Hi everyone! We have decided to start doing monthly devlogs instead of the biweekly work-in-progress posts. This way, each team member can go more in-depth into what they have been working on this week as well as share their thoughts on the process. This is the first monthly devlog of this year, and there will be many more to come!
Horse tweaking and clothes making
By Mathilde - 3D-artist
This month I have been working on more polishing of the Norwegian Warmblood horse. It all started with me tweaking the horse’s body after getting great community feedback and pointers, which then turned into me looking at many references and realizing that some of the muscular details were off. Since there were so many adjustments being made, especially in the face, I decided I wanted to revisit the high-detailed mesh where all the details lie. Or rather, make a new high-detail mesh instead. Since we already have the low-detailed mesh, I simply had to import this mesh into my sculpting software and up the resolution. This way I could sculpt in new details while keeping the shape of the low-detailed mesh which would save a lot of time when baking the high to the low.
The new details of the Warmblood corrected the odd-looking shoulder, the disproportionate face, and other muscular parts. While the new version isn’t as muscled as the old version, it looks more natural and less strained. This also fixed the transition from shoulder to barrel, as the previous version had a very unnatural grove there. After applying the new normal/detail map to the low-detailed mesh, I did some further tweaking to the neck, belly, and thigh.
The base coat colors for the horse have also had an update. Since the previous base colors were very flat but served as a good placeholder. This month I had time to rework these coats and make them have more shading and color variations. This also gave me the chance to look more into different shades of the bay coat color. Previously, we just had some different color shades with a slight variation in light/darker shades. But I was able to explore a bit more and add shading layers to the agouti gene. This means that we still have different color shades of the bay, but on top of this, we can add variation in darker pigments. Take an example in a seal bay which can appear almost black. And speaking of shade variations, I also added darker shades of chestnut after wishes from the community. I introduced two shades that are more liver chestnut-shaded.
Moving on from horse colors, I’ve started helping out the character artist with the rider clothes at the end of this month. This includes fixing and tweaking the low-detail meshes, creating UVs, and finally doing some light texturing to serve as examples of what kind of detail level we are looking for. I’m excited to keep working on the clothes in the coming month as well as some finishing up and polishing of other aspects.
The spring splash art
By Maja - Concept Artist
This February has gone by so fast that I’ve been primarily working on splash art only. The main splash art in focus is the spring splash art of 2023. Though I did not have time to work on it every single day because of lots of application writing, office moving, and pitch planning.
The spring splash art is not released yet, but I finished it last week. My idea for this drawing was a cute and cozy concept of a Jutland horse saying hello to a cuddly and happy Oskar with small chickens on his back in a bright and colorful landscape. The core colors in this are green, yellow, orange, and blue. Oskar is a grumpy cat, but when the cuddling is on his terms he’s happy to do so. But I did not foresee the amount of work the flowers would cause me. For spring and easter, it’s common for people in Norway to plant yellow daffodils named “Påskelilje”, I believe they are named “lent lily” or “wild daffodils” in English. Flowers are hard to draw. But I made it in the end.
The last time I drew Oskar was almost a year ago and I’ve had quite a drawing growth in that amount of time which I'm very happy about. That is the point of being an artist, you keep evolving every day. You never stop growing! One of my main goals for this art piece was to make Oskar as fluffy as possible. I’ve not been drawing that many cats before, but I absolutely love how he turned out in the end.
This is kind of the first time I’ve had more large art projects going on at the same time. Mostly I’ve had one splash art at a time with concept art tasks at the same time. I am not going to lie, it has been quite stressful for me to have that in the back of my head at all times. Especially when I got to a point where I thought the drawing wasn’t going anywhere. But I luckily managed to turn it around in the rendering phase.
This was also my first time pitching and I was really scared. I'm a quiet and introverted person and I have social anxiety so it was challenging for me, I was so nervous. But this was something I really wanted to work on. I want to be good enough at talking in front of a crowd. We can’t let extroverts be the only ones that are being seen and heard, you know. Everyone has a voice. Anyways, the pitch went great and I was so proud of myself. I probably looked stressed and nervous but I said everything I wanted to say. And it’s much easier doing it together with my amazing team!
Forward, I will be working on a poster for the early access release, a “secret” large drawing, and some concept art from now on.
The Horse Creator
By Green Horse - Programmer
We released a big update to the Horse Creator this February. Instead of having just a randomize button, we added the ability to create a horse from scratch using all kinds of drop-down menus and sliders. Very nice! This enabled us to iterate faster on horse-related assets internally because we can see the changes instantly. Next up is finishing the last parts like having the ability to join a server with the horse you’ve made.
We’re reaching the point where we’re happy to put the stamp of approval on the Horse Creator for now and move along to the second part of the Early Access release which is the show jumping game mode. That doesn’t mean we’re done with the Horse Creator yet. It just means we’re going to finish the rest of it after the release of Early Access up until the full launch of the game.
Early Access will contain two main features. The Horse Creator and the Show Jumping game mode. Moving forward into March I’m very happy I got the multiplayer work done in December as having that in my head would have created a lot of anxiety. So with that already done I think I’m ready to start prototyping some jumping mechanics. But first I’m going to make a proper server list so that our Patreon Testers can see who’s hosting a test server.
Buildings and textures
By Tirna - 3D-artist
The riding arena has undergone some updates to enhance its appearance. The walls are now adorned with more decorative items that later will include Maja's art on the picture frames. The circular model made of marble will eventually be transformed into a watch. We aimed to maintain the older look of the arena, so we made some changes to the textures, replacing the previous ones with darker, more damaged wood and rougher metals. The ceiling lamps are inspired by 1920s factory lamps, and the idea is that they are original to the building, adding to the authenticity of the experience. Riders will get to enjoy their time in a 100-year-old arena, which can be renovated or upgraded to a more modern version in the future if they chose to.
In recent weeks I have been working on blocking the main house on the property. The style of this house was popular among the upper class in Scandinavia from 1860 - 1930. The version you see in this post is our first iteration but I have been working on a new iteration that is a better representation of this style. The new iteration will be posted this week! The interior of the house is yet to be fully planned, our focus is the outside for now since there is no need for the inside at the early access. However, it has been useful to test out a room so that we can estimate better how long time I’ll spend on each room. And it is looking promising when it comes to the full release of the game.
The focus now shifts to the environment, now that most of the buildings are in place. This will likely take up most of my time until the early access release is ready.
Tail animations and human character
By Marius - Animator
This month I have been working on a couple of different things. First and foremost I have been working on fixing the more noticeable faults in the horse animations in general, after adding the new horse mesh to the rig. Luckily the mesh was similar enough not to cause any additional problems and just needed some minor weight paint adjustments. Otherwise, a lot of time has gone to redoing the tail, as most of you have seen the current version is quite buggy and at the same time, the mesh got an upgrade and the tail mesh got an upgrade too. The tail is probably the hardest part to update at the moment, as it is a lot of manual work that the more automated tools have problems with.
While adding the new tail mesh is a project in itself, the most time-consuming is to redo and fix the tail animations. The animations are made with a mix of physics simulations and manual animation techniques, as physics simulations by themselves can be unreliable; especially as none of us are physics aficionados. I will get more into detail about the tail some time in a future Patreon post and have developed it further.
From right to left: Old version with its physics setup, new tail mesh, and animation.
Other than the horse I have been working on remaking a rig for the human character, as the old character is outdated and won’t be used. It is also to know the rig more thoroughly since the last time I rigged the character I tried to use the built-in humanoid rig; which, while good, has a lot of features we don’t need and don’t know the intricacies of. This let me have a session of learning rigging tricks that shortens the animation time and increases the quality of deformations.
While I am in the process of rigging the character, the mesh itself is not done as we only have the feminine presenting version as of now.
Please note that everything shown in these devlogs is mostly showcasing work that is in progress and is not finished. To see work in progress daily, join our Discord server community here! To get more information about Astride, check out our website.