Hey everyone, Blacky here!
After introducing procedural masks in our previous release and reading through your feedback, I decided to take a closer look and see if there’s more that can be done to make your creation process even easier.
Turns out, there is!
So I invested a bit of time and created a variety of new masks for the most prominent areas of the body such as the entire front, chest, belly, and back. While I was at it, I also thought about having one for as well as the underside of the arms and inner area of the legs.
For heads that feature them, I also added masks for the nose and nostrils.
You can already see some of the final results here!
A good portion of the light areas on our upcoming templates are now painted solely by using procedural masks, supported only by very few radial or capsule gradients here and there to fill the gaps or customize towards a certain direction.
Since the procedural mask work with every body type and scale along the body, this should come in very handy when you decide to e.g. swap the body type or change the scaling of your character mid-creation process.
So, let me introduce you to some of the newcomers including the male and female versions of our Tiger and Panther templates, the male domestic feline, the female goat and the lioness.
In addition, several familiar faces are returning to the roster as well, such as the male Bovine, Eagle, Croc and Deer. These “oldies” received a nice polish, streamlined folder setups, improved masks, and physics updates to their parts.
I also decided it's time to rework our Dragon templates, now running on the latest body types and head versions as showcased in the previous post already.
With that said, I might add even more templates for the upcoming build though I don’t want to promise too much just yet.
If there’s a second template wave, I’ll definitely let you know!
As for procedural masks, I think you’ll really enjoy these new additions and I’m already considering expanding the system further in the future for areas where it makes sense.
For example, I thought about adding one procedural mask for the front of the neck on each head, since that area can be tricky to color with capsule gradients. Will be a bit of a effort to say at least but I feel it might be worth it.
We’ll see!
Alright, have a great weekend and if you have some spare time, feel free to drop a comment and let me know what you think about the new templates, or share your ideas for future procedural masks!
Till soon,
-Blacky