I set it up quick as a test animation but its really been growing on me. The hands on hips + point makes the character so sassy

I'll have to include it in the game as an emote or something

Thanks!
Yeah, I had to try a few different methods before I settled on this one. Right now it's first aiming the Upper Chest toward the view direction, and then re-aligning the hands back to their original animated positions when they're not being used.

An added complexity was the fact then when you're not moving/using your hands, the controller allows some free head movement for immersion.

When pointing (or using weapons/tools) though, I need the body to match the head direction. It's nice to have all of that working and not be jarring.

The placeholder walk cycle I'm using from mixamo is so goofy 😭

I really need to animate a replacement in between character controller work.

Before finding that talk, I was just rendering at half resolution and then blurring it as I upscaled.
Which worked, but it was a bit pixelated and couldn't go any lower than 1/2 resolution without looking really bad.

The new system looks better even at 1/4 or lower, and runs faster.

I cannot recommend enough that anyone making their own volumetric system watch INSIDE's rendering talk from GDC: youtu.be/FMfC47xsImU?...

There's a ton of good tricks in there for getting good looking volumetrics with a low sample rate. Finding this talk a few weeks back was a goldmine for me.

It's a bit noisy this far out, but the volumetric lights can even be rendered from over 200m away. Instead of sampling at consistent step lengths, I'm sampling on a curve so that volumetrics have a higher sample rate closer to the camera.

The trick ended up being a modeling workflow change, actually.

If you have a smooth-shaded non-segmented mesh, you can copy the normal data over from that to a segmented mesh using a Data Transfer modifier in Blender.

Messing with normals can achieve a lot of fun effects!

Thanks!
And yeah, I've really only worked on 3rd person animations before. It's fun learning about all the considerations that go into designing first person ones.

I decided on a fullbody controller for Hadostruct for a few reasons (immersion, animation reuse), but it sure does introduce some interesting complications!

It's been so much fun working on all of these systems for the game. I really want to be able to nail the visuals of lights shining into and out of windows in a deep ocean.

That's enough of a thread on the lighting for now. It's very fun to look back on how it's shaped up!

It's got full control of the volume properties too, so I can make liquid profiles and swap them out on the fly, even on a per-room basis. The same goes for the atmosphere in each volume, in case I wanted thicker or colored fog.

Since the game will involve submarines flooded structures, I needed to also support multiple water volumes.

So it also supports water volumes that can be filled and emptied. That way individual rooms can flood and the lighting will work fine between them!

It's all done through a base shader that I set up for all objects in the game, so the water is always present.

I have a 'water plane' for rendering the foam on the top of the water, but all the lighting effects are part of the base shader.

Thanks!
I love the vibes of your game too! PSX style is real fun.