[Progress Report]: 24th of January - with Harper! (Patreon)

Hey everyone,

I know the above image is of Riley: it's just a little peek into where the next H-event is going to take place for winning the poll. That said, Harper is finally done and I absolutely cannot wait to talk about it any longer! I couldn't be happier with the results. Never, ever before have I had such difficulty in making changes to a character. Most take around two days - one for 80% of the basic work, and then the next day, after I've had some time to sleep on it and look at the new appearance with a fresh perspective, I do general touch-ups. The vast majority of characters fall into this category. The heroines themselves have required multiple fixes because, as I've gotten better with the morphing tools, I've wanted to keep their looks updated to the new standard. Valentina, Chrys, and Riley have all received some minor details edits to help their proportions and remove general irregularities. For example, did you know that the very first design of Chrys didn't have eyelashes? Her model didn't come with any, and I didn't have any I could add at the time. This has since been fixed.

But we're here to talk about Harper. Now, on the surface, this image isn't so bad. Actually, Harper looks very nice in this picture, and she also looks quite nice in most of the renders she is in. There are still problems with her: her lips look constantly chapped, for example (and it's always driven me crazy), and the bags under her eyes are a little distracting, but Harper otherwise is a charming, and perfectly lovely young woman. Sort of.

What's not seen in this picture is the extensive work I've done to to hide all of the problems she has. Viewed perfectly from the front, she's fine, and you'll see that most of the scenes she's in has this kind of perspective. Change that, and you'll notice a lot of the problems that I've been trying to cover up. The first one is probably one you would have never suspected: the skin tone. Harper's skin actually does not look that color. What you're seeing is her skin-tone with double the light sources of any other character - which is one of the contributing factors as to why she almost never shows up with other characters in the game. Let me show you:

That is Harper's actual skin tone with my lighting set-up. I've been trying to wash this out with brighter lights because you can really see some problems here: instead of bags under her eyes, her eyes appear sunken (because they are), instead of gaunt cheeks, it's actually shown that her lower cheek bones are too pronounced, and so on. Having to use twice the normal lighting is a nightmare for clothes, furniture, and just about every environment. I typically have to set everything to a darker color so that it rebalances to a brighter color when Harper is in the room. 

Now, that displays the lighting issue, but here I'll give the reason why you almost never see Harper from the side:

Her jaw disappears. Her cheeks also become flat and now you can see how deeply sunken her eyes are. 

Before I get any further, please note that this isn't the fault of the person who created the original model. They had their own lighting, camera choices, tools, and so on. Very few Daz3D models are created with visual novels / video games in mind - that being seen from every angle. Few creators design their models to be seen from the side and starring off into something that isn't a sunset.

Harper was the very first character I added in Superheroes Suck, all the way back before I even had a Patreon page, and I had no idea how to address any of these issues at the time. I'm showing you all of this bad, early work because I also want to demonstrate how much your support has enabled me to improve. I would have never made changes without your feedback and encouragement. So, without further ado:

Ta dah!

Her skin-tone has been adjusted to fit into the normal lighting, and she's now working on those chapped lips! You'll notice that the most significant changes are around her eyes - that's what they're supposed to look like when they're not sunken. More than that...

The eye-depth issue has been corrected, her jaw is now clearly visible, and she looks great at any angle (or at least I think so).

This is been an intense journey. Previously, Chrys has held the record for the most nonconsecutive days spent on a character's redesign on three days total. For Harper, I spent nearly sixteen days. I actually started her redesign almost five months ago, and have been working on it off and on on my "days off." It's taken an immense amount of work to adjust everything, but I'm quite pleased. I hope you all are too.

There have also been a few changes to her body shape. A lot of her definition was already there - it's just that the lighting no longer washes it out. The most significant change is that her legs are longer - although I've never had any renders that really showcased that before. I'll show it off later on in the game. 

That does it for me this week. On top of everything else that's happened in the past month or so, the 22nd of this month was my birthday. With Harper's redesign done, I can finally sit down and just roll my face all over my chocolate fudge birthday cake.

Thank you all for all your kind words and support,

~Solace