The VHL skater is finished
Big news from the workshop: the VHL skater model is officially finished. The character that will take the ice in every match is complete, in the game, and it arrived together with a brand-new set of skating and idle animations.
Finishing a character model is a bigger deal than it might sound. The skater is the thing you look at for an entire match: every rush, every goal, every replay runs through it. It has to hold up next to the arena, the lighting, and the VFX work that came before it, and it has to do that from every camera angle at full competitive speed. That bar is why we took the time to get it right, and why today counts as a milestone.
With the model done, the attention shifts to how it moves. The new skating and idle animations are imported and running in-game, and that is where the current work lives: making the skating animation feel like actual skating. Ice is unforgiving to animate. A normal run cycle reads instantly as someone jogging on a slippery floor, so the animation has to sell glide, edges, and momentum instead of footsteps. That tuning is happening right now, and it won't be called done until it looks like hockey.
The full showcase is up on our YouTube channel, and as always, playtests are announced first on Discord. See you on the ice, and soon you'll look better getting there.