A World of Color

1 year ago by The Lewd Dev (@thelewddev)

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I'm very happy to have finally wrapped up work on the shader for Waifu Island. This turned out to be a much more time-consuming process than I had originally planned (49 commits to my git repo total) but I also ended up adding a lot of things that I was not planning to add at the start of it all. There's a lot to list, so let's get to it!

New Shader

First I'll cover the shader itself, which has given me the opportunity to add all the new things listed below and has also made a ton of new things yet to be included possible. As discussed in previous devlogs, this new shader is compatible with point lights and spotlights, something that the previous shader lacked. Shadows are much cleaner and there's no longer a need to stack directional lights on top of of spotlights to get the lighting effect I wanted in Playlist mode, which has provided a significant boost to performance.

This shader also allows me to easily stack textures on top of one another, which means the waifu's body is now rendered in a single draw call rather than the multiple draw calls that were required before; another boost to performance. I've also knocked the number of textures being used for the waifu's skin down from 9 individual (1 for each skin tone option) to 1 total. This texture has color options applied to it a runtime which allows for a lot of customization, but I'll cover this more below.

Color Options

You'll notice that a lot of the customization panels now have a color selector included which will allow you to alter the hue, saturation, and vibrance of most waifu options. Everything from skin tone, hair color, hair highlights, and even makeup can now be altered to your desired color. Green runny makeup? Check. Purple hair with pink highlights? Check. Orange skin with yellow freckles? Check and check.

Lighting Options

I've expanded the panel in the upper-right of the screen for the Photo Shoot mode. You now have multiple options for the lighting set up as well as full control over the lighting color. This should give you a lot more control over how your photos look in the end and pairs really well with the skin tone color options if you're feeling creative.

Hair Highlights

Now that stacking textures is a much simpler process, I was able to add a second texture to each hair option that can be set to use it's own color. There is currently only a single highlight texture for each hairstyle but this new system does allow for me to create multiple highlights for each, so I'll definitely be playing around with new ideas in the future.

Tan Lines

As with the hair highlights, this feature is basically just a simple demo of what's to come. There is now a tan slider (marked "T") which allows you control the tan level of the waifu's skin, revealing a set of basic (albeit slightly out of place) tan lines. This feature will be expanded on a lot in the future and will come into play when applying lotion to the waifu's body, and I should be able to get it working directly with whatever clothing the waifu is wearing at the time, which will give realistic results.

Skin Tones

All of the previous skin tone presets are still available, but you also now have complete control over the color. As with most color selectors, this includes options for saturation and vibrance to ensure you can get the tone you're hoping for with little effort. Throw on some blue skin and pair it with yellow hair and some white stockings for a sexy Smurf. Whatever color combos float your boat, you can be sure that the option is available to get the skin tone and hair color combos you want.

Face Details & Makeup

Face details have been separated from makeup so that one does not remove the other. Currently the only face detail is freckles, but I'll be adding more in the future. I've also added a new makeup option to resemble that of Lucy from Edgerunners on Netflix, which pairs nice with some white hair and either blue or pink highlights. Both face details and makeup also include color customization now as well.

Cup Sizes

There are now 4 toggles that allow you change the size of the waifu's breasts. There's a bit of shading work need under the breast itself that can make the A size seem a bit off, but I'll be adjusting that in the near future as well.

Look Targeting

I've separated the option for the waifu maintaining eye contact into two separate toggles. The first will keep the waifu's head pointed in the general direction of the camera at all times, the second controls whether the waifu will maintain eye contact with the camera. These two options are now automatically swapped off for specific animations and toggled back on at the end of the animation to prevent any strange head angles from occurring and to ensure that the waifu looks down at her legs when touching them, etc.

More In The Future...

The great thing about this new shader is that even with all the new options that have already been added, I still have a list of new things I'd like to implement in the future. I've done preliminary work on adding tattoos to the waifu and expect to have that added to the game soon. On top of all that, this new shader has added a lot of life to the upcoming sandbox mode and also expanded on the options that will be available for it, and I'll be sharing quite a bit of info for sandbox mode in the next devlog.

v0.2.1a