Sorry for not updating here for so long. Here is a bit of actual in-game footage of Iris:
View attachment 2460948
I know it's a little questionable why it took me so long to make it. That's because it's actually 3D:
View attachment 2460951
And it has a crazy amount of bones:
View attachment 2460961
It's tedious to get it right, especially since I want it to look a bit like 2D in-game.
Why did I take such a long and complicated approach? Could I not have used 2D instead?
I want this game to have plenty of animation. While there's nothing wrong with the classic 'text and static images' style of visual novels, it doesn't align with my vision for Horny Dungeon. I want vivid, lively characters that feel real on screen. To be honest, I'm not the best writer out there; using animation might be my best chance to bring these characters to life.
After exploring frame-by-frame, spine/live2d, and 3D approaches for animation, I determined that while it requires a complex setup initially, using 3D will ultimately save me more time.
And here I am, with a rigged model of Iris that has 300+ bones, and a customized render pipeline in Unity. Sorry for being slow up until this point; now that I have the 3D workflow figured out, I hope to produce more content soon.