Greetings. It's me again.
Honestly, I did not expect my previous post to cause this much activity. I expected another small complimentary comment section like those that usually appeared below all the "let me know what you think" posts before. Huge thank you for the feedback, gentlemen - I definitely needed your fresh eyes here.
Here's a small follow-up addressing the most common points mentioned regarding the new looks, and how I will be (or won't, but mostly will be) resolving them:
Lips/Face and "age": I will work on her face and proportions. I'll try to find something in between to bring that "innocent" and "less experienced" (100% legal F21) vibe back.
Glossiness: I'm still working on it. I was trying to achieve those manga (of a certain content) style white-to-pink highlights (when the manga's colored) that are usually seen on thighs and cheeks (both kinds). It seems the attempt wasn't very successful. I "invented" my own NPR texture map format (called A/S/S for Ambient Occlusion/Shadow Softness/Specularity on the RGB channels) and I'm still struggling with how the shader works with the blue (specular) channel. I will either make the highlights look as I originally intended (similar to manga), make them much less prominent, or remove them completely. Either way, they won't look like this on the final model. The purple cloth pieces aren't supposed to be glossy at all. I just haven't found proper values for everything else yet, so they currently use the same material settings that kinda work. Will fix very soon.
Missing hair outlines on bangs: The bangs will be less see-through and will have outlines after I fix outlines for semi-transparent materials. I added semi-transparency there so Aster's eyebrows are more visible for expression readability.
Anime shading and cel-shading: Will remain. It will change and vary in intensity (the hard edges(ness)) depending on the material, but it will stay. The lack of any real-time shading caused a lot of problems with animation readability (who is who, what are they doing, to whom, where are they, who are they, do you know them?). Flat unlit handpainted shading combined with the old rig (skeleton) was a huge pain and one of the main reasons I had to place characters at angles and in positions I did not want (as someone directing this stuff). It was a pile of compromises on top of other compromises throughout the entire development. It wasn't that type of artistic restriction that stimulates new idea generation (challenge) - it was just a straight up issue numbing the "creative" process and generating technical debt.
Inlines (on clavicles, lips, neck area, armpits): Needs more feedback. If they're generally hated, they will become lighter in color, meaning closer to the skin tone in most cases. Outlines will be kept as they are.
New default outfit: Needs more feedback. If it's generally hated, I will remake it again to match the old one (including the horseshoe). The new one would then be added as an optional or removed entirely.
That's definitely all for today. Thank you for your support. Until next time!