News about the Upcoming Character Models

Yandere Simulator's current character models are store-bought assets that have numerous flaws and limitations; I've wanted to replace them for many years now. Way back in 2023, I mentioned that someone had created new character models for the game, and explained that they required some adjustments and improvements before they would be game-ready.

It's been 2 years since then, and I've been quite silent about those new character models. This is because it took a long time to find someone who specialized in optimizing anime-style character models. It took a long time, but I finally located the right man for the job - and I'm very pleased with the progress that has been made over the past 2 weeks!

I'm sure that I'm going to forget a few things, so I'll be updating this list as I remember, but here's what comes to mind off the top of my head:

• Adding bones to the eyebrows so that they are much more flexible and are capable of many more shapes than just the default shape. (The current eyebrows cannot bend at all.)

• Adding a new bone designed to contain the protagonist's eye, which will allow me to resize the eye much more easily during gameplay. (The current method is terribly inefficient.)

• Skinning the new school uniform. (The uniform was not skinned to the protagonist's bones when I first received it.)

• Adjusting the new school uniform model to confirm better to the protagonist's new proportions. (The first version of the uniform was clipping into the protagonist's body during walking/running/crouching/crawling animations.)

• The creation of a bunch of "anime effects" that can be toggled on/off to help the character become even more expressive.

• The creation of a test animation to confirm that the character's new bones are animating properly within the game engine.

In addition to those, a bunch of other work was done, as well. Many of these points are highly technical and might not be very exciting to read about, but I'll include them here anyway for the people who are interested:

• Changed the topology of the hands and fingers for better deformation

• Fixed weight-painting issues around the character's face and body that have been there since the beginning

• Added more edge loops around the eyes for better deformation

• Added bottom teeth that can be hidden and unhidden by animating a bone

• Added a tongue that is controllable by bones

• Expanded the inside of the character's mouth so the new tongue could fit in there properly

• Added extra bones that will allow the red "kerchief" on the character's chest to animate and/or have physics

• Added an extra blendshape to the characters feet to hide the feet when shoes are being worn

• Added an extra bone for the character's eyelid to prevent certain deformation problems from occurring

• Added extra bones to each of the eyelids so that it becomes possible to hide the eyelashes if necessary for animation

• Removed unused bones that have been an unnecessary part of the character since 2014

In addition to that, new blendshapes were created for each of the rivals' faces. That one might require a little bit of an explanation...

Currently, characters in Yandere Sim are given unique faces by adjusting their "blendshapes." However, if a character's blendshape deviates significantly from the norm, then their face will deform in bizarre ways whenever they animate. A blink animation designed for the default eyes doesn't play correctly on adjusted eyes; imagine someone blinking so hard that their upper eyelashes move BELOW their lower eyelashes, clipping into their cheeks. Yikes!

So, how do you solve that sort of problem? How do you give each character a unique face, while still retaining the same animation skeleton and animations that were designed with the expectation that facial features would be shaped differently? The plan was to make each rival's head a unique model, and to give them all custom blinking animations.

However, after talking it over with the volunteer, numerous flaws were identified with this solution. Instead, the decision was made to retain ONE head model, but to give it enough blendshapes to become any rival, as well as a series of custom blinking blendshapes for the rivals whose eyes were significantly different enough that the blinking animation wouldn't look right on the otherwise.

I bet you'd love to see how the new character model looks and moves, wouldn't you? Over the next few hours, I'll begin to upload image and video previews of the new character model here on Patreon. I feel super-guilty that I haven't been providing exciting rewards to each tier of supporter, so the higher tiers will be getting the juiciest previews.

Thank you very much for your support!