Making Rose, the spider-doll
How the creature of Nowhere House went from a detailed Blender model to a character that hunts you in real time.
Rose is the heart of Nowhere House: a doll the size of a child, who moves like a spider. She crawls across floors, walls and ceilings.
She was modeled in Blender, piece by piece: body, head, skin, the bows and the hair, the clothes. Each part is built by a script that can be run again, so a proportion or a color can be changed and the whole doll rebuilt in minutes.
That detailed model is far too heavy for a game running in real time. So a second version is made for Nowhere House: a lighter mesh that keeps the detail of the original in its textures, a skeleton for animation, and her hair as separate locks. That version is loaded into Godot, the engine the game runs on.
In the game, she watches you, plays with you and hunts you. In the trailer, you can see her climb the walls and walk on the ceiling.
