Nine's 3D people

[westingtyler]

awesome.

1) having bones in the hair and clothes will improve animations greatly. is there a concern about having too many bones and causing performance issues? I know for VR Chat they recommend as few bones for avatars as possible, especially for clothing and hair (Dynabones?). I might be over-paranoid about performance.

2) do you paint on the models in Blender or use some external app for texture creation or painting?

3) could you give a list of your priorities for the model sets? as in,
women
men
children
animals
humanoid enemies
non-humanoid monsters
daedra lords
building exteriors
dungeon exteriors
weapon models
particle effects
player bodies
player faces
player armors
inventory items
etc.
knowing where your focus is, would help me consider focusing on areas of daggerfall less likely to be worked on soon. I mainly want to consider putting my efforts where needed most to get the entire game in 3d, which will be awesome. I may end up still just doing 100 female models of my own instead just for practice (the main reason for my project), but it would be nice for me to keep in mind the areas most in need of work.

4) what are the areas I listed above that you will NOT be doing?

5) so to make sure I am clear, you ARE adding facial bones like a jaw bone, two eye direction bones? are there other face bones you consider essential for good animation (tongue bones, mouth side bones, eyebrow furrow bone, etc.?)?

6) when you stitch the clothes and hair onto the character model, do you just eyeball that and say "these faces look like they are under the hair, so delete them." or do you delete part of the face then just bridge to make new faces, like at the hairline or chest going into the shirt? how do you ensure the topology aligns correctly? does this mean all the shirts and hairs have topology to ensure it naturally aligns with the quads of the head? and also specifically, does this mean your models contain no hidden quads that are not stitched to the surface?
or do you just delete faces and go F F F to bridge then? what is the ideal way you do this?

[Ninelan]

1) consider that VRchat is a multiplayer game that has to be optimised to run on a wider range of machines with spikes of large crowds of complex models. Try looking at some contemporary or semi-older games and how their assets are built and how their textures are arranged to get a realistic idea of asset complexity.

I've already done the animals.
I would not look at Daggerfall's various 3D projects as some collective effort to get the game into 3D, as quite frankly, everyone is approaching this with an entirely different art style and it might not even be advisable to run them all together at the same time due to stylistic clash.
Unless people come together to follow the same artstyle I would not be approaching this as some kind of patchwork effort.
Do what you want to do, do what you'd enjoy working on.

5) Depends on the complexity of the model.

6) If the skirt goes to the bottom I don't need no legs.

[westingtyler]

Thanks for all the helpful info!

it's funny how different my brain works, regarding 'getting the game into 3d." in my view, 3d for daggerfall is objectively better than 2d flats, so I'd rather run the game with a bunch of mismatching 3d styles, than have any assets remain 2d. then once all assets have 3d versions, regardless of style, the next "modding phase" would be making the different 3d assets mesh well together given different desired styles, with remodels or retextures (ie "toon style" or "photoreal style" or "Render96 style"), so knowing what others have done helps me avoid repeating work. it's interesting what different people's aesthetics find more offensive, ie mismatched 3d styles or some 3d mixed with some 2d.

But yeah, my plan has always been to work on what is most fun for me. I really think all these models are equally fun since modeling for me is like solving a really cool puzzle, so I could work on building models or Daedra Lords or weapons if I felt there was a 3d gap. I really wish there was some spreadsheet somewhere showing which assets are 3d, by who, in what modpack. I'll look around the forums and see if there is a list like this. I'm considering looking into the weapons models if there aren't already 3d ones, and maybe the Daedra Lords and non-humanoid monster, etc. it's all great practice I need.

Anyway, keep up the awesome work, and I can't wait to see the animals and clothing in screens or in-game. Do you have an artstation or other place you post lots of images for people to see, or is it mainly a secret for now?

[Ninelan]

-/-

Look at the nexus to see what mods ar released and the released mods forum for 3D that's already ingame.
Pretty much everything is to a degree being worked on by somebody somewhere. The question however is, will those projects even be done? They most often are not. So don't put your cards down on something that you wanna work but decide not to because somebody else already is working on when there's no guarantee that project will ever come to fruition in the first place.

[King of Worms]

Very low coordination is a plague, thats why I decided to create Dream alone. Some ppl joined for a brief moments, Im thankful ofc. And ty for your words on Discord, it did not change anything tho, that thing was already decided and they waited for a trigger for a while.

[westingtyler]

yeah, totally. i really wanna make some 3d people my own way, but since Nine is already making great stuff, it seems like it would be weird, haha. like "oh, so you think something's wrong with Nine's 3D people? if not then why do basically the same thing?" i'm afraid it would look like i'm trying to compete or "take over the scene" or steal their thunder or something, when i'm not since Nine's stuff is great, and I definitely don't think my stuff would be "better". maybe all that is silly. i just imagine a strange world where on nexus or forums it's like "Nine's 3D People made first" then right next to it is 'West's 3D People made after that" and then people search for 3d weapons and enemies mods, and there's none, and people are like "uh, what's with that guy?" it would be really funny, but strange. like that episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where there's a coffee shop, and the main guy gets banned, so he opens a "spite coffee shop" RIGHT NEXT TO IT for no reason. i don't know if it would look that way. so i don't know, haha. my brain is silly sometimes. I just don't want Nine thinking I think someone needs to redo their job "better" or something, because Nine's work and project is awesome.

[Ninelan]

Ni problema KoW! And it is true, unless there's both coordination, skill and motivation to imitate an art style there's not much to go off from.

Also Westing, i really doubt it would be like that. There's already a 3D project for every aspect of Daggerfall in some way in the works, just not public. The only question is if they're gonna be ever complete. And you have to consider that for your own projects too.

Also no need to put me on a pedestal of all things 3D, there have been 3D trees before me and handpainted objects too. 3D animals has been around for a good bit before I moved onto humans. In the middle time there were 3D enemies but I had my models of it taken down. There's people who have working weapons too, and a gazillion other 3D other attempts in limbo.
There are literally zero hard feelings if you try working on anything.

[westingtyler]

Okay, cool. Yeah, I checked all 14 pages of the Nexus, and I was like "I thought there were other mods that existed" but those must have been ones that haven't been completed. I could not find 3D weapons, and the John Doom 3d Enemies mod seems to need more enemy models. I think the more mods the better, for sure, as it increases the chance one will get completed.

You seem to make steady progress. How do you stay motivated?

[Ninelan]

Okay, cool. Yeah, I checked all 14 pages of the Nexus, and I was like "I thought there were other mods that existed" but those must have been ones that haven't been completed. I could not find 3D weapons, and the John Doom 3d Enemies mod seems to need more enemy models. I think the more mods the better, for sure, as it increases the chance one will get completed.

You seem to make steady progress. How do you stay motivated?

The rest of it is on the forum, but its search function is a tad wonky.

Anyway onto your question.
I was most motivated and productive when I wasn't spending all my time on the forum lol.

[Cliffworms]

I was most motivated and productive when I wasn't spending all my time on the forum lol.

But now you're spending it on DFU's unofficial Discord instead.