In the previous post I talked about feeling out the characters from my visual novel and discovering some of their clothing preferences. This was a perfect opportunity to test some ideas visually in Daz 3D, since that software is all about character design, posing and accessories.

Daz 3D uses a system of "morphs" which layer onto a standardized 3d base body and allow for quick reshaping. If you've used Blender, it's a lot like shape keys where you define a group of vertexes, move them around a little, and save their new positions so you can animate back and forth between the original shape and the shapekeyed shape.

Morphs and shape keys capture the movement of vertices from whatever their starting positions. Since you're really only saving the *offset positions* in a morph, ie the distance and direction moved but not the final positions, you can apply as many morphs as you want and they *each* contribute to the final location of the set of verts.

You might create a "fitness morph" and move every vertex in the stomach and hips inward to make the waist look trimmer, for example. You can use that morph to slim the waist, and create another to sculpt muscle tone. You can then apply the muscle tone morph independently to a default belly or a thin belly for a whole bunch of different combinations.

You can even use half a morph, or double the effects of one if you'd prefer subtlety or exaggeration.

I don't have an April or Cailey 3D model rigged and textured for Daz 3D, but I do have some morphs that take the default human and turn them into an anthro foxperson! These are close enough that I can start to see what works or doesn't for anthro hair and apparel.

I found that hats, many hairstyles, high heels, and various earrings work poorly on Reyna. This is partially due to which vertices the author of this particular character morph decided to move (to remain compatible they have to start with the Daz 3D base human), and also a natural effect of trying to stretch things like shoes to fit a more feral-like leg design. If I ever do my own custom anthro character morphs, I'll probably separate the ears as a wearable vs moving all the verts on the actual ears. Not sure a better way to handle the feet, since things like high heels might just not look good on digitigrade legs...back to the drawing board (literally! sketches are the fastest way to find solutions at this point)

Here we have textureless stand-ins for Cailey and April trying on some of the fashions and hairstyles I think they'd appreciate in their world. This rendering uses the NVIDIA Iray engine for stylized/photorealistic materials and took about 30 minutes to finish with all the lights and mirrors in the scene. It's got some heavy post processing in photoshop because the room lighting was kind of a mess. >w>

I've been doing a deeper dive into my visual novel characters' backstories, motivations, lifestyles, and favorite activities. As I'm learning more about these critters, I've been discovering what kind of apparel they like~!

Personally, I've never had great fashion sense, so it's been good to do some immersive study on different types of clothing, materials, terminology and more. I still have a crazy amount to learn, but I'm finally starting to see how valuable clothing can be in character design, art aesthetic, and storytelling!

Below are some of my notes on the lead floofs who'll be in the visual novel. (Plus Zach who will appear in a later chapter.)


An incomplete list of wearables to consider for any character:

Character specific notes

Cailey
Sophisticated, fashionable, picky.
Likes to stay warm, and feel safe and snug.

Prefers material textures to printed patterns.
Likes using layers for extra variety.
Tends to be mostly modest with clean lines, no short skirts or flaunting her body.
Doesn't like frills and hanging tassels. Likes being in control of clothing movement.
Does NOT want to look like mom.

Sweat/sport clothes are her favorite.
Thigh boots and high heels are ideal.
Scarves rock. Hats rarely, except if they complement her outfit. Might catch her layering up with a vest.
Occasional well placed designer jewelry, especially if it complements the clothing.

Will change clothes as often as she can to find just the right mood.
Secret: likes to model lingerie in private.

April
Light and airy with a touch of sexy and playful.
Enjoys feeling free, with sun and wind flowing across her body.

Prefers pretty prints and cutesy patterns to material textures. Message shirts are FUN.
One or two piece is fine, not a ton of layers. No preppy anything.
Likes to show off and tease with her body. Sheer fabric is fun, so is bare neck, arms and legs.
Likes keeping it loose and swishing fabric around to flow with the breeze.
Likes to experiment with new styles and clothing. Has occasional tomboy, skater, punk, goth preferences.

Dresses and denim bottoms are the best! Usually the shorter the better.
Barefoot, flip flops and sneakers are great. High heels SUCK. High silk stockings are awesome.
Hats often, hoodies are cool. Some well placed bows are a plus. Sunglasses are snazzy and useful.
Likes bling for fun or meaning.

Sometimes she dresses older and sometimes she dresses younger.
Some days she likes to shake it up and dress in a hybrid of Cailey's prefs and her own prefs.
Secret: will skip the bra/panties and "go commando" if she can get away with it.



Kevin
Practical minded, prioritizes function. Is never overdressed.
Likes bare arms and covered legs. Avoids shorts and okay with tees and tank tops.

Likes solid earth tones, camo, message shirts, and simple patterns. Thick materials and durable textures are best.
Often layers up, perhaps for emotional security.
Dresses protectively in general, but will lighten up around people he knows.
Too loose and too tight are both a problem - somewhere in between is best.
Picks all his own styles, but tries to match what he sees others wearing so he doesn't look shabby.

Usually picks a T-shirt or tank top, and durable jeans or cargo pants. Survival and outdoor clothes are welcomed.
Trail shoes, work boots and sneakers are okay. Doesn't mind taking an extra minute to lace up.
Wears hats when practical. Hoodie or jacket with pockets in any weather that's cool enough.
No bling at all. It might reflect in the dark, get lost, or catch on things.

Secret: likes it when friends admire his physique, and will sometimes pick the tank top on purpose to show some upper arm.



Cody
Casual and practical, prioritizes feel-good clothes. Likes to look sharp, but never overdressed.
Likes leaving his arms and lower legs uncovered in moderation. Prefers shorts to slacks.

Likes solid colors and simple patterns, with some texture variety.
Is indifferent about wearing multiple layers.
Is indifferent about clothing coverage. Prefers less coverage when flirting with ladyfriends.
Loose is better than tight, but anything goes.
Enjoys relaxed, easygoing styles. Will gladly take Cailey's advice on fashionable clothes.

Shorts and a comfy T-shirt are standard wear.
Socks and shoes are fine. Prefers easy laces.
Hats are fine if it's sunny out. Hoodies are nice in the fall and winter. Sunglasses are a must on sunny days.
Not interested in jewelry, except if it has important personal meaning.

Secret: likes dressing and undressing in blankets and wrapped towels.



Zach
A bit of a slob, is usually underdressed. Doesn't care if people disapprove.
Likes making a statement with his body.

Likes leather, brown and black, and occasional bright white or bold color pops. Mostly heavy, thick materials.
Doesn't wear many layers and often skips traditional layers, like wearing a vest without a shirt.
Shows whatever he feels like showing, which is often a bit too much.
Prefers what clothes he has on to be tighter than looser.
Charts his own style, and nobody can change it.

Dayclothes are casual shorts and a shabby tank top or dark image shirt. Jeans are sometimes okay.
Sneakers or goth boots suit him well.
Could wear leather vests, bullet belts, lots of straps. Maybe a headband but no hats.
Appreciates bling like chains, necklaces, spikes, and chokers.

Might wear the same clothes for days at a time. Will wear whatever's on hand when he's in a hurry.
Cailey would say his (lack of) style sense is a bad influence on April.
Secret: dresses dangerously to help imply how dangerous he can be in bed.

Heya floofs! Here's last week's update, a couple days behind schedule!

The screenshot is a lovely Lynx lady that I used to test a workflow from Daz to Blender to Unity so I can quickly populate a 3d world with anthro NPCs! She's in the nude and doesn't have any extra body stylizations, but I can reshape her freely with the sculpt tools in Blender and attach clothing and accessories to her rig (generated quickly with the Autorig extension!) It's a clean workflow and I'm excited at the possibilities it opens up. ^w^

Still working on the nsfw feral fox rig and getting him into an animation with fluidsim, nothing ready to show there yet but it's in the works.

I've also been working on 3d gamedev stuff for my visual novel. (Working title "April's Adventures") As a refresher, that's a game I started last year featuring some of my anthro OCs (fox sisters April and Cailey, and gray fox brothers Cody and Kevin Grey). I'm designing it in a 3d world - but instead of playing the game in 3d, it'll be pre-rendered out as a bunch of flat images like a comic book. This completely skips a whole slew of 3d game design worries like animation, optimization, camera movement etc, and makes such a game much more achievable for a one-fox dev team still learning this stuff.

The last few weeks I've been going through and making sure I have all the 3d assets needed to tell the full story. There's kind of a lot --

And within each category there are specific little things I need like popcorn buckets, ice cream cones and funnel cakes, snorkel and swim goggles, slices of pizza, a street-racing arcade machine with a bucket seat, and more! :O

Level design is a HUGE process here, since even if I start with pre-made 3rdparty scenes (like the Mall environment I showed in my stylization tests from a few months ago) I still need to carefully choose and arrange each prop, expand or shrink various rooms, choose the lighting, line up cameras with art direction and worldbuilding and storytelling in mind, etc. I totally love doing this, so it doesn't really feel like a chore, but efficiency in my workflow is critical or I'll be spinning my wheels for many months.

Now that I've collected the 3d assets I need, the easiest way to approach level design is to use Unity's default 3d render pipeline (with no stylization shaders) and mix and match whatever props I need for each scene in the story. I have some Unity editor extensions that will help me further organize the 3d assets, position them, scatter them, snap them to grids etc. After fleshing out each area, I'll export the finished scenes (containing only the props I actually used) into a second Unity project to do stylization and render the final images for the visual novel.

Hoping to post another update before end of month! Boop you soon. <3

This week I focused on making progress on my graphic novel with April and other anthro characters.

Originally I'd imagined using flat backgrounds and character portraits that changed during dialogue, sort of like how it's done in Forest of Love. This approach is often used in dialogue-heavy games to get maximum mileage out of each asset (especially the character portraits, which get reused again and again). It can result in a more abstract feel since characters are only loosely affiliated with their surroundings, which can be a good tool to highlight the drama in their interaction without distracting the audience with environmental noise or camera movement.

[Screenshot from VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action]

But having the characters painted into the backgrounds themselves can make the game feel more like a comic book or frames from a movie. This approach would require making more frames (too many to draw by hand) since every frame would be uniquely contextual, but I think it'd be a more immersive experience, especially if I can bring the actors, cameras and environment together to tell a better story. For example, I could have an underwater camera, worm's eye POV, or a camera looking down from atop a roof.

[Screenshot from AI: The Somnium Files]

The nice thing about working in 3d is I can take either approach!

I can design the 3d scenes Blender or Unity. I picked Unity because I already have stylization tools ready to go; being limited to a game engine constrains me in a good way (can't noodle for hours on tiny art details); I can use scripting and prefabs and other Unity tools to automate various steps of the process; and if I can achieve a desirable look and feel using game shaders only, it may be possible to introduce animation and camera transitions into the game.

So I'm currently working with these constraints:

AND

The game's story happens in several locations: the mall, the beach, a house and apartment, and the pizza parlor. Last week I catalogued which assets I already had and which ones I still needed to find or make. (I had to collect more beach, pizza, and mall-arcade assets to be able to build believable environments for those areas.)

Next I went into Unity and did some "Look Dev" (what is Look Dev?) with some pre-made 3rd party mall assets to explore ideas for look and feel. I am currently shaping the style around clean lines in a bright and colorful videogame-esque world with a few shadows, lots of gradients, and occasional textures, planning to use the highest contrast & most vibrant tones for characters. This prototype style will keep evolving as I finish filling out the mall and building out the other areas. An important part of Look Dev is establishing design consistent throughout the game -- this is easier to do when most of the design elements are present!

I also did some quick study on anime stylization, which will continue next week. There are some design elements here like bold, toony shadows that might improve my game's look and feel. Shoutout to this incredible video for art analysis, technical process and some cool design ideas.



In other news, I'd wanted to do a monthly project and work on something for Valentine's day. This month has been unforgiving so far, and as buried as I am with other work, I hesitate to take on another project. I'll aim for a sketch page at least, maybe a short animation loop if I can be very economical. Will try storyboarding on Sunday and Tuesday (Saturday, half of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday are booked for other work.)

See you next week! :}

Was listening to Chrono Trigger and got inspired to explore the video game art software Tilesetter! This nifty tool takes base tiles (textures that can repeat on a grid without edge seams) and one transition tile per material combination (dirt to grass, grass to cliffs, etc) and autogenerates all the corners and rotations needed to quickly develop and refine a tileset. The program has basic painting and layering features and I can also export to game engines like Game Maker Studio or Unity.

Someday I think it'd be fun to make a game with pixel animals trying to survive in a wildlife RPG of sorts, kinda like Cattails meets Wolf with a touch of Stardew Valley!

For reference:
Cattails https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nKIG6F39-4
Wolf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xwGXmt1m_Q
Stardew Valley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obd2VBXPPmY

For this first test, I grabbed some seamless textures and painted new variations and transitions. Tilesetter has an alien interface that reminds me a lot of old Blender, with undocumented shortcut keys and confusing panels and subpanels. But it's a super powerful tool once past the learning curve!

I can tell right away there's a lot of design tricks involved when making tiles like what you might find in Chrono Trigger or Stardew Valley. There's usually one or several light sources and a clear shadow side to give the tiles more depth. In my R&D tileset there's not a clear sense of depth, due to lack of cast shadows. I don't really care for the cliffs material either, haha! >.>

There's also often semitransparent tiles (snow, flowers, rocks) that can layer on top of base tiles to add variety and create unique effects. I tried this out with some blue diamond materials, rock formations and two types of grass. Depending on which order they layer up, the visible pixels in different patches seem different even though it's all the same few source images. Tilesetter also has a really cool feature called Proxies that lets me weight tile variations to make the app choose a random tile from the set when painting. I can select my diamonds tile and it'll automatically vary it up!
Will do some study and give this another go! ^w^

Btw, if you're interested in playing around with Tilesetter too, boop me in the Patreon discord and I'd be happy to show you how it works! <3

Sometimes when stuff's super busy I'll take little detours for mini projects like testing these snazzy grass, reflection and toon shaders! :}} The first gif is a silly foxy with an idle animation added to a ball controller, but it looks too funny not to share! XD The second is a more serious foxy and a lot closer to a look I'd use in a real game. I'd wanna add some additional physics in a real game to make the ears and tail bounce and paws align to the terrain, as well as tune up the animation a bit to make it feel smoother.

More soon! Scrambling this month. I hope things are going well for you! <3