Team Nessassity Mods - AAAAAAAAAA! (also feat. PORTRAITS 2.0 & More!)

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MONTLHY...

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MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD

!!!

REPOOOOOORT! >O<

And guess what, it's still technically monthly! >.<

ANYWAYS, today's ado is about to be out of here in record time because the past couple of weeks have been a constant drain on my brain juice (BUT, don't worry, it's for good, very promising and useful reasons... that I can't reveal just yet! >.> <.< >.<) so... let's get straight to it, shall weeeeeee? @.@

ADO! WITHOUT FURTHER!

PORTRAITS 2.0

Nessa always has a lot on her plate but has been making steady progress on PORTRAITS 2.0! After we figured out the structure and mesh layout of base bodies (a prototype of which we showed off in an early MMR), the time has come to start a practical implementation!

In this phase, Nessa has ported several existing elf variants into the new framework to see if they would still work and...

...they look just as eldritch as they should <3 Especially once you add the mask filler in...

BE NOT AFRAID o_o

Anyways! As you can see, the heads have been adjusted to fit the new bodies, Swiss Army knife of pointy ears included, the familiar face variants have been preserved... and best of all, with the structure and workflow figured out, we'll be able to add countless NEW variants in the future!

But even more importantly than that, with the body phase roughly 95% complete (we're leaving some wiggle room for retroactive adjustments in later phases) we're about to move on the next phase - the hair!

Similarly to the body itself, the hair will have animated bones but... we've decided to change our plans regarding the complexity of the skeleton.

In fact, I think it's a good time to bring up the conceptual redesign the project has quietly undergone in recent months.

REWORK 2.0

So! The original plan, if you remember, was for PORTRAITS 2.0 to be the ultimate solution to Team Nessassity's portrait needs. It was going to be based on this massively complex and robust skeleton that would be incredibly modular and customisable and would have support for complex animations that would allow us to have interesting idles without having to redraw assets.

...but, as you can tell, that ambitious plan... turned out quite time-consuming to develop. In fact, prior to the ninja rework, we hadn't even managed to settle on all the bones it was going to need. That incarnation of the project was essentially stuck in preproduction limbo. Ironically, all the things that were supposed to make our job easier down the line became obstacles in the way of getting the project off the ground in the first place ._.

So... what's changed? Are we scaling back the project? How much has been stripped down to allow it to finally enter active production and make progress?

Aha! You see, that's the trick - we haven't scaled down at all! We have just decided to be smarter about the implementation of our vision!

Under the new design of PORTRAITS 2.0, we are actually developing two skeletons: one for generic use, and one for special cases. Let me explain:

• Generic use cases are things like pop portraits, ordinary leaders and the species portrait. All the things that you see everywhere in the game and... frankly speaking, would have no use for most features of the full version of the PORTRAIT 2.0 rig. Mostly, you're looking at small versions of them that don't allow you to appreciate subtle details, fancy animations or physics-simulated accessories.
  As such, we decided that for those portraits, we could develop a more rudimentary version of PORTRAITS 2.0. It's still based on the same UV map as the full version, so basic assets can still be produced easily, but will feature only limited animation support and, simple hair and clothing skeletons that utilise mostly static bones.
  Meaning, hair and clothing assets for Generic portraits will be largely WYSIWYG, apart from arms which are separate so they can be naturally layered in front and behind the main body. Additionally, it will have generic front and back layers that will be available for whatever you want to place either in front of or behind the body (like tails, capes, etc.)
  Hair will also have two layers (front and back) but the back layer can probably be ignored by a lot of basic hairstyles. The back layer is mostly there for long styles, ponytails, etc.
• Special skeleton, on the other hand, will be reserved for high-profile and unique portraits, such as Paragons or otherwise unique preset characters we want to put in our mods in the future.
  It is what the original plan has turned into... kinda. It's not quite the universal-rig-that-has-contingency-bones-for-literally-every-possible-thing that we'd originally envisioned. Instead, it will be a slightly more complex baseline than Generic, further extended into specialised variants for the task at hand.
  The Special variants will have all the bells and whistles befitting Paragons, and will feature the full suite of animations, extra-flexible bones and bespoke bones unique to each character built on a Special skeleton.

So! That's where we are so far. Thanks to this new separation, hopefully you will see the release of Generic PORTRAIT 2.0 infrastructure very very soon now! (at least much sooner than it would have taken under the original plan) and later on we'll start releasing Special characters, such as custom Paragons, one at a time!

Oh... but before that...

Prettier Paragons 

This has been Nessa's little side-project and a new mod we'll be releasing... actually soon, because it's been complete for a while, just waiting for me to post this MMR >.>

It's not related to PORTRAITS 2.0, or a major project. It's just a side-effect of us looking at how Paragons worked in vanilla and deciding that the testing would be a lot more pleasant if we introduced them to a little skin care n_n

It's a texture replacer for the vanilla Paragons, dolling them up a bit so they don't feel so out of place among our own species. Elements of their clothing have also been tweaked a little, but only in minor ways, preserving their original design and most of their standout elements.

Here's a comparison:

Vanilla

Pretty

It's out now and you can find it on the Steam Workshop!

And with that, it's all for this month's belated Monthly Mod Report! I was originally going to mention the ongoing progress on EoS Lhùren rework, but seeing as February is right around the corner (in fact, some of you may already be there by the time this post goes up, but shhh!) it might be more appropriate to do it in the next MMR... and I should have a lot more to show by then too.

So until then, thank you for your continued support, putting up with our ongoing clown fiesta, and continuing to be the most encouraging and cutest community we could ever ask for >o<

And if you aren't on our Discord yet, you can find it here!

And when you aren't busy enjoying the cat pictures channel, I hope you're enjoying gaming as much as we love modding games for yet another year! Happy new year and let's keep it up throughout 2014! <3