Sera the mercenary, sitting on a bench by the guild's east wall waiting to get paid

I thought it'd be nice to sit an NPC at the furniture under the guild's east wall. On screen it looked like a table, but it was actually a bench.

At 0.8× scale, that bench has a seat at 0.63 m, but the sitting animation I made in 152 is built for a chair height of 0.43 m. So I decided to fit the bench to the animation first and add one more NPC sitting there, facing the hall.

Screens I built

I lowered the bench seat from 0.63 m to 0.43 m (about 0.55×, 1.8 m long, 0.48 m deep). Now it actually reads as a bench on screen instead of a table.

Sitting here is Sera, a mercenary. Waiting for the pay to be settled, Sera sits with their back to the wall looking at the hall, and doesn't turn around when you talk. The three lines connect to other village characters: Elise never gets a single coin of the pay wrong, Sera chased off a big crab under the river bridge, and once paid, Sera plans to have a drink at Marco's tavern while listening to Pelli sing. The idle animation starts at 25% with a speed of 0.92 so it's out of step with the other NPCs.

The hips are at 0.506 m, on top of the bench (0.428 m), and the back of the head stops just in front of the wall surface. The knees are past the bench's front edge, so the shins hang down off the bench naturally.

Locked in as is. Paths connect up to 1.0 m in front of the bench, and conversations with all six hall NPCs, Sera included, work fine.

Things I thought about

• Fitting the bench, not the pose. If I lower the bench to the clip height, I can use the sitting animation from 152 as is.
• Model and hair color. I put a light blond hair material on a villager model, so Sera doesn't look like Dana, who uses a model from the same family.

Rabbit hole: the back of the head and hair ornament going 14 cm into the wall

The merchant model I picked first had long hair and a big ribbon, so when seated it stuck out up to 0.47 m behind the hips. It also had the same hair and ornament materials as Noa. I switched to a villager model with short hair at the back (about 0.30 m behind the hips) and gave it a different hair color.

Rabbit hole: shins sinking 6 cm into the bench's front edge

The seated knees are 0.23 m in front of the hips, but the bench's front edge was further forward than the knees. I moved the bench back so the knees are 2–4 cm past the front edge. The back of the bench is 5 cm in front of the wall surface.