Bendy vs Blocky Character Debate

[SDGNelson]

Thanks again for all the feedback! Lots of controversy which makes it harder to decide one way or the other, but perhaps we can reach the best of both worlds.

Replying to questions:

@CravenWarrior

Better or at least more “realistic” animations would definitely be nice but the feet here make me think a bit too much of some of the Roblox player models.

@AnimaticFreak

As for giving the character feet, I personally don’t think it fits too much as in my eyes, either the entire character should be blocky or should be detailed to the same fidelity with extremities, etc. Mixing the two makes it come off like a LEGO or Roblox character like mentioned before.

@Froggo

Personally, I like the advantages that come with a blockier character but dislike the roblox-minecraft style that comes with it.

@MrKoix

Blocky is my pick, but ditch the weird feet.

@Toothy_Deerryte

Finally with the rig, I have to 100% agree, the feet truly look like the ugly Roblox joint model they made for WHATEVER reason.

This has mostly been a consensus particularly with regards to the feet. I do want the character to remain distinct from Minecraft and Roblox. Personally I recollect on the original Roblox character fondly. Ironically considering this topic I agree that the newer ones do not have the same charm. As Rain pointed out, constraints can be helpful for creativity. Does anyone have thoughts on what would make the feet less of an issue?

@CravenWarrior

I’m not really sure about hands. Gloves are a nice idea but I don’t have any thoughts on what would look good other than taking the 3.0 approach of textures.

Perhaps I am misinterpreting, but the glove design I want to return to are the meshed gloves from earlier in the beta which had a cutout for the “fingers”.

@CravenWarrior

As long as it doesn’t look horrible and we aren’t required to shove half a gun through our shoulder, I’m fine with anything.

FWIW, the current bendy character on the 4 beta version should not have the gun in their shoulder. The main improvement that helped reduce that was allowing the upper body to rotate 30-45 degrees away from the hips. Both the bendy and blocky character should benefit from this.

@AnimaticFreak

Other than that- and more ‘unrelated’ to what we’ve seen so far- I’m curious to see how people would react to a playermodel akin to Ravenfield’s.

@Leprechan12

I think having something between Unturned 3’s and, as Animatic pointed out, Ravenfield’s character design (might I also add Sub Rosa’s character design) would be better for Unturned II.

Theoretically I would love to program a game with character designs like those, but cannot imagine modeling without exact measurements and dimensions. For Unturned I think that might stray too far from the art style as well. It reminds me of this post: Interesting character style concept art

@Panda3d

What if you rotate the cube by 45 degrees. Arms, legs, neck are extended cubes that have the pointy ends forward. Or use a shear function of the edges.

Interesting idea. I think this really changes the feel of the hands though, whereas proposed cube design holds items in a similar manner to the old design. Here is the rotated hand:

@TigerSurvivor

But isn’t it possible to make a happy medium between blocky and Bendy? Like, the thighs to the knee are connected to the torso, while the shin and foot are blocky.

True, it would be possible to keep the hips and shoulders connected to the torso. Those connections are the cause of some hideous distortions however, like the Bluntforce example.

@AdrianWR

Personally, I think that the block model does not look bad, however, I doubt that this is the final modeling, and I suppose that by the end there will be adjustments and improvements.

In case it impacts your opinion, I would like to note that a “final” modeling of the blocky character would have similar gaps, but might have slightly adjusted dimensions.

@Toothy_Deerryte

Also one tiny suggestion while on the subject of the character changing, I think it would be awesome to change the eyes/mouth separately, would add much more customization when it comes to facial expressions!

Agreed! I think it would be especially useful to separate the eyes and mouth for aligning eyes with masks and glasses.

@Toothy_Deerryte

This Minecraft rig is a very good example although I’m not 100% sure if it could work with an Unreal foot IK, though if it can this would be a nice thing to try at least.

It does have promise. At one point I did experiment with that rather than feet. In my opinion it felt wrong for the arms to have hands without the legs having feet. Something like the detail level being inconsistent across the character, whereas all the current characters have a similar level of detail throughout the body.

@anonimoanbu

I didn’t see any problem with the old finger gloves, even if they were in a somewhat awkward position.

To clarify: it was not the gloves themselves that were in the awkward position there, it was the inner forearm, elbow, and outer shoulder that did not make sense.

@anonimoanbu

I wouldn’t mind using a more basic system for the hand position, perhaps hinges that are not noticeable?

Unfortunately this works best with a single axis of rotation like elbow and knee, whereas the hands need to rotate freely.

@anonimoanbu

I don’t know if the game will move forward with so much emphasis on aesthetic details that being honest isn’t very important at the moment and there are quicker solutions.

@Yarrrr

My other hope is that a design should be settled on or else too much precious time is wasted on perfecting the model while there are other core parts of the game to be touched on

Yeah my bad. I have been too fussy with 4 since the beginning.

@Dug

imo the bendy character is a relic, the blocky character model has so much room for more expressive animations, the only thing I dont like is how the hands are smaller than the forearm, looks kinda weird.

@MediumPlayer

We all wanted slim character models at some point, didn’t we?

@TigerSurvivor

The arms and forearms could also be slightly thinner than the torso and perhaps thin as they come closer to the hands.

I briefly experimented with a thinner even blockier character:

As a messy example of why I am hesitant to taper the arm, I do not like how the intersection between upper and lower looks:

@RainOfPain125

The bendy playermodel is a contrast versus the blocky items and buildings that you find in the world. The only things that are smooth are the terrain and the player. The player is a unique contrast to the world, and I think that is important for reasons I can not exactly describe.

Interesting point. This was more true in the early days, but there are a lot of smooth-shaded props in 3 now. e.g. at a PEI farm the silos, well, logs, and trees are smooth-shaded. The player, zombies, and animals are the only smoothed weighted meshes though, and I suppose that would be lost if the character was blocky.

@AnimaticFreak

As long as the Bluntforce situation isn’t re-introduced, I think most people would be content with the playermodel.

@RainOfPain125

I assume the problem with the BF is the player arm has to be a constant “length” but because the arm has to reach so far outward it bends and twists horribly wrong. idk I’m not a model person.

Stretching the arm could be supported, but the main issue is that the arm rolls 180 degrees which twists the connection to the body. One of the benefits of detaching the shoulder from the body is that there would be no distorted mess there anymore.