March 2025 Work Report

Hello! I have completed 1/4 of the work on replacing the base character model, I want to share information about the work done and what in-game changes will accompany this work.

 Perhaps I want to start with the fact that if there is a chance that something will go wrong - it will.

Initially, I was focusing on Metahuman as a framework for characters, they have a huge layer of utilities and presets that would simplify production and optimization, but as it turned out, this is another beautiful toy for the showcase from Epic Games. The problems mainly affected the difficulties of customizing basic proportions, synchronizing LODs, and directly separating the work of the body itself and everything above the neck. Large incompatibility with the current game framework forced me to use my license in Character Creator to get a fairly well-developed model without the need to make edits to the basic geometry. It's a shame that sometimes Epic Games tools that look cool - work cool only in the tech demos in which they are provided, but let's not dwell on the bad ...

The main model for the new framework was Camila from CC4, fortunately it contained the fewest problems that I would like to encounter when starting a big job, although there were problems with it too, but more on that later.

So I have completed approximately 90% of the work with animation (not related to bondage animation), in this I was helped by a more or less adequate retargeting built into UE5, some animations like Locomotion walking and running had to be completely replaced with new assets due to the radically different body proportions, and a lot of work was also done on replacing and refining all sorts of little things, like addictive poses for holding objects in hands and other little things.

Overall I was pleased with the result, but there is still room for improvement.

Let's talk a little about the in-game customizable clothing that you can create in the shelter using the Cloth Palette tool. I'll say right away that I've completely revised the options for the visual appearance of this clothing, since the current options for "Onion" clothing cause certain dissonances in my head. I wanted something more than a tight latex suit or other equally tight things.

I spent some time making loose and sometimes baggy clothing. I'd like to pay more attention to how bondage looks in-game, and ropes tightly wrapped around loose clothing would be a much more visually pleasing alternative to the current state.

Again, I used new tools for myself and this is just a trial run. Most of the clothes listed above will be reworked in the final version.

 

In fact, this provides additional opportunities for customizing clothing, such as the presence of elements or accessories, dividing one product into several types of fabrics to create a unique piece.

 

I also worked on post processing some materials to give them more naturalness, for example any woolen items (if the clothes support this material) will have additional pile, I think people who adore sweaters will like this...

 Translucent or thin clothing materials have also been added, so you can create these without any problem.

 Hair, damn it.

Obviously this was a challenge for me, as I am not very good at modeling when it comes to Digital Humans. I immediately decided to achieve my own result in solving this problem, as I need to at least somehow visually match the current detail of the model, as there will be no place to find the necessary assets.

 I switched completely to construction based on curves and Hair Cards, this was the only way I could achieve a more or less stable result.

Basically, I only worked on hairstyles with moving elements and those options that were more amenable to sampling, you know, I would like to at least simplify my life here and make more options for hairstyles that would have ponytails or double buns of tied hair.

I'm focusing on physics assets because there will be new clothing, hair, accessories, and race assets that will require simulation. I'm at the "I'm too excited about this" stage right now, mostly because there's no other way to simulate them other than bone animation or cloth simulation in UE, which mostly sucks. I'm using rigid body simulation in post for all accessories that require simulation, and so far it's been working well. I spend most of my time just modeling and weighting the bones, rather than implementing them in the engine and worrying about how they'll work, so I'm okay with that.

 That's all for me, next month I'll be working on reworking bondage items and animations, there will be a lot of interesting stuff! To always be up to date with my work - visit the official discord server, there you can find interesting things that I publish from time to time, and also chat. See you soon, don't be bored!