Unreal Engine Onhold The Green Bang [Development Thread]

[TheExordick]

So, i just realized it's been a while from my last update, but i've not been sleeping the whole time.

I made some QoL improvements and reworked some of the core mechanics:

- since the project is starting to get bigger i'm grouping things in function library so that i can reuse the code and have a much leaner experience debugging my blueprints.
- reworked the skin material as it was way too flat and lifeless
- also added to the skin material a sort of soft outline to help with readability of the character borders. I still need to refine it as right now is just a generic dark color, but i would like to make it a darker tone of the skintone. My first idea was to just do a simple average of the skin texture, but apparently UE does not have a simple way to calculate the average color of a texture (who know why).

This is an example of the new skin material (Boobs yay!). Which also has some handy features for a more oily, sweaty look and a more matte look. One day i'd like to add a layer to the material to make the idea of sweat droplets instead of just having a shiny skin.



Another required feature i added was to highlight the interactable objects in fron of the player, otherwhise how would you know which objects in a room can be interacted with?
I feel this will sensibly improve the player experience reducing frustration.
I dediced not to highlight people and NPCs in general as they are already lively and the perception of interactivity shouldn't need to be injected.

Here is the comparison between off and on on the highlight



I feel like it's clear enough that the object has something interesting.
I now need to make the widget with "press "E" to interact" to avoid any confusion.

As i said i worked primarily on the backstage:
i needed to extend the functions of the quest system as it was a bit too simple, it still has some adjustments to do but it's working weel (sometimes it spawns characters when it is not supposed to, but i can replicate the behavior so it should be easy to addess).
Also i needed to make different spawn points with different names based on their nature: quest, default or sleep points. All these target points need to be properly addressed and stored for use at the right time.

What are the next steps:
As the project is taking shape we are approaching the first real nsfw scene.
so the very next step is in fact the first nsfw scene:
- code the mechanic of interaction of the scene (i'm thinking of some sort of quick time event)
- build the animations in blender.


Right now i'm thinking to build two different kind of nsfw scenes: the story scenes and the "gallery"/sandbox scenes. So while playing the story of the game you will encounter the new scenes as a sort of quick time event (playable with a single hand). These kind of event won't be replayable or will be in a controlled way as they represent novelty and milestones during the story.
The second kind of scenes: the gallery/sandbox will be an easier approach and will be an option on the normal interaction with the NPC: when you unlock a scene during the story you will find a corresponding scene in the free mode.

I think this wraps what was done and what needs to be done.
Until next, have a nice time!

 

[TheExordick]

So, another couple of weeks have passed.
During these days i've been fighting with the level sequencer. God how much i hate sequencer! But as of now i'm almost done with the very first lewd scene of the game. I don't want to spoiler it as it is a story related scene by posting a video but we are getting there.
The cinematic/sequencer still need some refinements like screen shake, interactive buttons to press (sort of QTE) etc..

Also, on the QoL, i added a dedicated camera for the dialogues that frames the character currently talking, this way it's clearer who you are talking to and since the main character is a goblin whose height is less than a meter you can look at NPCs in the face when talking instead of looking at their knees.

I hope to have something more juicy to show in the next update.
The next steps:
- finish the cinematic
- finish the QTE mechanic
- advance with the story

so, once the cinematic and its mechanics are ready i will need to write and branch out the story to plan the future steps.
As a general idea the next story steps:
- full submission on Mathilda
- settlment of MC in the Family House
- start with the corruption of the two daughters
- side quests with the villagers (far away in the planning)

Until next time, have a nice time!

 

[TheExordick]

Here we are, another wall of text update without any image and juicy content... Why? well because i felt there were underneath mechanics that needed to be fixed before it was too late.

In particular i'm referring to the management of the girls. At this point (and believe me we are still at the beginning) the system was getting too big and too crowded: based on specific functions for each girl... but that's not how OOP works.

I did something right however, meaning that the girls are childs of the base class, but managing a different child class for each girl without any relevant different feature between one another makes no sense.

I was getting tangled setting up the variables of the quest that each girl need to remember and save.

So i am, right now, scraping off many of these functions and making them generic function to be used with any girl. This will also make any addition very easy.

In particular i don't want to use anymore child classes for each girl but just a generic girl_BP that retrieve its data from a data table and sets up the main variables.
In this way there will be only one girl variable type (with different meshes).

This will cost me a few days of work but will make me faster in the long run.

Also i added a better system to manage the girl's outfit and one day the player will be able to customize (to some extent) the outfits.

Once i will finish the reconstruction of the girl mechanics i will go on with the quests. Right now i need to create animations for the quests. (i think you know which type of animation i'm referring to)

Until next time, have a nice day!

 

[xorcist]

The changes have to be made in order for the game to work as expected. Take your time. Can't wait to see some images.

 

[TheExordick]

The changes have to be made in order for the game to work as expected. Take your time. Can't wait to see some images.

Appreciate your comprehension

 

[TheExordick]

Here we are again, apparently a few planets aligned in the last couple of weeks and i managed to succesfully transfer the morph targets between daz, blender and UE5.

Before the last update of the Daz2Blender bridge every morph not directly related to the character itself (i.e. genitals morphs) didn't export so the only way to do it was to export the characters many times with different values and rebuild the morph targets inside blender.
This was not acceptable and very time consuming. So i decided to wait, hoping that the Daz developers fixed the problem of the bridge. And apparently they did it in the last update.

At this point i exported the morph targets for Mathilda. So now she is able to have some facial expression, genitals and anus opening and of course pregnancy.



The other good news (that i personally didn't knwo) is that animated morph targets export correctly from blender to UE.
So i don't have to painfully reanimate the morph targets in UE, which was one of my fear. (but do they retarget when i retarget animations? this is my other fear, and i don't think they will)

At this point i can finally start to animate the lewd scened and make face animations for things like talking and expressions.
I don't think i will ever work with things like lipsinc and such as they would require an amount of work that is not feasible on my side.

I will do simple additive animations for the face so the NPCs will have less detached look.

Unfortunately i have to throw away the few sex scenes that i already did, but as you may have seen, this is a very iterative process where we go back and forth to add to new functionalities and make our future life easier.

Next steps:
update the morph targets for the other 4 characters
make a lot of animations
progress with the story/quests
update the save system that regards the NPCs


Until next time, have a nice time!

 

[AlternateDreams]

Hi,

I'm probaby not the best to give you advices but since I have some problems in common maybe it can help you.
In my case I was animating in Daz and using DazToUnreal to bring everything into Unreal. It works but needs some tweaks too in order for morphs to transfer correctly.

However, even I'm a noob in animations, it seems that Daz is pretty limited at it so I thought it would be a good idea to switch to Blender now, this way I would be limited by my knowledge, not but the software itself.

So I tried to export to Blender with Daz2Blender and also Diffeomorphic, my goal being to able to animate in Blender then bring everything into Unreal Engine.

Daz2Blender seemed to be the easiest to use at first BUT Diffeomorphic give so many settings to get everything you want that in the end I preferred it.

And the export of morphs seems to work perfectly and the imported mesh has all the needed morphs so I can focus on animating.

The drawback was that I had to switch to another skeleton/mesh in Unreal since it's a bit different from the one exported by DazToUnreal. But I was able to do a simple animation in Blender which use morphs and play it in Unreal Engine with the new skeletons.

Keep in mind that I'm still beginning my Blender journey so my advice may not be the best but I think you should give Diffeomorphic a try because it may be better than Daz2Blender for solving this kind of problems.

 

[TheExordick]

Hey AlternateDreams !
thanks for taking the time to share your experience. I really appreciate the exchange of information.

I do know Diffeomorphic and i thought to use it as well, but, in order to simplify even more the UE process i decided to stick to Daz2Blender and rerig the character in blender using Uefy 2.5

Uefy is a powerful tool based on rigify (which is a free addon) that let's you rerig the characters to match the UE skeleton in a very efficient and timely manner. The price is right (around 50$), but it's very very useful.

Thinking about it now, i could've moved to Diffeomorphic and then rerig with Uefy anyway to bring in the morphs correctly.
If i will encounter problems again i will try to do so.

Thanks for your help!

 

[TheExordick]

Good day boys and girls,

since i was a bit tired from my IRL job these weeks, i focused on jiggle mechanics (everybody loves jiggly tits).
And i have to say, that i'm really pleased with the result: the physics is very stable, withouth jittering and strange articacts so far.

It will also be very easy to make different clothes have different levels of containment and support of the breasts. If you think about a full plate armour shouldn't have any jiggle, while cloth dress should allow for more freedom and naked breast should be the maximum jiggle.

Enough talk, let's see the results:

As of now the effect is subtle but definitely noticeable.

View attachment JigglePhysics_001.mp4
























And here i activate the physics simulation during a sex pose:



If there is interest in the topic i can prepare an in depth tutorial on how to set up good and stable jiggle physics, because the ones i found around the internet where all lacking some information.

Anyway, that's all for now, see you next time.