I realise there's still a lot of comparing between the old and the new in this update, but I promise there'll be new stuff soon... hopefully. Right now, I just want to go over the improvements I made, because creating Laura has been a huge learning process for me and I honestly think it's been quite successful, which I'm really happy about.
Animation
...is tough. I've never animated a character before. I get how to do it mechanically, within Blender, but it's hard to nail natural movement. I've dabbled in walking and running cycles so far, and they do look like the action they're supposed to represent, but just not quite like what I'm aiming for. There are also issues with things like the speed and, as a consequence, foot sliding. Growing pains, I guess.
Model Changes
Blinking
Something that was quite easy to improve was Laura's blinking. In her old model, the topology around her eyes was bad, which led to some nasty stretching:
I fixed this by adding a separate eyelid mesh, which was recessed into her head while her eyes were open, and stretched from the top of her eyes to the bottom when she blinked. I figured the toon shader I intended to use would hide it, and it kind of did. Still, it didn't look great because her eyes shut from the top only, which is unnatural. Plus, she only had eyelashes on her top eyelid, so making a bottom eyelid would have looked a bit odd. I made the flat eyelashes move and rotate with the eyelid, but it didn't look great either. They clipped into the mask, and the flat plane visually disappeared around the halfway point. Observe on the left, and compare to the new one on the right:
The way I set up the new mesh allows for stretching the eyelids without affecting the rest of the mesh in any harmful way. Hardly any stretching artifacts to speak of! Thus, I was easily able to make both the upper and the lower eyelids move. And because her eyelashes now wrap around her eye, they close up during the animation, which I think looks super fancy:
Her eyelashes now look so damn good when closed. Maybe not perfect but I'm VERY happy with the result.
Texturing
I took the liberty to refine her textures a little bit. I didn't add a lot, but I went over a few things:
- the trousers are a shade darker
- the hoodie now has a black V-shape across the chest and back
- the shoes are now white with black accents
I still need to add some texturing detail to the trousers and hoodie, like seams. I think they're needed to push the model just a little bit further. I'm just worried whether or not I can actually make it look good. I guess I just need to try to get practice though.
More Changes
I also edited the model slightly by changing the shape of the trouser legs near the shoes and modifying the topology around the hips for better leg bends. The hood now doesn't bend, but rather bounces as a single unit; I disliked the fold it had and the way it looked when Laura moved in-game. I also gave her a belt buckle very similar to what she had in her old model (see picture above). Not sure if I'll keep it, but it might be a neat detail.
Storyboarding
I'm likely using that term wrong, but I've been trying to refine the story ideas I've had and put them into a string of events. I'm using Obsidian's canvas feature for this, which is really cool. It gets laggy every now and then, but manually deleting cache folders every few months seems to do the trick, for some reason.
I've been using it to put all my pieces, all my ideas into a central document, and using groups and arrows to create this string of events to turn it into a linear story. It allows me to view the story as a whole and see the gaps and missing pieces.
Can I just say: this is difficult! I've written stories before, but most of them never received an ending, and some of them didn't even have a proper beginning. And those I have finished, well... there aren't many, and I don't think they were good. In fact, I remember just one finished story I wrote in the span of around an hour for a school project (a film), and I also directed it, did the camerawork, and edited it. It was awful, let's never speak of it again.
This time will be different! I never said this before in regards to storywriting, so it ought to be true.
I've also been thinking about the gameplay side of things. I'm thinking that the game should still lean less into the gun-play direction, so I might stick with the two weapons currently implemented – the blaster and the rifle. I'm also considering omitting the levelling mechanic entirely, since there's hardly a point if there's no arsenal to back it up.
