Touhou Smash Bros Project (Development & info thread)

[Savory]

I have seen the heights that you are talking about before. But I've also seen a bunch of other takes on the heights of Touhou characters.  Yes in the fighting games Cirno is miniature, but I feel like that's just another interpretation, just as good as anybody else's really.

Except those are official games as opposed to fan interpretations. Cirno is very short when portrayed in official material, as is Rumia. Koumajou Densetsu (Touhouvania) is in no way related to the canon material; ergo it is an unreasonable source when it comes to determining character size.

[Saijee]

Like I said, I'm not using Touhouvania as a source, I have my own reasons for doing things the way I do.

It just so happens that they came to similar answers. And it certainly was OK for them to go with their decisions.

[Savory]

Like I said, I'm not using Touhouvania as a source, I have my own reasons for doing things the way I do.

I know, but it seemed like you were trying to justify making Cirno taller by using Koumajou Densetsu as an example.

[Saijee]

I am, but not that way.

The point I'm making is that character heights, appearances, and depiction are very flexibly up to interpretation.

[Savory]

The point I'm making is that character heights, appearances, and depiction are very flexibly up to interpretation.

To an extent, but not entirely. Otherwise, you'd just be ignoring the source material.

[Saijee]

I don't really see the problem there.

Even the source material is not always consistent.

[Prime32]

Except those are official games as opposed to fan interpretations. Cirno is very short when portrayed in official material, as is Rumia. Koumajou Densetsu (Touhouvania) is in no way related to the canon material; ergo it is an unreasonable source when it comes to determining character size.

Fairies in the manga tend to be really small, and Cirno is a little shorter than Sunny. Forbidden Scrollery makes it even more pronounced, where Remilia looks maybe 8-10 but fairies look like toddlers. PMiSS says that in general the tallest fairies look like 9-year-olds while the smallest can fit in the palm of your hand.

EDIT: For reference, an official height chart from ZUN around the time of PCB (meaning it predates the PMiSS comment):

Tall (16+): Sakuya, Meiling, Yukari
Fairly Tall: Reimu, Yuyuko, Alice, Letty, Ran
Fairly Short: Marisa, Youmu, Patchouli, Lunasa, Merlin
Short (10+): Remilia, Lyrica, Chen, Cirno, Rumia, Flandre

[Savory]

I don't really see the problem there.

Even the source material is not always consistent.

Sorry, I've just never really envisioned Cirno being that tall, at least not as tall as Remilia. At best, she's portrayed as being about as tall as a young child. Same with Rumia.

And I don't think the source material is inconsistent with size so much as character detail (like Alice's backstory retconning Shiki for instance).

[Saijee]

I am kinda the opposite, before she appeared in the fighting games, it was very unclear what Cirno's height could be,  I also recall quite a number of different people making SWR styled sprites of Cirno with every single one of them winding up a huge overestimation when Tasfro came out with the final sprite sheet.

When I saw the sprites I was surprised enough to reject the idea that she was *that* short, I'm not alone with that notion, but it has become an increasingly minority opinion.

After some measurements and calculations: my depiction of Flandre stands at 4' 2" which put's her at a maturity age of around 8.  And my depiction of Cirno stands at close to exactly 5' putting her at a maturity age of around 11.

But anyway, this kinda goes back to what I was saying a few pages back (though on style at that point more than differences in general) a big part of what fascinates me with Touhou is it's mythos like feature of being able to be interpreted in a wide plethora of variations that allow for many interesting reconstructions.

[Savory]

Perhaps it's pointless to go on with this debate any further. Seems you're adamant on making Cirno and Rumia tall regardless of adequate source material. We'll just go in circles anyway. Forget it, carry on.

[Luizsan]

No offense, but your 3d art is really amateur. If you really can't tell the difference between yours and the SSB screenshots posted on this thread, then unfortunately I don't think you can attain a decent level of graphic quality on this game, as Glass Wing didn't. However, I'm going to try and point out things you could do to improve it so people stop bashing you.

1. Faces
Like Kimidori said, the faces are extremely awkward and somewhat unpleasant to look at. And this problem happens mainly due to the way you modelled the mouth and the eyes. You tried to make a realistic mouth, but anime-styled eyes, resulting in a huge discrepancy of style, thus, looking bad and making your character look like a retard. In your Nitori 3d model, this problem is clearly visible: in the front vision, Nitori looks like every other character you did (bad), but in the last picture the face looks perfectly okay, because you can't see the eyes very well. You either need to make more realistic eyes or make the entire face look more anime-like to match the style of the eyes. You should also stop reusing the same face for every character. Changing small details like lips size and width won't work. Different characters have different appearances, facial traits, skin color and whatnot, and you DEFINITELY SHOULD NOT do what you're doing (the green boxes have the exact same size, by the way), especially when the base model looks that bad.

2. Textures
Your models lacks a lot in texture detail, in every part of it. Of course there are exceptions (some parts of Rumia's clothing, although it doesn't look like Rumia at all), but the majority of your characters dresses are devoid of any detail and depth. An example of that is Tenshi or Remilia: her shoes look like decals applied to her legs, her sash looks distorted in a strange way, and I can't describe what the hair looks like, but it definitely doesn't look like hair. You should work a lot on texture colors and UV mapping. Also consider using different Materials and Shaders for each part, because both the clothing and face looks like plastic, or a really generic 3d material.

3. Anatomy
Flandre looks like a mix between a halfling and a dwarf from Dungeons & Dragons. Even if you say the sizes of the characters are up to interpretation and/or base it out of Touhouvania sprites, you shouldn't ignore the common sense and the original source reference. Even from EoSD portraits, it's clear that Rumia, Cirno, Remilia and Flandre have almost the same height - Remilia is also only 5 years older than Flandre, and there's a huge discrepancy between their heights, considering their similarity. Cirno is a fairy, she's definitely small, no matter how you look at it. If you still deny my point, try looking at several other sources, like Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red or Perfect Memento in Strict Sense. Also note that some body parts are too broad or slim compared to the rest of the body.

Aaand that's it. Please don't take it personally.


What engine are you using for the game? I'd like to throw in some critique based on what I've seen on Glass Wing, but I'd like to sort out the 3d model thing first.

[Saijee]

I never said I can't tell the differences between this and Smash, I was framing the point that saying "Make it look like this" is not helpful. If you want me to make it look like that, tell me what I need to do to do that. I even said:

Now I'm not going to say that I think my models are any where near as good as Smash Bros Wii U

Because you are right, they aren't and I know that.

Re faces: Telling me what I shouldn't do is a step, but it is not nearly as helpful as suggestion what I should be doing.
Re Textures: I already said that the models will be re UV mapped and retexutred several times.
Re Anatomy: Again, turning off flashlights in a dark room that don't lead the right way doesn't do enough to point me in the right direction.

But hey, I think I've been doing a pretty good job at responding to the suggestions to adjust the faces so far.

And to answer your question, this game will be made using Unity 3D.
-----------

I don't feel like I should need to say this but it has apparently been something that comes off the wrong way for a lot of people. I do not take offense in any comments to the artwork, because I understand that I am not my artwork. I also understand it is very very far from perfect, but that's why it's being discussed right now, isn't it? So it can improve.

[Luizsan]

All I can do is tell if a thing is good or bad, and why it's good or bad.
Unfortunately I don't have a magic word that'll make you do better as soon as you read it. I've pointed out why it looks weird and what you shouldn't be doing if you want it to stop becoming weird. Maybe you should grab high quality models and watch tutorials (or something like this) on how they are done, then practice on your own?

[Saijee]

Practice does not make perfect, practice and modification in the right direction does. Like I've been saying for a while, showing an ideal is not the same as getting to it, and it certainly doesn't help.

At least tell me what your point is with the image of the green boxes. What am I doing that I shouldn't be doing?

[Luizsan]

Practice does not make perfect, practice and modification in the right direction does. Like I've been saying for a while, showing an ideal is not the same as getting to it, and it certainly doesn't help.

Showing an ideal does help a lot. How are people supposed to improve if seeing a better result doesn't help? Is up to you to practice and modify in the right direction to improve and attain the desired goal. However, you're asking for help to improve your 3d skills in a Touhou forum. Maybe there are a few people who can help you, but this definitely not the right and/or best place for it, mind you.

At least tell me what your point is with the image of the green boxes. What am I doing that I shouldn't be doing?

Copying the model and not adjusting the head size accordingly to the character's overall size.
I mean, copying a model over and over is bad enough, but it's ok if they doesn't look like they are copied. You should be using some reference and modelling each character independently so they actually look like different characters.

[Saijee]

It does not help out because of the limited point of view that an artist can have. And no I am not asking you to help me improve my 3D skills. As I was saying, I am personally quite content with my 3D skills. It's just that people like you and others are not satisfied with how it looks, As has been shown with the adjustments to Flandre, you could almost say that I am currently in service to the people here who want the Touhou Smash game. I do not seek improvement, I only invite it.

The head model is actually not the same geometry, the way the faces where done was that a while back when I first made these models there was a base head that I had put on to all the characters, but then made some adjustments for mutations on facial features, then came these recent days where I've been modifying them individually based on the constructive criticism I get. But nothing has been copied and pasted for months.

Look, I'm only going to delv on figuring out this stylization thing for this game till Sunday, so if you would like to see it better in your eyes, I'm willing to put in as much effort as you are willing to detail.

[Saijee]

---accidental double post.

[Colticide]

We really need to stop the hate guys, I really hate trying to read it to get caught up on what happened during the day.

First I'd like to say is that this game isn't even in the Alpha stages yet, it's still on the character development. Fine tuning the characters and textures are something that should be done the in the middle or near the end. It's good to want to make your game look good but that is a issue a lot of indie devs do that I find bad. Since their game is being shown to the public they try to make it look good and then the game suffers in the bugs department. This will make me sound like a old man but back in the day you never had 3d models fully finished, fist you'd get the base model and work on other things like hit detection/animation and other things (I forget at this time).

In terms of art and the cannon sizes and look, it really shouldn't matter. I've seen plenty of artist that make Cirno older or Remilia taller and they can work if everything flows the same in the style it's made in. As was said the textures will be coming later (which it should, no sense spending all that time on the textures and find out that character size needs to change and then redo all the textures.) but what we can try to do is make improvements where we can. I have no modeling experience (except for a single sphere, yay.) so going into detail on what the faces need to change is out of my reach but those who do have experience should be able to provide details on how to change it. It's good to know what not to do, but for me when I do sigs and avatars knowing what not to do doesn't help, it just creates more of a roadblock since I have no idea where to start. And Looking at other models won't help very much, again either you won't make progress by looking at them or you will end up making the models too much like them.

OK long post sorry everyone.  Working from a base model shouldn't be a problem, what do most artist do when they start drawing a face? A circle, which is the base for the face. So lets kinda calm down a bit and focuse on how we can improve the models instead of saying you shouldn't do this or that.

[Saijee]

I'm not really detecting hate as much as civil impasse. Yes I will take my artistic licenses when constructing character height, the whole reason I posted those characters to compare heights was never for open input, rather I was using it as an explanation for Cirno's leg shape being less child like. If that wasn't clear, then I am sorry about that, as it could have been avoided.

The current discussion is about the faces, I can tell from the amount of text all of you put in on your posts how much it means to you, As I've said before, I have always been content with how they are: Were it just up to me, I would find no issue in just leaving them the way they were when I first showed you them. But since so many people were striking it, I felt it reasonable to give you guys the power to control how I edit them to YOUR liking.

Slightly off topic, but perhaps the reason why something that is so clearly ugly to you, while I am left confused at what exactly you want me to do is because I'm the kind of person who appreciates ZUNart, or the crude drawings and sprites from the horror game Ib. In regards to how the faces look, tell me to do something, ANYTHING, and I will do my best to render you an edit as  you describe.



Tell me what to do with description or if you feel like it, edit the image to give me a better idea. And no, posting something like this will NOT help me: http://oi58.tinypic.com/30wts8i.jpg

[Kyouma]

pretty nice quality, too bad theire MMD models which "cant be used" on this, its a shame, this seemed like an interesting project

[Colticide]

pretty nice quality, too bad theire MMD models which "cant be used" on this, its a shame, this seemed like an interesting project

There is no need to act like that, I can respect the effort to make your own assets for the game instead of using someone else hard work. Also if we got a touhou smash bros game with the MMD models then what would be the point in the mods for brawl then?

[Saijee]

Hey Kyouma, if you want to see your -- oh wait, that's right, they aren't yours, my mistake, erm,  those imported MMD models in a Touhou Smash Bros fan game, why don't you just make your own game, along side this one? See what happens, make a better game then me, then we'll talk.

But in all seriousness, using MMD's is not up for debate. The way that you all want me to edit the faces is.

The sad part is that you show such a strong desire to see this game be more then what you can see out of it now, I've given you the power to help shape this game by virtue that I am making more of an unnecessary effort to act on your commands for the editing development of these character faces. And yet you make no effort to utilize that power to an effect of desired result.

----Edit---
Since nobody's suggesting anything, I've gotten all the current available models their head to body ratio adjustments as well as used the new eye texture:
http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2014/162/c/b/touhou_faces_by_saijeehiguchi-d7m0zrc.png

[Searinox119]

Well, Flandre and Remilia look really great. Rumia is good as well. Cirno, though, could have some improvements.
1) As far as I know, Cirno isn't supposed to look like a teenager. She is supposed to look like a child. Also, she isn't supposed to have breasts (by the way, Rumia suffers from this as well).
2) Icicles (the ones forming her wings) aren't supposed to levitate somewhere away from her back, because really, wings floating somewhere away are quite useless.
3) Ribbon on her head isn't supposed to be angled downwards. It's supposed to show above her head. Could be bigger too.
Color of her hair is also debatable, since she had grayish blue hair since Fairy Wars and light blue hair in portraits before this game. In fact, she had this dark blue hair only in EoSD's battle sprites.

[Savory]

I still think going for a more cartoonish look would be much better, while still retaining some realism. For a Smash game, we need something a bit more colorful. Skyward Sword is probably a good example.

[Imosa]

Two things.
First of all, this thread might help you out. Not sure if you can gain any insight from that.
Second, why are you asking about the look of your game here? It seems to me that this is an art issue, so why not take it to the art forum?

[Saijee]

Again "asking" is the wrong way of framing this.

I am perfectly content with the way the art looks right now (I was also content with the way it was when I started this), but there have been a number of people here who ranged from creeped out by it to allergic to it. So until Sunday, I'm allowing people to inform the way that I edit these character's faces so as to form the style that this game will wind up with, so long as the suggestions are specific rather then general (as the likes of Prime32 and Colticide have been ever so cooperative with).

As I've said before:

I do not seek improvement, I only invite it.

That all said, since I am not the one who thinks that the art looks fugly, since I am not asking about the look of my game but simply listening in on it, I don't see any reason why I should need to make a topic in the art forum.

@ Savory, thanks. I'm still not sure where to begin in terms of what that should mean for any of these character face models in particular. But thanks.

Just another general message to everybody: If you don't like the way the art style looks right now, that is your problem not mine. If, when this game is finished, and you still don't like the final art style bu didn't make suggestions, don't blame me, I gave you a chance to adjust it to your liking right here and now.

@Searinox, out of curiosity, you are basing your suggestions off of accuracy to the original designs, right?

Here are some other designs that other people have made for Cirno that follow a lot of the same artistic licenses for the design I do.
http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/099/b/8/touhou___cirno_by_paperjoey-d4vl4oi.png
http://hqwallbase.com/images/big/rei_cirno-1521663.jpg

[Savory]

I've been going over a few things and I think MMD models might be your best bet. Try checking out some Touhou MMD videos on Youtube or look some up on Google. Even if you don't want  to use the models exactly, you can still use them for references.  One thing that does bother me about your models is the clothing.  And a lot of  MMD models do justice with that.

Here are some other designs that other people have made for Cirno that follow a lot of the same artistic licenses for the design I do.
http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/099/b/8/touhou___cirno_by_paperjoey-d4vl4oi.png
http://hqwallbase.com/images/big/rei_cirno-1521663.jpg

So you're still going on that angle, huh? I still think you should use canon material to determine size instead of trying to use fan interpretation to justify it.

[Saijee]

I believe that touhou fan art would be a lot more rudimentary and boring if everyone conglomeration decided to uphold an unstated dedication to the source material rather than celebrate the magnitude of allowece with artistic license for personal expression.

One could say that these are perversions of Touhou characters, but so what if they are? I personally cannot shake the opinion that they are ultimately very neat designs.





Anyway, Sakuya is going to be the first character made, so I've been making some adjustments to her model, if anyone has anything to say, say it now, this is what I did earlier today:

[CK Crash]

Please stop suggesting a switch to MMD models. That's already out of the question and it's just derailing the thread even further. Smash messes with canon as well. As long as the outfits are made with consideration for the character's personality, it's fine. The ONLY design I would mess with is Rumia, assuming she uses her silly "arms outstretched" stance. The reason why we consider that look iconic for Rumia is because it reflects her childish personality. That just doesn't work well with her model's skirt, both because it has a more mature look to it, and because the silhouette would be really different. There are other characters where creative liberties like that can be taken, but big and wide skirt is the way to go for Rumia IMO.

Anyways, I really feel that your presentation for WIPs is hindering you here Saijee. The way Tenshi and Sakuya look in the first post is actually pretty good! I understand that a neutral pose and expression might be the best way to show every detail of the model at once, but it also doesn't convey as well to non-artists what the character will look like in-game. The neutral expression in particular is really off-putting at times... If you look back at the Smash Brothers examples that game2011 posted, you should note a few things:

1) Even when characters like Zelda and Palutena are in an idle pose, they have an expression that reflects their personality. Zelda has a somber expression most of the time (does she ever even smile in the game?) and Palutena looks halfway between nurturing and condescending, which is perfect for a god who is lowering herself to fight among mortals. This is a CRUCIAL part of differentiating your characters. Truthfully, this isn't something that ZUN excels at in Touhou canon either, but you can see hints of it when you compare say, Kanako to Byakuren.

2) The facial features have variable shapes and angles, not just sizes. Link has extremely angular eyebrows and a rounded nose, conveying that he's a youthful and determined character. ZSS's expression is more relaxed, showing that she's a fighter who's calm under pressure.  The shape of the face itself also matters: Peach's design, face included, features a lot of roundness. What do you do think that conveys compared to Zelda, who has slimmer and sharper elements to her design?

I don't think Touhou characters need unique expressions to the same extent, but when you post expressionless previews, you're drawing attention to that lack of personality. When I visualize how a character should look, I see not just their design, but their expression, and that's probably where half of your criticism is coming from! The models don't need a huge fundamental change, but small tweaks to give the more character would help alongside more expressive previews.

Sorry, if this isn't of any help to you, since I don't work with 3D at all, I just have a lot of interest in character design in general. I hope you can see that I'm not just saying "look at Smash Bros, do that" but rather "look at these elements that made Smash Bros. look good, and see where you are lacking them in your own work". Best of luck, and I might post a moveset or two later when I'm feeling inspired!

(I see you posted while I was typing, but yeah the new Sakuya is better, I'd just rather be seeing her in "determined maid" mode, heh)

EDIT:

Here's a nice example by the famous Captainski of Touhous with lots of facial differentiation while still having a consistent style.

[Savory]

Sorry, Saijee. I wasn't trying to pressure you into using MMD models; I was just suggesting that you use them for reference.