Archive for the ‘pet projects’ Category

I’m almost done with all the styles I wanted to make, maybe one more?

I finished these two yesterday, the little trim is actually alpha masked and can be hidden if you don’t like it.

I distorted the surface on purpose to give it more of a “fabric” aspect.

This is something I’ve been meaning to add to the store for a long time, there is now a lock-cutting workbench at the Main KDC Store. While I haven’t really seen anyone abuse the system, this is now available for those who want/need it.

It’s not for sale (but it’s free to use duh) and it’s an experiment, more than anything, it uses a feature that has been part of the system for many years now, but there was no real way to use it without my assistance until now.

I’m open to feedback on whether this is a good idea or not. In the meantime, consider it a relatively lame X-max gift 😛

Finished a frilly “tiara” style and started a new one.

It should have a “point” in the middle, so more tweaking required.

I was supposed to take a break over Christmas, but I ended up doing a handful of maid hats…

I might end up making a “hat pack” with these. Normal mapped frills work wonderfully on the “pillbox-style” ones, but I haven’t figured a good way to optimize the tiara-style yet.

The past couple days have been pretty rough.

• Final meshs lodded and uploaded.
• Reworked the heavy-duty padlocks a little (better lods, center point and smoothing)
• Made and uploaded the “worn out” texture set (8 colors: red, blue, black, yellow, green, pink, white, orange)
• Made and uploaded a “fresh” texture set (same color, still some slight wear but no rust)
• Made an “unpainted” style, it’s very similar to black but a bit more rough and worn out.
• Wrote all the specific code required to make it compatible with regular locks, accessories, time locks, heavy locks AND bolts (every lock type basically).
• It has some little “equip” animations like the Fallen princess and the same removable leaching point idea.

I still have a texture hud to make and some intense testing, just to make sure I don’t have any major bug.

I also have been working on a small gift for my Patreon supporters, but I’ll announce it publicly once it’s actually ready.

Honestly, this material is a bit if a pain to render. It’s also the first time I actually need to use a gloss channel on one of my items. I think I’m gonna “try” to clean up my baking setup, save myself some sanity in the process.

I did some testing on the red paint, and a test upload for the shackle & pin assembly.

I also tried to use brass on the shackle, but it didn’t look good at all (there is just something wrong with how the texture renders, compared to the hinge).

I also forgot to triangulate the model before baking it, so I’ll be correcting this too.

I know “huge waste of space in your UVs”, that’s because this is really 3 textures, the empty space won’t exist in the end.

I’m also including two in-world tests: The very first one (way too dark), the second one was after a rough specular map attempt. Much better?

Not much going on in today’s update, I tend to be a bit obsessive when straightening and packing UVs. It took me a little while to come up with a layout I’m happy with:

• “Grey” metal parts and brass parts: 256×1024
• “Blue” metal parts: 128*1024 (I’m not sure how i’m gonna cram everything in there but I’ll try)
• “Misc” parts: back ring, pin, shackle, the size doesn’t really matter as long as it’s as small as possible.

“Grey” and “Blue”, will effectively be duplicated since they only represent “half” of the collar (that is why I’m being so aggressive with them). I’ve also lowered the resolution on the inside face of the collar, while it’s going to be visible (unless the wearer scales it down to choker size I guess), it’s not gonna be as visible as the rest.

In the end it should still be way below 1024×1024 in terms of texture area.

I think I have just about everything now. Hinge, back ring, shackle, pin, I’m also considering adding support for the bolt system too (last picture shows the shackle with a pair of short bolts).

This going to require some snowflake code I wager, so I’m not 100% sure that I will add that part.

I guess it’s time to unwrap all of this…