NEWS: Meet Your New Princess! (Patreon)

So the BP:SS game is approaching completion, and over the past few months, the development has been led by Gh0st, freeing up my time to learn about Unity's Playable Director feature (the timeline). This feature has given me the power to make amazing, longform animations with impressive detail, and I've been focusing on learning to use it to it's full extent. 

Since I started with the timeline, I've made a few longform animation previews, which I shared in a previous update, albeit unfinished. Two of them will be complete in the next game build, but the other one is still incomplete as its been quite difficult to work with. It turns out the rig I created for BP:SS was not optimized for use in the timeline feature (the separate features could not be split up for use in the timeline, and using it would corrupt old animations).

In the past couple months I've learned so much about how the timeline works, and how best to use it, and unfortunately I've determined that the BP:SS rigs just aren't suitable for this feature. So three weeks ago, I started on something new. A princess rig created from scratch, optimized to work with the Unity timeline feature. I've also incorporated loads of info I learned about making and animating rigs over the past 2 years, and the result is a way more powerful, far easier to use, and much more beautiful rig.

It's my pleasure to introduce you to our new princess. She comes brimming with new features:
-Smooth rotation of head and body
-Adjustable outline thickness for close and wide shots
-Advanced shading and lighting
-Optional unlit mode
-Flexible, "soft" body parts
-Articulated fingers and toes
-Smooth rotation on all features, including hands, feet and crown
-Smooth transitions between mouth shapes, and eye expressions
-Optimized for longform Playable Director (timeline) animation

Most of these features are demonstrated in the images and gifs. But just in case you're not madly in love with her already, I've also made a brand new animation to celebrate her arrival. I've included a version with the new advanced lighting, which is demonstrated in the room lit with a flickering fire. And I've also included a flat lighting version, which mimics the style of the official artworks.
(NOTE: the rig for the monster has not been completed yet, so these videos use a render-image as a placeholder for him.)

Advanced lighting version:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TO45OBzY4A1UYbioHrWAfbWlPuJ5IaQ1/view?usp=sharing
(Song credit: Brat by Mox)

Flat lighting version:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hUcMvRrNio_PCdcJvpucHVqhEcDMR9vr/view?usp=sharing

Creating this animation was a real breath of fresh air. With all the features in this new rig, and the handy timeline optimization, the whole video was very quick and easy to make, which to me makes it all worthwhile. I hope the new rig has won your heart like it has mine, and I hope you're all excited to see what naughty situations this new princess finds herself in next.
Development of BP:SS will continue as normal, with a new build coming soon. And as always, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments! What do you think of her cute hands and feet? What do you think of the monster's huge new unit? Let me know, and thanks for the support!