deform the paw at the end of it, not to mention the crippling lack of posability. Could be a bit of challenge to improve on account of needing changes to the character skeleton, I know, but I'd say it's worth the extra hassle as the more detailed skeleton can also be used for extra articulation for the plantigrade versions, so everyone benefits.
Also, how's everyone liking the fruits of my night of fevered experimentation? I call her Aeniolus the Bronze Dragoness. I'm quite proud of how she turned out, even if I do say so myself:
I ended up listening to this song on repeat for most of the time I was working on her, so I guess that'll serve as a nice theme tune for her. Suitably triumphant and grandiose to commemorate this first release, methinks.
We're having more scalie heads down the road for our updates and there's guarenteed to be a long snouted repilian there that I hope will be rather malleable for many peoples needs.
I must say, that is an very impressive dragon you've done, very good work!.
High praise there, Thank you kindly.
Good to hear we've got more heads on the way already. Any equine noggins in there? I'm happy with anything elongated, of course, but I especially like horses, as I'm sure you've guessed. Got several character ideas in that vein all lined up, in fact.
The next head update is an equine one, we're going to do the horse from Yl1 which will also mean a first version of an horse head for trying out in the app.
Chest is the only bone that doesn't use undistortion tech, because that tech caused problems with tits. I thought I could get away with it, but as discovered now, not using it will cause problems for hands.
Gonna see if there's anything I can do.