An old character model is getting remade in this week’s game devlog, and the Grid Shader in Unity now boasts several new features that will improve the overall feel of Depths of Erendorn. As always, remember to stay tuned to our Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for all the latest updates on our fantasy RPG!
3D Character Modelling
Rather than beginning work on a new character model, this week we decided to revisit one of the older ones! Wolvajins are terrifying, humanoid wolf creatures that can viciously attack you in Depths of Erendorn. Their original model, however, didn’t quite capture the nature of these fierce creatures, so our Character Artist decided to remake it with a few refinements:
- The original body sculpt was used, although we heavily modified it
- The entire anatomy was resculpted into a more upright position
- New arms were transplanted from the male Human base mesh
- The arms were then elongated to fit the Wolvajin’s new proportions
We changed the body proportions on the Wolvajin model so that it not only appeared more anatomically correct, but also so that the legs would seem slightly longer. Wolvajins are impressively fast creatures so it was important to ensure that this part of the anatomy was given some attention. By making it so that the model was a total of 10 heads tall, 5 for each half of the body, our Character Artist was able to keep everything in proportion while also making the legs appear slightly longer.
Before we remade the head, our Character Artist first sculpted the skull in order to give themselves a better understanding of the head shape. In spite of this, we still had some difficulty getting the head shape just right since there were a lot of changes that had to be made on it.
In the end, the new head shape ended up looking more fierce and more realistic than the original model. For a final touch, our Character Artist sculpted a snarling expression onto the Wolvajin as these kind of features are often used on ferocious, animalistic characters.
Animation
Our Animator worked on a few more animations for the Watertarg this week, including ones that show the character disarming, equipping/unequipping a weapon and performing two casting animations. After these were done, a few of the animation poses were adjusted to ensure that everything was where it should be. Once we were happy with all of this, the Watertarg animations and meshes were exported to Unity in one FBX file so that they could be tested in the game.
This week, there were some issues with the animations of the Forest Druid model which were causing a camera bug to occur in Unity. To resolve this, our Animator fixed the off-scale and rotation for the coat rig on the Forest Druid. Once this had been done, the character could be animated properly without causing any issues to arise.
Environment Art
Another dungeon scene is being created in Unity this week. This serves as a taste of how Depths of Erendorn will be experienced and also allows us to experiment with different assets, lighting and post-processing effects. Our Environment Artist started by migrating all of the required assets over to the main project. These assets were then used to dress the cinematic scene, and they include things like crystal clusters and wooden barrels.
Our artist continued working on this dungeon scene by:
- Creating burning, burnt and regular logs for fires and fire pits
- Combining logs, a stone circle, a fire particle effect and light into a prefab in order to create campfires
- Adjusting the lighting and post-processing effects so to achieve the best scene visuals
Server and Game Client
A new Grid Shader was implemented this week using Unity’s newest rendering technology: High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP). The grid will be used in the game in order to help players understand how far they can move, how far away targets are and much more. There are several new features that the Grid Shader now makes use of, and these all improve the overall feel of the game when you play:
- It will pulse slightly over time
- It will fade over distance
- Grid lines will fade towards the edges of the lines
- Line colour can now be changed
- Grid scale and line thickness can also be changed
The week was rounded off with the input being validated in the Game Lobby. This means that if the input is a number, you will only be able to put it in the input field. A lot of planning work was also done on the project so that there is a clear direction as we move forward. Some of this work will be detailed in next week's game devlog, so make sure you stay tuned!
