June 2022

Disclaimer

As a reminder, devblogs will be available only for Patreon patrons until the next game update. After which, every devblog posted prior to this update release date will be publicly posted, one by one, on the game’s website.

Shoe model

During this month, my focus mainly was on Talas’ shoes for the future v0.4.2 update.
What took the most of my time was to redo topology.

To redo a model’s topology is to create a simplified copy of a model that will be more practical to use in another software. This is a common occurrence in video game development.

While the model loses details and polygons, this is caught up by Bake. Bake means to apply details, topography and occlusion from the original model to the simplified one through textures.

Now all that is left to do is to paint the model, which is no small task. Lots of details like sewing points or signs of use are applied there.

This is an in-game render using Lumen. VR render will be less soft regarding shadows. This design also is not the final one, I will work more over colors and textures through July. For now, everything seems too uniform.

Rig

I started creating Talas’ shoes’ rig. A rig is more of less a toolkit with the appearance of a skeleton that allows the creation of a model’s animation.

When I created Talas’ model, I created my own rig with my own constraints and a homebrew software to generate it in Blender.

Since then, the rig has lots of functionnalities that are generally ignored, and also contains classic yet specific features linked to animation, such as IK Blend, IK/Sub IK, Follow Blend, etc. It was of course made to be fully compatible with Unreal Engine and contains elements specific to MMVS. I sometimes update said rig, and it became my main rig for all my characters.

I spent some of this month focusing on updating the generation software. I had to refactor a good chunk of code. Once I am done with this update, I will be able to do the same with Cobble and Talas’ rigs, then move onto the shoes.

Jackdaw (Bonus)

This time, something not related to the game: for two weeks, I had to take care of a Jackdaw.

It felt from its nest close to my home. It was completely helpless, and its nest was too high up for me to put it back in there. Since I knew it would be killed by the village’s cat, I chose to take it with me.

Every two hours, the little bird was begging for food before returning to sleep. I fed it boiled egg yolk, mealworm, dried grape, and some egg preparations.

At the start, it remained fairly calm on a coat hanger or in its cardboard box. Then, by growing up, it wanted to move around and explore the place. I had to survey it with a sponge to clean behind it, as it was doing its things a bit everywhere but, of course, in its dedicated sleeping area.

After a whole week and a half, it was able to fly and eat on its own, then I let it go after two weeks.

I am sharing this here because taking care of it took plenty of my personal time, and this took a toll on what I had planned to do this month.

Thank you for reading!