@speedybeef.bsky.social
gonna document my potentially disastrous attempts to remake some Xenogears stuff - just starting with Fei and Elly for now - i don't want to commit to more than i can manage!
4 hair colours quickly thrown together with no care! No shading yet either, just flat colours
Setup in Substance Designer
Some super quick examples! Second pic showing the setup - probably far from the best way of doing it, but it works!
04.10.2025 19:03 โ ๐ 1 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Spent an embarrassingly long time fumbling around on this today, but I got something I'm pretty pleased with:
04.10.2025 18:57 โ ๐ 0 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0And thats it for now. Sorry for long potentially boring thread, but I'm learning all this as I go and finding it really interesting!
02.10.2025 19:06 โ ๐ 2 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0-(the body won't need this vertex info because its a fully separate object). During my research into anime style cel-shading, its pretty clear that faces can look pretty bad unless handled very carefully, often with custom normals or SDF Shadowmaps. So this may form part of that :) But who knows!
02.10.2025 19:06 โ ๐ 1 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 0
And finally the most interesting to me as its the most mysterious: the blend into purple below the chin on his head. I can only guess, but I suspect this info is potentially being used to help differentiate between "special face shading" and the rest of the skin-
02.10.2025 19:06 โ ๐ 1 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 0
In-game shot showing the unusual render order
Green seems to be used to dictate render order. In-game, the eyebrows/eyelashes are always rendered in front of the hair, as a stylistic choice. And the purple of the hair shadow may also be related, as they too render in an unusual order (on top of the eyebrows but behind the hair!)
02.10.2025 19:06 โ ๐ 2 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 0
Image showing Noah's hair in 3D space (left) and the same hair laid out on a texture, aka. UVs (right)
Side note: Its also a really efficient way to deal with AO on hair - as it means the hair strands UVs can all overlap. You can use more than one set of UVs (the second can be non-overlapping in order to bake AO), but this way means just one simple UV set is required!
02.10.2025 19:06 โ ๐ 1 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 0
topless Noah's well defined physique is represented by varying shades of Red vertex colours
Most obvious is the shade of red on the skin and hair. This is almost definitely Ambient Occlusion, which can add some nice depth. Typically this is just baked onto a texture, as shown on his trunks - though I suspect for stylised cel-shading, this is sufficient!
02.10.2025 19:06 โ ๐ 1 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 0
Image of the Noah 3D model from Xenoblade 3 showcasing vertex colours
๐งต Here is a look into how Vertex Colours are used in Xenoblade 3!
I've put together a short thread with my best guesses
This first pic is just Noah with the vertex colours overlayed on top of his materials. However I'll remove the materials so its even clearer going forward
baha true! Gonna wait until their bodies are done, but I'm really excited and nervous to make their outfits. I hope they end up looking as good as i envisage!
02.10.2025 13:34 โ ๐ 1 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0
Image showing the newly painted eye textures
image showing the layers in Photoshop that built the final eye textures
First set of homemade textures to replace the XC3 ones - eyes! Quite pleased with the result. I won't be happy until I've replaced everything, but its nice to get a start
01.10.2025 19:49 โ ๐ 9 ๐ 1 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0All that is to say, should they ever do Switch 2 versions, the character assets would 100% still look amazing without any work whatsoever!
01.10.2025 12:21 โ ๐ 1 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0The normal map for A's body is 2048px btw, and it's totally possible that Monolith would have masters in 4096px. On Switch its really hard to appreciate the details, they are almost overkill - though cutscenes definitely benefit from this.
01.10.2025 12:21 โ ๐ 1 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 0
Colour removed, just showing normal maps enabled (left) and disabled (right)
Colour removed, just showing normal maps enabled (left) and disabled (right)
alright this is no surprise to anyone with any 3d art experience, but its cool nonetheless imo; Normal maps do SO MUCH heavy lifting! And they stand up to close scrutiny too - they still look great on a 4k display, which is insane given the game is i think 720p max?
01.10.2025 12:21 โ ๐ 5 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 0
image from 3DS Max showing the vertex alpha values; black being transparent
same shot but taken from inside Xenoblade 3, showing the final result
One thing Monolith do which I love is blending the lower eyelid using vertex alphas (as kindly demonstrated by A); so where its black will be fully transparent ingame, giving that lovely soft look. Second pic is from ingame - also note the eyelashes and eyebrowns rendering in front of the hair!
01.10.2025 11:44 โ ๐ 0 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Note all the nice little details on the XC3 models - the fake shadows for hair and eyes, little highlights on the nose/lips. I'll do those too eventually
01.10.2025 11:31 โ ๐ 1 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0
my Fei and Elly models with standard shading
A and Matthew also with standard shading
A and Matthew with Flat shading - a lot nicer imo. Obvs a cel shader would be much better still
previous pics were using flat shading atm (so texture only basically), because they look awful with normal shading and no toon shader setup! Tho tbf, the XC3 models look pretty goofy too without the proper cel shading, here is a comparison:
01.10.2025 11:28 โ ๐ 1 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 0atm I'm still borrowing some XC3 assets (face, eye and hair textures, plus Fei's hair is actually Matthews but stretched around!), though in time I'll make my own and replace them. For now I'm fully focussing on getting the face and hair forms correct
01.10.2025 11:10 โ ๐ 2 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0
So for a while I've been wanting to learn how to make game characters, but quickly realised I have no actual creativity ๐ญ
So i've settled on trying to remake Fei and Elly from Xenogears, in the style of Xenoblade 3. SUPER WIP atm but i'm actually kinda happy with how its going now.
