and if you're curious about the "custom normals", here they are on and off. Still just a test, i have some tweaks to make still. Looks odd here but with toon shading its beneficial. Absent still is the extra handpainted nose and centreline highlights/shadows, example in the third pic

really super early still, but wanted it ingame just to check i'm heading in the right direction. Last time I did this (many months ago) I realised things didnt match what I had in my head and I didn't have a solution, so it went on the backburner. But I think finally i'm more happy with progress

Anyone ever use or know that XC2/3/DE have what I'd consider a legacy camera mode? You access it by resetting the camera to its default position and then not touching the control stick. Until you intervene, it gently tries to look where you are going. First half shows this mode, second half is off

feels so much better with a simple UI hint!

also i realise it may not look like much, but i find it really tricky and as a result its suuuuper satisfying when stuff finally works as you intended! Here is (some of) the logic behind the switching-

i get so distracted... anyway i got XC3 style character switching! With very janky party AI behaviour (wouldn't want them any other way)

Spent all day messing with built-in unreal methods and got absolutely nowhere. Then i found this free plugin which literally just works! Amazing, i am blown away with the results! github.com/pafuhana1213...

fixed the shadow going transparent as the model does as you get close. Small wins but really satisfying

Something else that to me felt really important for "the xenoblade feel" was the camera controls. I always loved how easy and how much freedom they gave the player in XC games; far, close, up and down. Even side to side in XC2!

Oh but of course when you zoom into effectively first person mode, then the camera has to jump again !!! plus the model must also disappear, else you see bodyparts flailing around

I'd really like to learn how to do physics based animations for the hair and clothes. Monolith did such a great job with all this stuff, it adds to much life to the movement. Maybe that'll be what I try next

Whilst running was quite easy, getting jumping 'right' (its still not) was much more tricky! After getting the animations to work, something felt off still. Turns out in all Xenoblade games, when you jump, the camera does not. And I really wanted it to feel as close to that as possible

And of course we can run too! Made it so the character goes translucent when the camera gets too close

So turns out in XC3 i never noticed that they have specific walking animations! Added a walking toggle to make a bit easier to see them in action

Sorry for lack of updates, been busy. Anyway. Animations! Not my own yet, but I think its really good to learn with known good examples, so I know what i aim for. Just implementing them is a huge learning experience

the gang! Sadly they are super labour-intensive to try to fix. Only spent a bit of time on Shion, manually flipping and welding half her poly's... and made a quick hair texture as apparently they never made it from the game

@sparksopus.bsky.social regarding my yt comment: easier to show pics here than explain the effects - some examples of what NMs are doing, and a pic of how to set it up in UE(4 in my case but its the same in 5)

Honestly just so thankful for Xenoblade; before I played them (which was 2024), i was a super casual gamer and really struggled to get hooked on any game. Now i've realised I love JPRGs and have decades of games to dig into

I couldn't help but study the 3d art too. The character designs definitely grew on me, and I have an inkling most of the characters would actually suit being toon-shaded. Like the face shapes are surprisingly close to that of XC2/3. Big fan of the vertex lighting too; very of its time, very clean!

Also loved seeing how and where they used various music track - I've listened to the OST for quite a while so was so fun hearing my favs! I feel like they saved a lot of bangers for near the end. Also that ending! Getting huge XC2 vibes (other way around really)

Xenosaga ep 1: So good. Been playing it for the first time over the break, just finished it now. I love the characters so much! I'm very confused still, but in the best way possible. Probably not jumping into 2 (or Pied Piper) straight away but certainly looking forward to it!

the original still looks more charming with its whimsical trailing sparks effects, I don't know how to do any of that yet 😭 #Xenogears

didn't actually get the chair finished but its fine from this distance (play Intangible Treasure when looking at this!) #xenogears

oh i'm really pleased with this one! I got the fake hair highlight working! Things that are just taken for granted when rendering more normal stuff, but with the toons style it needs adding manually

love the core crystal "animation"!

other effects I've made are the hatching on clothing. Quite like it

made a funky painterly PP filter (99% copied from a brilliant tutorial, would never have managed it on my own 😭). I intend to only have it affect hair only, but here it is on everything for now. Looks interesting at least

And I got that working too :D Just roughly painted the verts to test, I'd spend some time making sure its done properly when doing it for real

ah might as well how how it looks with the sun rotating sideways too - before and after in the same clip

However I've also been trying to put together a toon/cel shader, and I figured out how to lock the sun direction cast on the face vertically, leaving the rest intact (Horizontal rotation of the sun still works as normal, as it should). The "Before" video is in the next post!

Sorry for the lack of activity here. I have been making a little progress on Elly and Fei, but also been getting distracted with all sorts of other stuff! Some of which has just been playing games - beat FF7 for the first time (loved it)! And really enjoying the Remake too, for different reasons

Some super quick examples! Second pic showing the setup - probably far from the best way of doing it, but it works!

Spent an embarrassingly long time fumbling around on this today, but I got something I'm pretty pleased with:

🧵 Here is a look into how Vertex Colours are used in Xenoblade 3! I've put together a short thread with my best guesses This first pic is just Noah with the vertex colours overlayed on top of his materials. However I'll remove the materials so its even clearer going forward

First set of homemade textures to replace the XC3 ones - eyes! Quite pleased with the result. I won't be happy until I've replaced everything, but its nice to get a start

alright this is no surprise to anyone with any 3d art experience, but its cool nonetheless imo; Normal maps do SO MUCH heavy lifting! And they stand up to close scrutiny too - they still look great on a 4k display, which is insane given the game is i think 720p max?

One thing Monolith do which I love is blending the lower eyelid using vertex alphas (as kindly demonstrated by A); so where its black will be fully transparent ingame, giving that lovely soft look. Second pic is from ingame - also note the eyelashes and eyebrowns rendering in front of the hair!

previous pics were using flat shading atm (so texture only basically), because they look awful with normal shading and no toon shader setup! Tho tbf, the XC3 models look pretty goofy too without the proper cel shading, here is a comparison:

So for a while I've been wanting to learn how to make game characters, but quickly realised I have no actual creativity 😭 So i've settled on trying to remake Fei and Elly from Xenogears, in the style of Xenoblade 3. SUPER WIP atm but i'm actually kinda happy with how its going now.