Progress report

Okay, the next one is up.

Mixed bag this one, lots of frustrations in last 2 and a half weeks. Of the things I've completed, quite a lot. Finished the last section of ep3, so now all ep3 renders are done, which added 200 more compared to last report. I also made 4 animations, and with that, Ep3 rendering and animating is fully complete. Bar possible some reshots if I find a mistake while testing it, of course.

Which is... Good. But not as fast as I hoped, as I faced a mountain of issues. I thought I figured out the face issues in hs2, but no. I got slapped by it when I tried to make animations, as the eyelashes would bug out, so I went back to square one... Man, trying to figure out hs2 bugs is annoying af, it makes no sense at times. And to compound on it, shit kept happening. I didn't realize Valentina's earrings got bugged, so had to reshot all her shots... Then for some fking reason a light pole teleported in the background suddenly and I didn't realize till making 50 renders, reshots again... Maybe because I am the rework guy, hs2 likes giving me more rework/reshots opportunities 😅

And last but not least, the last animation was fking depressing to work. It's done, I didn't cut it out, but I had to massively scale down what I wanted to do, as it got into day 4 of working on it. I don't know, making 2 full characters go from stationary to walk without looking goofy, I don't have the skills to do that, unfortunately. Instead, a much simpler anim was made so i don't lose my mind, dropping my original idea.

So yeah, a lot of things that slowed me down, I also had to take few days off for my health. Not the best report, as I really hoped by now Ep3 alpha testing would be in progress. To try and make some time somewhere, before sleep I started working on some chara stuff for Ep4+ the last 4 days. A week or so ago, I asked on my server what people thought about undereye/eyebags details on characters, as I've noticed quite a few games lately have such details (Eternum, Sicae, Dawnfall, Pale Carnations, etc.). The responses were very mixed, but it did spark the idea of me just checking all my main cast once more to see if I can improve anything, as it's been some time (besides Levy). And I've.... Fixed/updated/changed quite a lot. Obviously not any crazy changes, and i've dropped the idea of undereyes. But here are some of them, and some are actually quite funny, at least to me as a hs2 creator. Obviously nothing major and nothing worthy of redoing any ep1-3 renders, put your keyboards down 🛑
Honestly you can stop reading here, but my chat wanted me to include this so I am writing it down...
-Avis: further head fix, nosering corrected values (the fking metal rings were actually never a circle shape for 5 years 🤣🤣🤣🤣), cheek+ nose fix on side profile, makeup slight fix (tear like smear effect noticed and removed, eyelashes also had some weird pixelated makeup effect I didn't notice before, changed to better model). Also had much wider than tall eyes, so made it a bit more circle shaped as it should (was like 20% wider x size than y size before)
-Eiko: Slightly smaller head, fixed mouth/chin area which caused weird shadows under certain angles due to her big lips that are a bit out of hs2 regular area
-Koko: makeup changes, further head fixing shape. Fun fact: Koko had the exact same sliders for the whole chin/jaw area as a regular default character in hs2 🤣. Slightly personalized it now. Also, she fucking ROCKS 2 other haircuts, and she will definitely get a hair update after seeing it
-Levy: Just lipstick, and even that I am unsure of. She got plenty of fixes before
-Raiko: Actual main reason for all of this, as I noticed the usual super simple 1 button way of adding undereye didn't work on her, because of how I designed her nose which had unknown side issues at the time. Slightly fixed it with some wizardy, while keeping nose almost identical as ep1-3. Also fixing her head/hair position, as her head is actually much much less eggshaped in rework, but the hair continues to sit so high up above the head for no good reason. Similarly fixed weird shadow at times on mouth/chin, and her eyes pushed back to more vanilla position, as her current one made extreme sharp edge on eye to cheek transition
-Serena: with her ep4 haircut coming back, I finally found a way to fix the big ass gap at the back of her hair, that was completely hollow under many angles. (example below) Huge fix, as it almost made me want to either change hair or get someone paid to redo it from scratch. I also pressed a single button to remove 1 makeup and uhh... She looked like a granny. Even a friend told me she looks like her mom without it. I tried to change slightly makeup, not sure if that's enough just yet

-Valentina: similar to Serena, huuuuge hair upgrade. I absolutely love her newer hair I've used in ep2+, but it had some downsides... I managed to gap quite a few holes, spent tons of time cutting secondary hairs and making them fit it. Single update, but helps her a lot in many angles now. Slight jaw change as certain angles made it overly strong.

Still have to test all characters fully bald from all angles which could make me more adjustments, especially if I find any other such bugs as before. It felt quite good doing this, especially as I managed to fix plenty of things that often annoyed me in renders (shadows, hairs). In case of Raiko and Koko, now I feel much much more open to hair changes with them as their headshape finally is a bit more welcoming of others (kinda like Levy now after her previous fixes). Obviously I am not showing any other pics, both as a surprise but also because there is always a chance I revert some stuff/further change after testing.

Oh, and might check MC further, altho I feel he is alright.

That's all for here, good progress but missed the mark with multiple hiccups. Ep3 alpha testing by my team should be in like 5-6 days. And Monthly wallpaper before the end of month, I didn't forget.

Love you all,
Kat <3