Progress Update (Early May) upcoming hScene work

Hey everyone, as promised a small progress update roughly two weeks after last patreon release.
I will try to keep these up and post whatever I've been working on regulary, although this one probably isn't the best one to start with since last two weeks haven't been too successful...

I still hope you find it interesting and let me know in case you have better ideas/critique for whatever I'm working on!


Let's start with a quick list of everything I've finished for those of you that don't want to read through the smaller unimportant stuff.

Progress Early May List - Release of demo hScene 2

Model Work
-Added new Outfits to main Braixen Model (Office Outfit Variations & Stockings)
-Added new Style options to main Braixen Model (Old Dream Sketch Style Tuft+Shoulders)
-Added the ability to change body proportions of main Braixen Model (mainly head and body Size, ear, cheek and leg still being in work for Braixen Creator later)
-Improved main Braixen Model parameteres and fixed a couple of bugs with different styles and poses

Animation Work
-Animated 7 new Poses to use with main model in the demo hScene
-Improved older animations to work with more styles and outfits, including new one

CG and Background Work
-redrew the background for a couple of CG's, including one of the animations to better fit the scene
-changed lighting and general positioning to better fit scene

hAnimation & Model Work
-Changed general structure of the model and overhauled animations to fix inGame look
-Added a couple of smaller animations and expressions to use in first part of scene/animation
-Changed background and lighting in second part of the scene/animation

Script & Scene Work
-Cleaned and rewrote the scenes to use the new models & animations
-Rewrote and improved some of the writing
-Fixed a couple of bugs and visual problems

Braixen Tamagotchi / Braixen Creator Work
-Finished planning and writing down plans and everything needed
-Started some simple UI Designs


Summary
Altogether I didn't finish too much of the stuff that I wanted to have finished by now and ended up doing lot's of smaller stuff that needed fixing or that I simply forgot about.
That was definitely just me messing up planning, but had to be done nonetheless, even if I wouldn't have forgotten about it.

Because of this there isn't too much to look at right now, but I'll still try showing as much as I can!

The Tamagotchi stuff wasn't actually needed for the demo release btw, but I ended up working on that one whenever progress got stuck/slowed down over the weeks and I needed a break.


Model Work Summary
The model work wasn't something I expected to still have to for this update.
First I've noticed that the only outfit needed for the scene was missing and had to be colored and modeled from scratch.
Then I relalized that the model still has way too many visual bugs and problems that I didn't realize when working for it on the Braixen Creator.

Now this is all kind of because of time problems and trying to get stuff done fast enough, but I still didn't expect the sheer amount of problems/work that needed to be done on it.

I've ended up fixing a big chunk of the bugs, mostly those that needed fixing to be usable in the demo and will need to look at the rest of them along the line.
The outfit in itself was extra work that did cost a lot of time, but wasn't a big deal in the end.





The outfit was actually mend for the "Dream Form" which was supposed to have it's own model.
A lot of the parts and work needed for the Dream Form ended up being finished and added to the Braixen Creator though, which is why I decided to instead add the outfit to the main model. (Which I never did.)

Having the outfit on the main model has multiple advantages, mainly, that it can be used like a normal style/outfit in other parts of the game and the Braixen Creator.
I've improved a lot of the older outfits and sorted out clipping issues while working on this one as well, so that's definitely another plus.

This means the outfit will be usable with all chest sizes and can be fitted together from the different parts if you wanted to use it for your Braixen's casual look.
So yeah, make whatever you like from it~

(Different Chest Sizes)

(No Skirt / Just Vest / Vest + Legwear without Chest)
Another thing needed to go along with the Dream Form & Outfit was a fitting chestfluff and shoulder style.
Both the chestfluff and shoulders were covering a big part of the chest and clothing, so I've ended up adding the styles that were used in the old Dream Form sketches.



The shoulder style wasn't actually needed in this case, but I felt like it wasn't a big deal and would fit in nicely with the new tuft style.
Important was that it fits the form of the chest more to emphasize the body change in dream form.



Lastly to make the "body transformation" in dream form complete I've added a few options to slightly scale body parts like the head, ears and legs, giving you the option to drasticly change the look of your Braixen and make it look even more unique.
In Dream Molder this will be used to make Fia look more "mature" when needed, in Braixen Creator and Tamagotchi though it can be used to make your Braixens look more different from one another, especially needed when owning more than one.

(Default scaling) / (long legs, short body, big ears, small head, long cheeks) / (short legs, short body, wide hips, small ears, big head, short cheeks)

The changes are mostly subtle since too big of a change will need extra work on the clothing/animations/etc, but I think this example should somewhat show what you're going to be capable with it.
(All of the outfit and style previews above are actually using a slightly bigger body and smaller head since it's supposed to represent the "dream form".)


CG and Background Work Summary
Here's not too much to say and I'll go right ahead and post the changes~
>

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Main problem here was that the old background was part of an older background that I used for the office that I drew myself, but ended up discarding because I didn't like it. (And because my backgrounds are horrendous :D)

Realizing that I'm still using the old background in the CG's I had to redraw them to fit the new office used (from the first gameplay sample above).
These have been a quite a few of CG's I had to change, but since most of them were using the same background in different angles/positions it wasn't as much of a deal.

The new one isn't perfect but does look a lot better than the old one at least.
The BG from the last picture is also used in the second part of the animation which is why I had to update that one along with the CG's, here's a small (although censored) preview: :D




I've also drawn a sketch for another CG that I felt was missing, but depending on how fast I get everything done I will color/refine it or simply use the model for the scene.

Animation and Script Work Summary
Besides telling you everything that could have possibly gone wrong actually happened,
there isn't much to be said.

Because of some limitations with the engine I'm using I had to rework a big part of the models.
I ended up having to change the textures, rebuild the skeleton for the animation and
add a couple of work arounds to even get them to run.

Once I had the animations inGame and running, the software simply kept crashing
and slowing down, and by now I'm fairly annoyed as you can imagine. xD


Luckely I did get to fix most of the problems, no more crashing, no more slowing down/etc...

(actual model used inGame here, not a CG)

Still needs fixing...
Problem now is that the engine forces animations to fade out on end, even when this isn't needed.
(In loops for example).
This causes little skips and lags in places where they shouldn't be and this is especially inconvient with the h-animations as little lags and skips definitely disrupt the flow and ruin the mood of the scene.


Sound will also be hard to implement this way, knowing that the scene can skip/lag at any time and force sound/animation to be out of sync.

My guess is that it's the engines poor compability with Live2D here, I'm unsure of how to fix it though.
For now I'm using longer loops to simply reduce the amount of times it needs to skip, but sound is still a problem.

The developer of the engine already promised/works on an update to add the missing live2D functions and improve newer version compability, however last time anything about this update was mentioned was about a year ago if I remember correctly?
I've been waiting for this update for a while now and I'm unsure if it's actually still coming...

For now all I can do is try to find a workaround, maybe someone else has a bit of live2D knowhow and/or an idea of how I could go at this...


Aside from these problems the animations are running though, so give me a couple more days to figure things out and I'm able to upload first demo samples for testing. :D



Braixen Tamagotchi Info
Alright, knowing that my post/writing is all over the place again I'm gonna keep things short and post all the info for the tamagotchi seperately, then link it over here when it's done.

I actually didn't want to work on the tamagotchi until after Dream Molder, but I felt like the time between the episode releases would need some additional stuff to play with. <3

It's not going to be anything big or fancy for the for the start, but you can at least expect a simple demo of it to be released with Episode 1.

More info here:
https://in-dark-waters.blogspot.com/p/living-with-braixen-tamagotchi-thoughts.html

Please know that this is just me rambling again and only interesting if you, for some reason, find my usual rambling entertaining.

I feel like I did go a bit overboard, talked about more than I had to, but for everyone that's still interested:
Have fun~