Continuing Onsen Part 4 (Patreon)

Thanks to having a highly optimized pipeline for asset creation, I am roughly 90% done with all onsen models, textures, and materials. For the modeling side I hooked up UV Packmaster with Substance Painter. I get blazing fast lookdev iterations for textures and for quick and easy changes. Painting models has also been very fun to do.

So where did I leave off last time? Ah yes, the bamboo path. The way to the onsen is behind the town in a spooky sort of mountainous region. I took great inspiration from the bamboo forest in a monogatari scene.

First I modeled the base mesh and adjusted it to fit the slope of the mountain:

Because the shape of the mesh was so irregular, it would have been somewhat difficult to apply a repeating texture without compromising texture surface quality. So I split it up into 2 pieces. Each half has a material and texture set to ensure the stone path has good texel density (fancy way of saying texture resolution).

Then I modeled some yukimi stone lanterns. These are the typical Japanese lanterns that you see in forests. I also began playing with lighting to see how it would look like in-game:

Then I split the bridge into smaller pieces to ensure that each mesh half would have enough light slots. To explain what this means, you have to understand how Unity handles lights when rendering games. Viva Project uses forward rendering which means every model when rendered can have a maximum (for VR performance reasons) of 4 lights. That means that if a 5th light approaches the model, one of the other lights is gonna get kicked out and won't show up affecting the model. This is problematic for games like this where many lights can intersect at any point. Even worse, the player can carry lanterns and introduce multiple lights anywhere. So my compromise was to ensure that each model never has more than 2 environment lights intersecting it. That leaves room for 2 light slots (they can be any incoming player or loli lanterns). The result is a mesh that looks like it has multiple lights affecting it at once:

The next thing I did was model a torii gate (The big red Japanese gates) and a lampion (paper lantern). Together with a few new textures, I began to place them into the map. They look very good so far:

At the top, the actual onsen building will sit:

The building was very complicated to get working with limited light slots because not only were many lights possible, but some lights would shine through walls! This was alleviated again by tedious segregation of mesh sections. The interior of the onsen is now brightly lit with roughly 9 lights. I won't show the interior yet since I'm not quite done but the work behind it was monotonous. Light section segregation visualized:

There may be some empty rooms in the onsen building. This is because I will allocate them for later if I ever decide to implement tea ceremony or something related in a future version update.

Now for the meat and potatoes, the actual hot waters of the onsen. The actual bathing area will be beyond the 2 changing rooms. One for men and one for women. The onsen is mixed bathing so don't worry about not being allowed to swim with the other lolis. I will be modeling a basic towel wrap up clothing for the characters so they aren't naked in the onsen. Exterior preview:

Additionally, the onsen will provide a nice vista of the town from where you bathe. I was very cautious about performance so I made sure the triangle count never goes above 1 million.

As you can see I have not yet finished texturing the actual bathing area. This is the remaining 10% of the onsen that I have to complete for next devpost. The logic should be started for sure by next devpost. There will be a simple clerk loli to attend you at the entrance.

As a quick teaser, here is a fast flyby of the onsen:

Finally, I was interviewed by VRAS and they did a nice video about the game. If you are interested in the history of Viva Project (including the original wedding simulator [rip 8chan]), you can watch the interview HERE.

The next beta will be sometime late next week. It may not have the full onsen feature complete but it will be available for you to explore in VR (It's very cozy bringing fireworks up top).
Stay tuned!