Devlog #4 - Bringing the Cast to life - Neon Doctrine
Welcome back, and a thousand praises to you, Your Majesty!
This is Part 2 of our fourth My Lovely Empress dev log from the teams at GameChanger and Neon Doctrine. We hope that this series of behind-the-scenes peeks at the process of game development gets you excited for when My Lovely Empress launches on Steam, Switch, and Xbox later this year!
In case you missed out on our previous dev log with GameChanger, check it out here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2052990/view/4252047138006229532
For this fourth entry, we wanted to go even bigger than before: a two-parter where we have answers from both GameChanger and its codeveloper partner, Neon Doctrine. As My Lovely Empress shifted from 2D to 3D, both developers ended up taking part in bringing its cast of humans and the Yaoguai to life. Today, we will go over the process of 3D animation as explained by Neon Doctrine’s Eilir!
Upon beginning work on the 3D animation, the original 2D animation had to serve as a reference, though preserving the original’s style with 3D models took a lot of work. Much talk was had about the transitions between different expressions on a character, the movements of their clothes, their facial expressions, and how to achieve all of this efficiently. In the end, an animation style was developed involving fast transitions between different expressions, floating movement on clothes, and giving each expression only two key poses to perform.
Now, given that players would be seeing these animations be repeated often throughout their playthrough, they could not be made to go on for too long without feeling repetitive. In order to address this issue while still maintaining the expressiveness of each character, a transition between two poses was tightened to only being one-third of a given loop time, while the rest was filled by idle movements, allowing for a more natural feeling to the looping animation.
In truth, the animation process for the cast of My Lovely Empress was fairly straightforward. Blocking animations first, then transitions, then once all the timings and overall feeling was right, then spline animation. The main body of a character was always animated first, as the movement of clothes and hair would have to follow the movement of the body.
The main challenge in the 3D animation process was time. Animating clothes and hair with the movement of a character takes time to get right, and Empress’ large cast made for a hefty workload. In order to tackle this workload within a decent amount of time, each movement would only have a basic follow through and overlapping actions, after which physical animation would then be applied within the game engine to make these movements more lifelike. Having concept art of each character’s expressions also worked towards cutting down on animation time, as transition poses could easily be determined by the character’s personalities.
Unlike with GameChanger’s Matthew however, Eilir can’t pick a favorite from the cast, after all, each one was unique! However, Eilir did note that it was most fun to work on the Yaoguai with their diverse array of personalities and powers, each one a new challenge to tackle.
We hope you enjoyed this sneak peek into My Lovely Empress’ development, and Dev log 5 coming soon, as we ramp up towards My Lovely Empress’ launch!
My Lovely Empress releases this August 2024, on Switch, Xbox, and Steam.
Wishlist here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2052990?utm_source=homepage&utm_campaign=devlog&utm_medium=steam
~ Neon Doctrine 👑
Remember to Wishlist the game, join our community, and follow our socials so you don't miss the notification when it drops!
This is Part 2 of our fourth My Lovely Empress dev log from the teams at GameChanger and Neon Doctrine. We hope that this series of behind-the-scenes peeks at the process of game development gets you excited for when My Lovely Empress launches on Steam, Switch, and Xbox later this year!
In case you missed out on our previous dev log with GameChanger, check it out here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2052990/view/4252047138006229532
For this fourth entry, we wanted to go even bigger than before: a two-parter where we have answers from both GameChanger and its codeveloper partner, Neon Doctrine. As My Lovely Empress shifted from 2D to 3D, both developers ended up taking part in bringing its cast of humans and the Yaoguai to life. Today, we will go over the process of 3D animation as explained by Neon Doctrine’s Eilir!
Upon beginning work on the 3D animation, the original 2D animation had to serve as a reference, though preserving the original’s style with 3D models took a lot of work. Much talk was had about the transitions between different expressions on a character, the movements of their clothes, their facial expressions, and how to achieve all of this efficiently. In the end, an animation style was developed involving fast transitions between different expressions, floating movement on clothes, and giving each expression only two key poses to perform.
Now, given that players would be seeing these animations be repeated often throughout their playthrough, they could not be made to go on for too long without feeling repetitive. In order to address this issue while still maintaining the expressiveness of each character, a transition between two poses was tightened to only being one-third of a given loop time, while the rest was filled by idle movements, allowing for a more natural feeling to the looping animation.
In truth, the animation process for the cast of My Lovely Empress was fairly straightforward. Blocking animations first, then transitions, then once all the timings and overall feeling was right, then spline animation. The main body of a character was always animated first, as the movement of clothes and hair would have to follow the movement of the body.
The main challenge in the 3D animation process was time. Animating clothes and hair with the movement of a character takes time to get right, and Empress’ large cast made for a hefty workload. In order to tackle this workload within a decent amount of time, each movement would only have a basic follow through and overlapping actions, after which physical animation would then be applied within the game engine to make these movements more lifelike. Having concept art of each character’s expressions also worked towards cutting down on animation time, as transition poses could easily be determined by the character’s personalities.
Unlike with GameChanger’s Matthew however, Eilir can’t pick a favorite from the cast, after all, each one was unique! However, Eilir did note that it was most fun to work on the Yaoguai with their diverse array of personalities and powers, each one a new challenge to tackle.
We hope you enjoyed this sneak peek into My Lovely Empress’ development, and Dev log 5 coming soon, as we ramp up towards My Lovely Empress’ launch!
My Lovely Empress releases this August 2024, on Switch, Xbox, and Steam.
Wishlist here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2052990?utm_source=homepage&utm_campaign=devlog&utm_medium=steam
~ Neon Doctrine 👑
Remember to Wishlist the game, join our community, and follow our socials so you don't miss the notification when it drops!
