A Clothing Conundrum
My 3D skill tool bag continues to get upgrades, whether I want it to or not. The challenge for the rest of this month is clothing. Daz clothing "works" in Unreal Engine. But much like Daz characters with a basic skin shader and existing Daz texture maps "work" in Unreal Engine, clothing really does not do well. There are a few reasons for this, but the biggest is that Daz's clothing is extremely high poly. There was one outfit with a toga, wrap, and shoes that were higher poly at its base mesh than the Daz character at SubD1 (4X base resolution).
Without getting technical, that means that I'm needing to reduce the high poly count of clothing, especially for Unreal Engine simulations. There are several ways to do this, all with some drawbacks, and that has meant testing, trial, and error, and finally admitting defeat for some outfits. All that new clothing I thought I could wait to mess with later is now one of the easier paths. Wardrobe overhaul for everyone it is. The benefit is that clothing will simulate better in Unreal Engine, have less of a performance hit, and be more realistic to the time period. The downside is getting yet another workflow established, along with improving my skill at custom texturing. Thank god I'm a quick learner.
Here is an updated render of Aelinia:
Matters concerning Eye-brows, Physics, and Pregnancies
Apart from clothing, where work will continue for at least a few more weeks, I'm also experimenting with lighting, getting more environments into Unreal Engine, and making some final character improvements. The character improvements have been the most interesting.
After seeing how good some of the characters looked in UE with their painstakingly crafted eyebrows, I decided to bite the bullet and do it for ALL the characters. Trying to match up custom eyebrows with the existing painted-on eyebrows in their texture maps was…difficult. But I think you all will like the results. It only took me a day to get those done, and I think they match well. The rest of the hair assets are optimized, so now it is just fine-tuning hair physics and going back to adjusting body physics for all the characters. I'm prioritizing the ones I know have to be in Chapter 11.
Speaking of character improvements, I've got a couple of pregnancy morphs added to our ladies for future use (will be optional. Fear not). I keep hoping with each export from Daz and conversion (via Maya) into Unreal Engine that this will be the last time for each character. May Goddess Anna make it so!
A gorgeous render of Flora:
Few Parting Words
All this work sounds like a lot (and it is), but I'm taking a lesson I should have learned before: take some time to do it right the first time. I did not anticipate weight painting clothing, doing custom textures in Substance Painter, or doing custom eyebrows and pubic hair. But better to do this now and get it working than put it off. Lest you fear that I'm taking on too much as a solo dev, just know that my big board of ideas still has a lot that will not be addressed in Chapter 11. I am aware of the balance I need to strike between getting things close to perfect and actually shipping the next release. I knew the characters would be the most difficult part of this process. Sadly I find it intolerable to leave you all with subpar conversions.