Model Images are off limits right now, but here’s a picture of the design I’m currently working with. The picture is in my concept format so the face looks more classical because its easier to work with. I think the trick to a foxier look lies not in structural changes but the fur. Next time I work with art I think I’ll try more detailed fur and a finer outline. Art really isn’t all that important though…. but it sorta is.
I consider this design to be a blend of all the previous designs and everything about it so far just feels right. Hopefully it works just as well when animated in 3D.
If you wanna compare with outline in 3D I think you can scale the models up slightly, disable depth-write, render them in black, then reenable depth-write and render the models normally on top of that black.
In Okami I think they translated the black a bit back, instead of flat.
It’s one of the things I aim to try… sometime, y’know : )
Might be in interesting thing to do. Really I’m worried about the animation though. The running animation from a side view really triggered how much was wrong with the last design.
I think the outline may be a bit more difficult than that. Scaling up anything concave I would think would make the outline uneven.
I’m thinking Okami takes each vertex and extends it out along its normal and saves the result of then when drawing that model, draws the extended out version and the regular version at the same way except the extended version’s faces are black are inversed with the back faces showing.
There’s probably an easy shader for it though. Those anime based games have some GOOD outlines.
Ah right I think you’re right about the scaling, I didn’t think of that
Maybe you can also adapt animation to a design, I dunno, but I noticed that small things like “oscillating” the root joint up/down and wagging the torso (plus the arms) right/left made my 3D run-animation a bit cooler.
I’m pretty sure it’s the model. I even moved the limbs of the ol’ Felix “sprite” around to form a side view and it looked incredibly goofy. Seemed like a wake up call to me. : (
I do like the idea of translating the joints around though. Shoulder arching seems like something very fun to do.
You should make Felix comics based off characters of the series in this stylized format! : )
Definitely crossed my mind. I’d like to say I’m too busy to do it but there’s a fair mix of being too lazy to do it : j