Sexy Derg on the way

Apologies for the lack of posts lately, I was moving to a whole different country and looking for new apartment to rent, doing all the paperwork, etc. It took almost the entirety of September, but I think I did it all rather quickly, considering.

Dragon Character

Meanwhile I made some time to model the Dragon that you folks voted for! I utilized my new VR headset and Gravity Sketch to create him! And it was so much fun to do, I just couldn't go back to doing topology on the "flat screen" again, so I ended up with a new, faster, and more furry-2d-art-like art style that I intend to keep!

The character is still work in progress, I have yet to finish the rigging, clothes (a loincloth, because of course) and investigate the new Unreal Engine hair and fur system to give him a dynamic mane (right now his hair is just static, but it should look almost identical in the end)

You can check my tweet with turnaround video if you want to see him from all angles.

The New Style

Utilizing everything I learned from my earlier experiments with characters, I quickly came up with a new system of coloring the characters without painting the colors on the texture, or without having a lot of individual layers that make the system complicated.

It uses a special texture: a table with colors, and then the model cleverly picks the row and column on that table and samples the color from it. I can effortlessly swap those table-textures to a completely different color palette, keeping more variety of creatures in the game.

I dropped the detailed hand-painted textures, now it's just solid colors. It saves me a ton of time while also looking quite decent! I'm here for the long run, and I need to speed up character creation process as much as I can if I'm to create the creature diversity the game demands.

In the screenshots shown above, it only displays a "base" layer. On top of that, the system will have a slot for different markings layers (stripes, spots, tattoos, warpaint, etc.) that will further help to diversify the creature skins.

As a side-effect of the new style, I plan on making a PSD template which I can release for you folks as a "coloring book", and you will be able to help me come up with neat color schemes for characters I create! Then I will just be able to import the PSD color table into the engine with a few clicks.

Move to Unreal Engine 5

We moved to the newest and hottest version of Unreal Engine! Its quite significant this time because it’s the beginning of new era for games. If you haven't seen its trailer I highly recommend doing so.

With it we can have scenes made out of millions of polygons all with fully dynamic indirect light scattering, and a ton of other exciting features that we simply must have. The new engine version also simplifies art-creation significantly, requiring less time to create environment models.

Only caveat though, UE5 is not yet ready for production, its glitchy and still in early-access. But I think we can cope with its hardships as its being actively developed, as our game is also work in progress and yet not a smooth ride itself.

Anatomy Lore

Just for fun, I also modeled him an a part of the digestive system. I'm not sure what immediate use I can have for it, that anthro dragon is a bit too small to consume others (maybe you will have some suggestions?). The model doesn't exactly have the highest polygon count dedicated to the innards, because he's only 1.8m tall, and not a huge Dragon who can eat you whole. That I'll model later!

I can, however, use his digestive system to demonstrate the physiology of the creatures I'm designing: You probably know the popular meme that "furries are hollow tubes" because of the situations we often draw them in… I actually used ideas like that as an inspiration for creature physiology, and worked out something that's not just an artist's kinky fantasy, but something that I think could work from a more scientific standpoint.

Whether it is keeping path from mouth to tailhole be as straightforward as possible, or making that climax liquids much more powerful and multipurpose than here on Earth, I think it would make an interesting idea for an in-depth lore post. Would you be interested in reading about such? Perhaps some images to go along with it, to illustrate the process? For science, of course ;}

Conclusion

Thank you for reading! I tried to keep the post short and to the point. Let me know in the comments or on Discord what you think about everything I mentioned! I'll keep you updated with the next steps (rigging, clothing, animation).

With lots of Dragon Love.
    Salireths.