Hi everybody! 👋
It's been calm on the outside, but pretty hot here on the inside 🔥 We've been hard at work tweaking the game design to make it the best experience we can deliver. And we've been painting the backgrounds and modeling the characters too.
When this game was conceived a long time ago, some assets had been developed for it. Which is great, because we have some concepts and models that we can use as blueprints. But, sadly, even though the models were nice back then, a lot of time has passed and they have become outdated (plus we are perfectionists and want everything to look great 🤭). So we basically have to model and texture all characters from scratch, even if some of them were already made back in the day. But that makes for an interesting topic! And so this time we'll talk about our character modeling process and compare them with the original models.
First of all, we make a base model, which we could use for 3D sculpting – in some cases we are able to use the original model for that base. In the sculpting stage we add all kinds of details – basically make a pretty model without caring about polygons and such. During this process we are also going back to the original concepts and trying to make the models look as close to them as possible. Here's how a couple of character sculpts look:
Then we need to make a low-polygon model, which will be usable in the game in real-time. Sometimes we update the original model, sometimes we need to make a new one. Here are low-polygon versions of the two characters:
When we have all that, we can then "bake" all the details from the sculpt onto the low-polygon model. Since the in-game model has much less polygons, all those details go into textures (namely, color, normal, metallic, glossiness, ambient occlusion, which all add up to how the final surface looks and feels). Finally, here's a comparison between the original models and the finished ones we have now:
It's especially important for us to have all the extra details, since we have quite a few close up dialogues and cinematics.
Next time we’ll talk about how our backgrounds materialize (unless a more exciting topic pops up 😅). Stay tuned, you won’t have to wait for the next update for so long, pinky promise! 🤙 Speaking of, what intrigues you the most about the making of A Vampyre Story? What do you want to hear more about? Let us know and we'll see if we can deliver!
Make sure to follow us on Facebook and join our Discord to stay up to date on all the news! We also plan to host some events on Discord, perhaps a Q&A with the team (including Bill Tiller himself)! Stay tuned for more information on that 😉
Ghoulish Wishes,
Autumn Moon Games & Tag of Joy 💜