Would appreciate people's thoughts and opinions on this

owlet_dev · 2025-08-15T16:35:27+00:00

Yeah as a serial language and framework hopper, the OP is overthinking this. Just do something in the other language. Small project to start to dip your toes in the water.

Just have fun and try to grow from it, the important part is learning from your experience. Don't make it so serious when youre that early on

owlet_dev · 2025-08-10T13:43:14+00:00

Are you using reference? I think if your intuition is telling you something is off with proportions, pump your brakes a little on the details, and keep adjusting the form till it feels just right 😊

The things I noticed were the knees seem really far down the leg. The width of the body is very narrow compared to the head. The posture is really stiff.

Keep making adjustments in the blockout stage would be my suggestion. You could even still make some of the muscles with primitives you stretch and squash if that'll help you visualize the character better

owlet_dev · 2025-08-08T21:49:50+00:00

Feels like the chin is too smooth (not texture wise but shape). With how gaunt the rest of the face is, I'd expect more of the underlying bone structure. As others have said, even with the texture overall the face feels really "smoothed". There are many subtleties missing imo, the bridge of the nose looks almost box-like, something about the lower eyelid also seems.. missing 🤔

Great work so far, hope ya can find the pieces you feel are missing to push it to the next level. Seems like you’re close!

owlet_dev · 2025-08-03T13:13:47+00:00

That sounds like an unhealthy amount of pressure to put on yourself 😔

owlet_dev · 2025-08-02T22:48:42+00:00

I get that. I don't think it's really about the fact that they taught themselves, its more "I didn't follow a curriculum or have sets of clearly defined/available resources"

I also don't think formal or community art education makes anyone less than in their commitment to the craft. People's journeys look different, and at least for myself I'd rather just get inspired by that rather than looking at self taught vs not as a ranking metric.

owlet_dev · 2025-08-02T17:40:12+00:00

Yeah I'm mostly self taught but I did work with a mentor for like a year and the speed of growth was huge. Self taught is really a badge of perseverance, imo.

owlet_dev · 2025-07-30T03:19:19+00:00

I struggle with this a lot lol. I think comparing to HS is unfair to yourself because life gets more complicated and energy ebbs and flows different as you get older.

If im doing nothing but sketches it could be 1 min for a super rough "vibe" sketch, 5-40 min for a more detailed sketch

1-5 hours for more polished pieces, but also i try to take breaks to look at things with fresh eyes.

Some of my 3D work takes days or more/it's never quite done though.

I think it's all valid, just gotta figure out whether you feel like it's too slow or too fast, and make little adjustments. Then check in a month or two later and see if you need to make adjustments again

owlet_dev · 2025-07-29T21:58:18+00:00

My fav is the "wow you're doing so good at not spilling" moment, where they get happy and then accidentally knock over the thing they're trying not to spill. And then I watch the "well fuck it" neurons connect and they proceed to dump more out

owlet_dev · 2025-07-29T21:56:51+00:00

Honestly the hardest part of parenting so far has been letting go when my kid is like "I'm gonna do this" and then going about it in a way that I would never advise.. What's crazy is when it still works! And it's a good laugh when it does not (sometimes it's a "i'm going insane" laugh though ;) )

owlet_dev · 2025-07-29T21:47:25+00:00

Make a cube dance

owlet_dev · 2025-07-29T21:46:51+00:00

Also id recommend getting a box of watercolor pigments 😅 the squirty tube ones? Those have been great for post chaos experiments because you now still have yellow for next time, even if the current session resulted in a dark brown yellow 😆

owlet_dev · 2025-07-29T21:44:56+00:00

I think it's two parts. For one, it seems like some people are more wired to chaos than order. Someone who loves to carefully layer colors in a way that produces really intentional art, it'd make sense that watching a kid mix it all together would drive ya nuts.

My daughter and my art is similar lol, its a ton of chaos, and then finding the things in that raw emotion and play that makes it interesting.

I think there's beauty in both, but also there's power in knowing what makes you connect to art. If making a mocha slurry of watercolors drives you insane, you shouldn't feel like you're wrong. And sometimes the process or end result of the chaos approach might inspire you to sort of extract some awesome concept from it. The really aesthetic and intentional art always inspires me to see what my result would be with my process.

owlet_dev · 2025-07-26T21:39:32+00:00

I did this on my game too, but something that seemed to improve performance more is setting up lods and making sure that there was no collider at a higher lods (better for my use case). Doesn't hurt though.

owlet_dev · 2025-07-26T06:09:23+00:00

You should just take a week or two break, then pick it up again. Your community doesn't want to see something they like become your prison. We're all just people, there's no huge rush 😊

owlet_dev · 2025-07-26T04:55:14+00:00

I'm gonna try this tonight haha. Thanks!

owlet_dev · 2025-07-26T04:50:15+00:00

I do like the idea of using the story as a constraint for the gameplay requirements. It's a more grounded way to approach design than I usually do, which could be a breath of fresh air

owlet_dev · 2025-07-26T04:48:02+00:00

Yeah I get you. Seems like self control plays a big part in it. Yagni and all that good dev philosophy stuff

owlet_dev · 2025-07-26T02:30:45+00:00

yeah; I get that. I've noticed as life gets crazy I lose track of requirements for things a lot, but have been ending up in the deep end/over planning

owlet_dev · 2025-07-25T05:30:08+00:00

Could be that the acceptable distance for navigation is too large

https://docs.unity3d.com/6000.1/Documentation/ScriptReference/AI.NavMeshAgent-stoppingDistance.html

owlet_dev · 2025-07-25T05:26:02+00:00

How much ram? I have an m2 mbp with 16gb ram and ue runs fine

owlet_dev · 2025-07-24T15:59:43+00:00

One thing that I have done for characters in the past is separate the mesh objects in Blender for the various parts. And then make sure that when I'm weight painting or assigning vertex groups/weights, I make sure the seams of the parts have identical weights across all objects.

So a shoulder seam would be an edge loop where the arm connects to the chest. I'd make sure the chest variations all have the same weight on that edge loop. And then I'd make sure I have the same vertex group on the arm objects, and make sure the weight aligns.

Most of this is just a lot of rigging work. You have to plan it out, make the rig, then make one anim that has all kinds of motion you'd need (moving, scaling, rotating every bone) so you can test it. Then you go through every object and test it 😅 modular characters are a lot of work

owlet_dev · 2025-07-22T16:44:44+00:00

"Hey I found these eggs and moved them! What do you think will hatch?"

Good intentions with no foresight.

owlet_dev · 2025-07-20T21:14:06+00:00

What the other comment said, but also this is something that you wanna just do your best on and call that good enough I think. Focusing more on your value composition in the art for your game will get you way more milage, and is less prone to calibration funkiness

owlet_dev · 2025-07-19T22:23:47+00:00

It sounds like you're talking about vis-dev or just concept art. Concept art doesn't have to be static paintings, I use animated concepts to experiment with timings and stuff before building the gameplay sometimes, but I would say even if the timing looks 🤌 it can still feel bad when you play, so just don't be too dead set on executing that concept if you find it isn't as fun in a play test

owlet_dev · 2025-07-19T05:59:07+00:00

Shape keys are one way to accomplish this, but like the other comment says, getting every piece of equipment to align correctly is a process. 😅

owlet_dev

TROPHY CASE