cunihinx

HS2 Lightning WIP

Added 2022-09-16 15:57:30 +0000 UTC

As mentioned before I'm using Lightning model from Dissidia NT because the quality is higher. Not super high quality by modern standard but still better than the original model from FFXIII. One major thing to tackle is the hair. First, HS2 usual problem with transparency and dithering. There's a spot smack dab in the middle where the transparency doesn't look right.

Easy fix is to switch the hair render settings to type 2

But I personally prefer type 1, even with dithering so I'll try finding the fix.

Another hurdle is that the original rigging for the hair is not good, a lot of bones but at the same time weirdly arranged. I'm not sure if they will play well with HS2 hair physics. So I made hard decision to rig the hair from scratch. That slowed down the progress significantly for the past couple of days.

This is what I ended up with. Hopefully it's enough.

Now Lightning is popular enough that there are already mods of her using this exact same model, and surely there will be another in the future. I can't think of adding anything unique that can make my version stand out, I'll just do what I usually do. But if you ever try making head mod, you'll learn that everyone has different approach in one thing: the expressions.

Should the character be subtle, should they be expressive, how the smile should look, how high the eyebrows arched for angry expression, etc. Yes you can look at references from the original game, we're targeting accuracy after all here but then again everyone will interpret the references in their own way too. The point, every mod will be different even with same subject and same base model. It's up to the users to choose.