Weekly update 2 (Patreon)

Quick rundown this time, since the 'stuff' is all pretty contained in one topic. 

What's being worked on?

Last week, I thought I'd found the ideal rigging workflow. The method I talked about technically works, but it's using some brand-new features in the animation software that aren't well-implemented yet. It was way too fiddly, and was going to slow work down wayyy too much. 

So I went to my fallback plan, which actually worked way better: create anchor points for major body parts (leg joints, chest/neck/head positions). These anchor points are only active for a specific skin (mare, stallion, dragon, etc), and snap the relevant bones into the correct positions for each body size. This is actually the ideal for workflow. It means I can do animation stuff and flip between rigs instantly while working. Finally, a working solution to that problem.

It does create excess bones on the skeleton. Will have to watch that for performance implications. Also it's pretty tedious to set up, but I was able to get through about half of it on stream today, and it'll only have to be done once for each major body type. Whew.

Q&A!

(only a couple this time)

Will we be able to grab the ponies and move their limbs and stuff? Maybe! Since SHF3 uses bone-based animation, stuff like that is totally possible. And there's already a force/physics system in place, so this isn't a crazy suggestion at all. So, yeah, maybe! But not in this update :3

Localization in other languages? Good question. Ideally, I want most of the game to function without language. Tooltips and descriptions for the core parts of the game shouldn't be necessary with good UI design. I'll keep localization in mind for the eventual UI update. So the answer is... I'll try >.>

That's all for now! Short one this time. I'll be finishing up the rigging stuff I mentioned today, then diving back into code this week to finish the animation loop automation, and hopefully toy creation automation. 

Thanks so much for your support, you lovely degenerates~ 

<3