Work hard to work less...? ＼(^o^)／ (Patreon)

April was another crazy month filled with new experiences and learnings.

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The environment around the bar that I've been steadily working on since last month is finally starting to take shape! While there are still some decorations to add and it's a work in progress, I feel like I'm getting closer to capturing the atmosphere of "Deep Sea × Bar".

▼ Here's what I rendered with Eevee in Blender.

Since I'm aiming for a stylized look rather than a full photorealistic one, I referred to tutorials in the "Stylized" category. At first, I was stumbling around not knowing left from right, but after some studying, I managed to achieve a more anime-ish vibe with just a little extra effort. Somewhere between the middle of photoreal and cell shading. It was really worth it!

The lighting is still simulated within Blender, so I'll be replicating that in Unity moving forward. We'll be refining the visuals using materials and effects within Unity, so the appearance will change a bit more.

▼ Here's how it looks when manipulated in Blender.

With more intentional lighting and haze, the whole thing will come even more to life!

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Ritona Model Update

Continuing from last time, I've been working on updating Ritona's model as well.

Ritona has a setup with meter-like gauges on her arms. This meter was inspired by the health bar in DEAD SPACE as it reacts to the amount of "health" Ritona has (indicating her well-being and progression of the story and not a traditional HP system where it goes up and down in battle). Which is fine and all but because Ritona is a 2D drawn sprite that walks and runs in various directions, these meters need to be redrawn to match each pose.

This is, as you can probably imagine, mind numbing work that requires a bit too much patience than I currently possess. So, I decided to also turn this into a 3D project. I work in Clip Studio Paint for illustration, and while it can import 3D models, outlining and painting on top of the models was impractical.

It would be ideal if I can figure out a way to not hand draw any of this, since the meter needs to react to the amount of "health" you pick up during the game.

Therefore, I opted to create models with colors already filled in. That way, after rendering in Blender, all that's left is to place the exported images!!!

However, I found even coloring 3D models to be quite tedious. Since there are no free metal textures that match my art style, I had to create them myself. But to color the 3D model (i.e., create the texture), I needed to unwrap the UVs and ensure the data was clean...

So, this time, I used something called Matcap, which I had vaguely heard of before. By hand-drawing shading inside a circle image, the pattern is reflected onto the 3D model. It's fantastic!

▼ Model with Matcap applied. It looks metallic even without lighting!

All that's left is to adjust the colors of the exported parts for each pose and place them to complete Ritona's illustration!

Thanks to my laziness, it turned out to be quite easy in the end. Easy. Ha. Yeah,

▼ Summarizing the overall steps, here's the flow.

Now we have a functioning meter that works as originally designed. WORK! But it was worth it!