Voting result

I would like to announce the results of the “Important” vote that I conducted at the beginning of the month; I think everyone had enough time to make a decision. So let's start the conversation.

To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised that I was surrounded by a fairly understanding community that could evaluate my work objectively, which was clear from the percentage of votes and comments under the post. It seems that the result of the vote was clear in the first week, although most subscribers either missed this opportunity or refrained from making a decision.

 The result of the vote was "Replacement" of the main character model, or rather its transfer to a more advanced MetaHuman model with all its advantages.

First I will explain what this will give to the project as a whole, what work needs to be done and then we will sum up, let's go!

 So, what I'm trying to come to :

• Advanced character model will allow for more customization of the entire body, more adjustments and opportunities for diversity of the map population.

• Face type variability. In addition to classic appearance editing, I want to add up to 4 face types, from the shape of which profiles will be built, which will add appearance variability for both PC and NPC. But don't expect anything grandiose, since this will only add work in the future and the production of items that can be worn on the head will be slower. Most likely, this will be variability at the level of Skyrim characters, nothing more.

• Flexible quality settings. Metahuman supports tools for the ratio of quality and performance out of the box. You will be able to customize the quality of your character to your needs. This will also slightly solve the problem with performance regarding the work of game pawns, since they do not have optimization tools due to the peculiarities of clothing.

• Advanced items. Since the character models will be updated, all or most of the assets that can be worn by the character will need to be updated along with them. But this is more of a plus than a minus, since the new items will use optimal shaders that support Color ID, which will ultimately allow not only to change the model externally, but also to customize it by painting individual parts of the elements in any desired color.

• Simplified animation machines. Only basic state machines with lightweight logic will be used, which will reduce the load on the processor by transferring the main work to the video card. The idea of ​​​​leaving the advanced functionality of animations for creating mods obviously only aggravated the situation without bringing anything new, except for performance problems, I think this should be fixed.

• Clothes. The new tools will allow you to add more diverse models for clothes and add something else besides tight-fitting suits. Changes will also affect the cutting and sewing system, but this will rather be optional and most likely only the basic functionality will be available at the start.

• Animations. I don't have much hope for the power of animation retargeting to the new skeleton type, but most animations will still be changed, especially bondage animations (due to the peculiarities of body proportions).

 Briefly about the plans:

There is a lot of work and the work is quite difficult... As I said earlier, it can take three months, maximum four. All this time I will be working non-stop on a large update and therefore:

• Monthly updates. During crunch, I will be able to release ONLY fixes. I have already divided the versions of the project and will only make bug fixes, since the changes made to the main version can become irreversible. I think no one will want to play a completely broken build, because I am doing some work behind the scenes of the project.

• Voting items. As for the voting items - they will not be there during this long period either, sadly, but I do not see much point in adding items that will immediately need to be remade for the new model. It will be too problematic, sorry.

• Reports. I will update the development report as soon as there is something to show. Without a doubt, there will be something there that can surprise you and show the level of progress that you should expect. Also, since we are on Patreon and I can't show everything I want here, subscribe to the Discord server. The most up-to-date information regarding development is and will be there. You can also ask questions if you have any.

Finally, I wish myself good luck and of course you. I think you will have something to do this spring. See you soon, friends!