Greetings all! As you may have noticed, I just pushed the latest update to Flex. There are some neat updates in this release, both big and small. In this post I want go over these changes as well as give you a heads up on what I’ll be working on next!
TL:DR version: Made some nifty updates like character save/load, more body morphs and eye control, as well as smaller updates and fixes… and even more exciting features coming in the December build!
Character Saving & Loading
The ability to save and load is pretty important if you plan on using the app for any ongoing project. I’ve been building the infrastructure for this feature as the app has developed, but there has been a bunch of testing and bug fixing over the last couple of months. Tying in the save infrastructure to the operating system’s file management has been the biggest hurdle. The good news is that it seems to be working well! However, this feature was always a big red flag for me as it could easily introduce bugs, so if you find any issues please let me know!
Additional Body Morphs
More morphs! There are now more fine tune controls for adjusting the character's body giving you more ability to make the character as you envision it. There are also more “toon” options, which push body parts beyond what is natural.
Eye Control
The eye control feature was on the backlog but I decided to throw it in for this build. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, but let me know what you think of the control, and if you think it could be improved!
Housekeeping & Bug Fixes
Apple Notarization - This one took me a little by surprise (as it has done with a lot of developers I think). Apple is now requiring apps run on its platform to be “notarized”. This is basically a certification that your app doesn’t contain malicious content. Of course, if you’re developing for the App Store it’s an automatic process, but for Steam it’s a real pain of setting up developer certificates and command line tools to upload your build to the notarization service and “staple” your certificate to the final app, ugh. I THINK I did it right, but if you are a Mac user and have any issues please let me know!
Bug Fixes
- Having a controller connected no longer makes the UI freak out.
- Overlay Grid feature is now rendered to the camera… like it’s supposed to be.
- Naming cleanup in facial expressions for better usability? … I think so.
- Clicking on a lighting preset now doesn’t randomly open one of the lighting adjustment drop-downs.
Unity Engine Update - In this release I pushed up the build version of the game to Unity 2018. I was super hesitant to do this and originally didn’t plan to, but there were a couple of features in 2018 that I really wanted, so I made the leap to update. In my experience a big engine update plays havoc with 3rd party plugins and can unexpectedly break parts of your game. However, this update was relatively painless, requiring only minimal cleanup.
Unity 2018 has some nice features behind the scenes, but most notably it opens the door for more extreme morphing of the character. In previous versions the min/max of each morph was clamped. Unity 2018 removes that restriction. This segues nicely into …
Upcoming features in the next build! (planned for Mid-December)
Extreme Morphs - This idea was originally mentioned in the discussions and I had assumed it was a limitation of the engine. But after some research I found that Unity 2018 removes blendshape clamping, allowing for extreme morphs (both over 100% and below 0%). This is already working as a proof of concept. However, I want to develop an interface that makes the sliders still easy to adjust for most cases (not super sensitive), but allows for the extreme modification if you need it.
// I actually forgot to remove the extreme morph I was testing, so if you want to see how it looks (spoiler: it looks amazing) simply crank up the overweight body morph :D
Undo/Redo - This is another system that is partially built, but needs a whole bunch of testing and fixing. There are some weird corner cases that I need to account for (such as what happens when you click “reset” on a panel, or use a lighting preset that adjusts multiple UI elements).
Hotkeys - I’m probably going to do a poll or something to get your feedback on this. I have some ideas for how simple hotkeys can speed up the process, but I’m curious to hear your ideas!
Composition & Camera Framing Guides - Much like the Grid Overlay feature I want to add composition guides to help you tune your shot for composition & balance, and also letter box to certain aspect ratios. Along with this I’m going to adjust the camera zoom interaction to make it respond more like a traditional camera (ie. display the mm of the lens).
SO! Lots to work on in the coming weeks. I’m going to be keeping an eye on the discussions so if you have any quick fixes or improvements please let me know. I do keep track of everything that’s mentioned. While I can’t implement every idea I’ll definitely consider it!
Thanks for your support on the project so far, stay tuned for more Flex updates in the coming months!