Woke up today, expecting to see a few messages from Discord on my phone. Got
nothing, but I did see activity in DJ’s Discord.
Also last night (with the ‘spy drama’ of Frost hopefully behind Jero and I), finally got to work on what I wanted to do with his avatar. Titled the project– ‘JeroWorks’. And no it’s not a BONEWORKS clone.
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DJ working on a Dutchie meetup
Categories: ‘Personal’
As I said, got on my phone and saw DJ’s Discord. In the #announcements, he mentioned a ‘Dutchie Meetup’ and asking if anyone’s interested. It definitely has mine, that’s for sure. Asked if this was an ingame or an IRL Dutchie fursuit meetup (hey, Fur Cons happen all the time), and DJ said “ofc ingame”. Sweet. Now all you have to do is find a way to get a medium to large-sized group of people online at the same time to do it… and that’s gonna be FUUUUN!!
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Currently, 6pm my time on the 25th (next Saturday) seems to be the favorite, going by a poll. Drafy feels the time should be in GMT (as it’s the universal timezone). Hopefully this pulls off and we get something going. Love to be a part of this.
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‘JeroWorks’ Development
Categories: ‘Unity Stuff’
Clever name for a project in Unity, huh? ..Well I think so. And the reason why I called it this, was remembering the mess of trying to put his model in my main project (due to how old the model is)…
So, why don’t I create a brand new project folder for him, move my model into it, and then do what I want and need? And that’s basically where I got the idea for JeroWorks.
Started off as a ‘simple’ toggle animation (getting the model placed was a bitch) of having him on my arm..
…and have him appear in my hand.
Recently (from the recording of talking to him), I was able to get it to say “Woah! *chuckle*” when popping the animation. I LOVE IT.. but not as much as I love him. 😉
This was ‘fun’ too when testing the avatar in a world with friends in it, not realizing Jero’s charming voice could be heard in the entire world (Kovo caught the issue for me by describing the chuckle “traveling away” from the source).
Fixed it by setting Spatial Blend from 2D to 3D… greatly reducing the range it could be heard. Heh, never intended to do that!
I also added dances to his avatar, finally doing what I said I would (this time without the ‘obsessed’ part). Really wish I could add dances to the mini-Jero, and he would dance in place on my hand. Sadly I can’t do this as a majority of the dance animations have the avatar move from its spawned point. I would have to find specific songs for that to work.
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And now I’m working on a brand new JeroWorks; a 2.0 version, that contains the 1.2b Dutchie model (moving away from the modified 1.1b Dutchie model). Kovo showed proof that a 1.1b texture will work with the new 1.2b. Jero was interested in this, and how I was all “I’ll do anything for you,” I happily volunteered to do it.
And so…
But it isn’t without issues (unlike what Kovo told me), and I found three;
1. Slightly messy folder layout, the main model and its rigging was thrown into the Assets folder. Aka there’s no ‘ADModel’ folder with this one. Very thankful this is a brand new project. Eesh.
2. No idle pose/animation. Uhh… the heck, Kaelygon? Had to use the one from the modified 1.1b, though that one has the model’s head rotated to the left. Thankfully it’s a simple idle animation, so I was able to fix it.
May use BTD 4.0’s idle animation for this (as it’s public use). That’s up to Jero though.
3. A modified model for the Villar eye tracking shader, was causing an issue with the eyes that came with Kat’s ‘green white fade’ texture…
This is no bueno! I will not let my sweetheart deal with beady pupils!! 😛
So I moved the original model over, set the mesh..
“Eye see you!”
As you can… ‘see’ (oh god the puns)
I had to greatly shrink the eyes to fit with the model. Not even sure at this time that I got them properly set to the front and side shots I took above, but that’s why the avatar is a WIP. Uploaded to my account and let Jero clone it. Once I’m done with it, I’ll send everything to him.. unlike Frost.
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After showing him the model, he loves it! Says it looks “more floofy” than the original. Have to agree, even the wing feathers stand out better.
Since then I manually added puppy eyes to the ear droop animation, and now I’m finally doing something that would had never been possible without the help of Wolves.
A mini-me on his arm! 😀 Never have I been able of someone to do this, without them going through hell with all the attachments. Thanks to Wolves doing my sona ingame, this is no longer an issue.
Setting up the hand puppet animation wasn’t as quick as it was when Jero was in my
hand. Had to move the fingers around it. It also has.. heh, myself chuckling when the animation fires.
Showed him the latest changes. He loves what I’ve done and thanks me greatly. Well my love, I will accept one form of payment… if you know what I mean. 😉 Said he would love to pay it, but at the time he had too many people around (so privacy is an issue).
The model is now ready to be released (to him). Had to fix one minor issue of the emissions not showing up. Thankfully it was simple to fix by using the same settings of the 1.1b version. Cleaned up the project the best I could, then packaged it up (then threw it into a .zip). Also included is a (hopefully) easy to understand .rtf document with
pictures, explaining how to install and upload. I didn’t include the SDK, to prevent issues.
In this document, I said to “please not share my model/textures with anyone”. I highly trust him not to do so, but I said that as a very friendly reminder. I also said “if you have any requests for changes, don’t hesitate to let me know.” Said I would even help him with certain things (such as making the avatar larger).
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With this done, I’m going to re-purpose the project for myself (‘updating’ the model that I have of him on my arm, and then deleting the original JeroWorks). And this is all because of how old the 1.1b model is. Not even renaming it in Blender (to prevent overriding) will allow me to easily do what I need to do, as creating a new .blend file claims there’s “not enough bones to create human avatar”.. when it’s an exact copy of the original.
The 1.1b needs to be mercy killed and cremated (for its own good). Seriously. I’ve had so many issues with this model in the past (aka BTD 3.0).
So… THANKS, UNITY!!!
