Hello, everyone! Hefty update today with a bunch of changes and customization options, getting closer to making this presentable as a cloneable public avatar. The Quest version will be live in the next few hours after this email goes out.

I finished 0.96 thinking "Ah, time to relax!" and then it was made clear to me during a meeting with friends that the leg rigging couldn't wait any longer -- so I devoted the entire week of working hours (and then some) to releasing 0.97 -- and the following night of experiences made it clear to me that some bugs needed fixing and more work was needed to improve the new-user experience, so now we're at 0.975. The model now has full digitigrade leg rigging on PC, but also a whole bunch of customization options for character creation, including face/body sliders and separate hue sliders for the body and eyes. In retrospect I'm embarrassed as hell that I waited so long to rig the legs properly, but I like to think I went through my hard knocks fixing it.

Because this is now cloneable, I can confirm that this is very functional in six-point full-body tracking. Putting this in the hands of experienced FBT users (my life-partner and several good friends) was revelatory, and has convinced me to get a set of trackers myself right after Vancoufur. Body language changes a lot!

The next update will probably not come as quickly as this one, but it will feature retopologized hands/feet and toggleable clothing. We aren't done with body customization yet, but I consider this a pretty good start!

The public version of this is currently in the wild, but I'll be waiting till .98 to buy Furhub ad space for it. I'm committed to maintaining feature-parity between the free and paid versions of this, with greater customization through production files as the draw for the paid version. Any questions or concerns, please let me know. <3

CHANGELOG:

02/28/2024 & 03/02/2024

VERSION 0.97: THE "LET'S DIGRESS" UPDATE and VERSION 0.975: THE "LET'S DIGRESS" HOTFIX

(PC-only currently, will have Quest version added in less than 24 hours.)

Feature additions:

Radial menus for body characteristic customization:
- Hue sliders! Only visible on PC, since it requires the Poiyomi shader. Body and eye colors can be customized independently.
- Shelltooth length.
- Snout length.
- Snout width.
- Snout roundness.
- Ear roundness.
- Ear length.
- Belly size.
- Chin height.
- Hip width.
- Underfluff density.
Digitigrade leg armature on PC version, using constraints. Your hip bones should no longer completely dislocate when you crouch! :D
Front and back fur patterns! In the "Base Fur" layer category in the .psd is a "Patterns" subcategory, with "Front Pattern" and "Back Pattern" subcategories that can be toggled, recolored, and customized as you please.
Credits page, accessible from the main circle menu! Tell all your friends!
"Read this first!" page and toggle, which summons a plane containing helpful tips for first-time users.

Geometry tweaks:

Raised feet slightly to prevent them from clipping into the ground.
Adjusted shelltooth angle to prevent it from clipping into the lower lip.
Retopologized legs! Now significantly less boxy, and they stick out less far in front of the body (I used Valsalia's "Anatomy of a Yinglet" as reference).
Retopologized ears. The inner part's concave now!
Added blendshapes for all the customization sliders.
Added a bit more volume to the breast size blendshape.
Tweaked waistline to be more yinglet-y.
Tailtip now tapers more to a point.

UV/texture tweaks:

Added front and back fur-pattern layers, toggleable in the PSD.
Repainted legs and ears.
Repainted the weird transparent pixels bordering the tops of the hard black sections of the legs.
Made eyebrow anti-aliasing pixels actual transparency instead of the default fur color.
Changed credits page to use pixelated fonts.
Condensed color legend on texture.
Added "Read this first!" UI elements to texture. (Will be cleaned up when I expand the texture canvas for clothing.)

Armature tweaks:

Re-weighted feet. Still not ideal, but hands and feet will be retopologized for the next update.
Constrained feet to plantigrade ankles.
Added glasses bone. This and the skirt bones will factor into the next major update.
Added bones for individual whiskers.

Other tweaks:

Assigned default values to most properties between 0 and 1.
Radial menus have been reorganized. All customization sliders are nested in a Customization submenu.
Fixed default lid minimizer not firing in eyelid animations.
Restored eye sparkles on Quest.

Known issues:

Feet rigging is passable but could be better; I'll throw myself at it after feet receive the hand retopology.
Can't yet toggle front and back fur-patterns. (There's an issue with decals that causes them to not retain the hard edges of the rest of the model's pixelated texture.) Will be fixed in a later update.

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