Re: BRAWL2 [Character] Samus, M҉I҉S҉C҉

Some noodly concepting over a block out.

The thought process here is maybe she's a deserter from the Academy of Raya Lucaria.
It'll allow me to work in Samus's iconic whip as a "magic weapon" from that region.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/z6/a496cumu33q6.png

M҉I҉S҉C҉

8 ·

Re: BRAWL2 [Environment] Landing Plaza, northoftherain

I'm going to try to also draw up a little visual piece within the next couple days so I don't focus too broadly and get overwhelmed.

northoftherain

1 ·

Re: BRAWL2 [Environment] Landing Plaza, northoftherain

I forgot to say in the main post but the aim is to have the story take place before the events of TLG! Alchemy Stars is going to the main inspiration for that, especially it's vibrancy and how pristine a lot of the architecture looks.

northoftherain

1 ·

Re: BRAWL2 [Character] Electric Monk, kanga

Oh, what if he was an assassin...and maybe japanese, could be named Hideo? Maybe even skilled with a bow...Okay byeeeeeee

pxgeek

1 ·

Re: Sketchbook: Celosia

Eric Chadwick said:

About animation embeds, we have some guidance here FWIW: Sticky: Animation Forum - How To Post Your Work

Turning it into a gifv is a clever workaround, thanks! I edited the post with the new link.

------

I'm doing the nodes equivalent of refactoring code, still a work in progress, but I got a few interesting things to show. Technically I already can easily create hair with them, I just want to wrap up some things.

I created a blockout for a short bob to test a few things better seen on straighter hair. I didn't tweak the positions of the cards themselves yet, it's all automatic, but this base was amazingly fast to setup and and the experience was very fun.

The weird wild baby hair cards are me testing Blender's hand drawn curves vs classic control point pushing for this kind of hair.

For this hair I barely changed any settings besides the profiles types and their blending, radius and tilt, leaving the cards count and resolution and other things in the automatic mode, then enabled a few under and over layers for sections needing them. It's at 13k tris now, I have to bake generic textures to get a better sense of how many extra filler cards I'd need.

The nodes take care of the technical aspects for me, but when I need to override something I can. Here's a speedrun through some of the things they do:

I also got the axis locked noise working among other things (got plenty to cross out from the task list!), and while I had actual hair in mind when I planned this it's also pretty interesting for cards:

These aren't the best thing about this update. I got sidetracked by something else as soon as I started that hairstyle, and it was so worth it!

One beef I have with curves is how much friction you go through when you need to move control points, specially roots. The default curve normal solver (minimum twist) flips the entire curve wildly while z-up is stable... so stable it never tilts properly to adapt to any steep angles, it just breaks. So I'm working on a custom normal with stable and smarter roots that still can twist after a certain point to adapt to steep angles.

It's not perfect and I was skeptical it'd help in setting up a hairstyle but holy shit, it does help a lot, glitchy and all. I can't believe I lived without it until now.

I already have some ideas of how to fix the problems, which are mainly larger parent cards getting crumpled at the edges. It's a serious issue because it's transferred to the cards, you can spot some weird cards suffering from it in the first animation.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/x1/gpg9jufwc2y7.jpg

Hair tasks status (2025-05-25):

- Refactor parent cards nodes (80%)
- Refactor children cards nodes (30%)
- Improve profile blending controls and performance (95%)
Mostly done but I have to think through the best way to flip profiles, which isn't trivial due how curve to mesh is implemented
- Interactive gizmo tools to speed up hair manipulation ✔
- Roll on axis per control point 50% (hard to control and doesn't look good yet)
- Squash cards per control point attribute 50% (hard to control and doesn't look good yet)
- Support attribute-controlled resolution per spline to make conversion to real cards with minimal tris waste easier ✔
- Trim hair using helper meshes ✔
- Store source splines data into generated hair for later use, as they're destroyed by the interpolation process and keeping them around is problematic ✔
- Stagger roots for better but still layered hairlines ✔
- Blend different profiles for roots, body and tips of hair, so you can have flatter profiles for roots but still nice wild curved shapes for the body ✔
- Optimize children generation by pruning intersecting hairs ✔
- Auto-generate base layers ✔
- Line up highest point of pseudo-card with source curve by default for better previews when the card isn't a straight line ✔
- Implement custom snap to surface because the default alters the source splines too much ✔
Maybe:
- Dive into my old custom hair implementation to see if my solution for self-intersecting guides/cards will work here ✔
- Implement a new horizontal clumping that follows the "card" profile instead of going round the guides, so the hairs kinda slide onto themselves more like real hair locks (that's the biased noise) ✔
- Add clump towards helper curve to point hair tips towards a spline. Useful for eyebrows, dreadlocks, braiding close to the scalp and more ✖
That's thinking about hair as particles, not the best approach for these. I'll likely add a way to split parent cards instead and just use their radius + layers to create the "pointing" effect.

Celosia

1 ·

Re: High-fidelity pixelated futuristic character models for a GoldSrc game in development

Update

E X C A V A T I 🔴 N ™ | GoldSrc | Europa sub-surface bio-research station & other progress |

The image shows one of the interiors of what would be a quite large bio-research station on Jupiter's moon Europa, with a surface and this sub-surface level containing crust-suspended modules. For those curious to see an in-game tour of both the interior and exterior of the WIP sub-surface level, visit:

https://youtu.be/Tda1dt628GA?t=163

E X C A V A T I 🔴 N ™ | GoldSrc | A GoldSrc descent into retro-sci-fi |

This is a test scene created out of curiosity to see how a retro-futuristic setting would look like with the same high-fidelity pixelated graphics and on the same engine. A possible setting for a sequel or an independent GoldSrc game. An extensive in-game tour of it can be seen here:

https://youtu.be/7yGBNK-rjec?t=23

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/y4/ufo8oqarj2s0.jpg

This is all early work in progress so suggestions are welcome, here or on YT.

RAWconcrete

4 ·

Re: [WIP] Verasia - 3D Environment

Well, for one thing there are those houses that look like duck heads...
But like said, that impression has changed already.

Thanks for the clarification. All the more impressive.

Noren

1 ·

Re: What is the consensus on 3DConnexion hardware?

Also look for any action requiring you to hold down a mouse button while dragging (like most 3d software do for moving verts or objects) and try to get rid of it.

Blender has a very clever legacy input scheme (quite unusual for people not familiar with oldschool command-centric CAD) revolving around tapping a key to initiate a command like Move, followed by moving the mouse to perform the action (without any button being held down), and then confirming or cancelling the action with another tap of a button. This coupled with the fact that such a Move action doesn't have to start anywhere near the element being moved but is instead performed relatively to wherever the mouse cursor was located when the action is triggered makes it way easier on the hands than having to precisely grab, hold and drag a manipulator like Maya or Max require, and it's also objectively faster since it involves less mouse travel. Once you try it there's really no coming back, it's just that much more pleasant, streamlined and easier on the hands.

This could probably be applied to navigation too, but I think that using this kind of lightweight input scheme for object manipulation alone could already be a significant improvement for your hand pain.

pior

1 ·

Re: [WIP] Verasia - 3D Environment

That's some impressive progress. How much are you modelling/texturing yourself?
I did expect something a bit more stylized or even cartoony going by the shape of the houses, but everything seems to shape up great.

Noren

1 ·

BRAWL2 [Environment] Landing Plaza, northoftherain

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/0n/8z9ubvkajush.png

Images sourced from Tourdog's Alchemy Stars and genDESIGN/Japan Studio's The Last Guardian
https://x.com/AlchemyStarsEN/status/1450054196670214152
https://x.com/AlchemyStarsEN/status/1451113536529313793

I was thinking of using The Last Guardian as the main base to work on. I'm leaning int that dystopian theme the game uses in it's environmental storytelling but I'm a little stuck if I want to go into that open world genre since that would be more compliant to the original game or if I should lean out of that and into the souls-like.

Most of all I aim for the environment to be able to tell a story visually, which is going to be the hardest part.

northoftherain

6 ·

Best Of

E X C A V A T I 🔴 N ™ | GoldSrc | Europa sub-surface bio-research station & other progress |

E X C A V A T I 🔴 N ™ | GoldSrc | A GoldSrc descent into retro-sci-fi |