Current Progress
As promised, I've been working on Laura v2 – which has now become v4. On the right is the current/soon-to-be previous model of Laura, on the left is my current progress on her new model!
(By the way, the left picture is the most recent version of the model. Other pictures on this page will be older and may have some slightly different details!)
New and Improved
Notable differences are:
- Laura wears a cropped zip-up hoodie with a more saturated colour than before, and a black shirt underneath. Her clothes are generally fairly similar between versions, though her dimensions and especially the topology are quite different and optimised.
- Her shoulder area was a previous pain point of mine – notice the completely smooth transition from neck to arms in the right model. In the new version, her shoulders have been given much more shape.
- Her hoodie's colour is more saturated than before. The comparison here is not quite fair, since the left is an image from Blender and the second is from Godot, thus impacting how the colours look since there are different shaders used, but the idea still stands.
- Her hair is tied-up in a ponytail, which not only looks cooler, but is also way easier to animate, imo.
- Her eyes have been refined in shape and her lashes/eyeliner have been extended to wrap around her eyes more, which, in my opinion, looks quite a lot sharper than before.
- Her eyes have been socketed in a different way. Previously, they were flat faces directly behind her irises, but now they're much more recessed, which likely/hopefully won't be visible using flat shading. I also edited the normals to look less like the sclera is recessed. I'm hoping this'll make animating easier, since the irises can now move more freely without clipping into the sclera.
Things to Work On
Parts that have not yet received much attention are:
- Her trousers, which have received a general shape, but no details.
- Her belt, oxygen mask, and left hand, which are mostly copied over and adjusted to not look completely out of place.
- The shoes, which are placeholders.
- The right arm, which is notably present in the picture, but nowhere near finalised and to be attached.
- Her hair, which is present only in a basic shape to serve as a placeholder for what I have planned.
- I might add her hair band back.
Further Thoughts on Modelling
This model is supposed to look more dynamic and lively than the previous one. I want to more granularly animate the hair by adding more bones to individual strands. I'll also add bones for the hood so that it can bounce up and down when running. I'm also considering adding bones to allow the sleeves and trouser legs to move slightly, though I'm not sure if I'd be able to make that look good, so I'm keeping this idea in the 'optional' pile for now.
I think what helped with modelling this time around was that I let go of the notion that Laura should be a low-poly character. I started out that way when I was modelling v1 but then I changed my mind, which created some problems, I find. This time, I still don't want to go crazy with tris, but it's not as much of an issue to me. At one point I even intended to subdivide her entire model by 1 level to smoothen some rough edges and overall make the model a bit more polished, but I discarded that idea yesterday.
The Eternal Hair Struggle
I've struggled with hair before, and it's not gotten much better. Check out Laura's current ponytail:
Looks like a banana!
I think my next try will be to polymodel strands of hair out of subdivided planes. It'll increase the poly count quite significantly, but it's a trade-off I'm willing to make for hair that'll look better and flow (animate) much more nicely!
wdym v4?
The current version of Laura is based on the following sketches:
I worked with these sketches to create the first remodel of Laura. Originally, I was decently happy with the result, though her sleeves seemed boring – just ballooning and lacking an interesting shape.
I had quite a few ideas to improve the current and rather boring Laura model. At the centre of the remodelling was keeping Laura's character but giving it more edge through a more unique silhouette. I wanted to accomplish this by adding textures and detail, layering clothes, and giving more shape to her.
Eventually, I had a different vision for Laura, though. This time, she would wear a dress with a long-sleeve shirt beneath. I liked this idea because it showed off the shape of her legs more, whereas the previous idea would hide them inside of straight-cut trousers. It would just look more interesting, I felt. I was also inspired by some 3D models I saw on Pinterest.
While I generally liked the idea, there were two major problems: firstly, I felt I wasn't really able to execute the idea in a way that I found fitting. Secondly – and this plays into the first aspect – the model didn't look as mature as I liked. Partially in its style, but also in its execution.
This v3 of Laura was then superseded by another Laura, which essentially went back to the previously style, though I used v3 as a base due to some improvements I made on the model. Thus the new version is now called v4.
Notice how specifically her head and the prosthetic aren't present in the v2 screenshot – those were v3 additions.
Prosthetic Implications
I'm changing Laura's amputation from its previous below-the-elbow cutoff to above-the-elbow. This is mostly a stylistic change, because it means her elbow will be a mechanical replacement as well, and that might look cool, I think.
I've also been thinking about how her prosthetic could play into the story. A while back, I watched this video by champutee on arm amputee representation in video games. Admittedly, I feel I'll likely fall into quite the same categories in some ways, making Laura's prosthetic so advanced that it'll more or less serve as a perfect replacement for her organic arm. I had a potentially neat idea that would impact gameplay, though.
Difficulty Scaling
At one point in the game, Laura could lose function of her prosthetic entirely and be forced to continue without being able to use it. This would reflect in gameplay especially because Laura would then be unable to use any two-handed items, which will include a majority of her weapons as well.
Laura will likely have something between 4 and 8 weapons available to her. I'm thinking that some will be two-handed from the start (including her main rifle), and some will level-up from one-handed to two-handed or dual-handed (for example, a blaster in each hand). This would mean that more advanced players who progress quicker and manage to level up their weapons early (through XP, collectibles, or purchases, I've not decided) will face a greater challenge, since more of their weapons will be levelled up to their two-handed versions, thus making a larger part of their arsenal unavailable for this part of the game.
In my teacher training, we call this type of catering to different skill sets differentiation (Differenzierung)!