Sunday Progress Report (Patreon)

Stuff I've been working on this week. Fur, Tails, Bulges Fluid sim and Animation blocking 

After many weeks of doing animation polish I built up quite a list of little tasks I wanted to tackle so I've been putting some work into each this week. 

Fur. The idea for this one started one night after re watching a certain animated feature and I decided to try and put a bit more work into my fuzz and for some unknown reason I chose the fox to work on first ^_^ I've included a collection of comparison picks with original 0.1,  current 0.2 and this new 0.3 build of the groom, 3 picks where they are sliced to compare and 3 of just the headshot in full. (I also added a one off shot with 0.3 from below a paw because when I saw that angle I'd knew some of you would like it.) let me know what you think of this new groom in the comments.

This groom will add a bit of render time but won't know if it's an acceptable amount on current hardware for animation until a few more characters are done. Time to calculate a frame does not scale linearly because characters are different sizes with different thicknesses of fur. I'll be keeping 0.2 and 0.3 if time to render is too big for animations I'll keep 0.3 for stills and switch back to 0.2 for animation, that is until I can get my hands on a new graphics card.... (Nvidia please just let me give you some money so I can have a 3080, I've been trying for weeks)  

Tails. as I go along I'll be looking to add improvements to everything, rigging is no exception. I've reworked the rig and added "spline IK" It means tails can be controlled more like pieces of rope, being able to drag around the tip and the middle where the apex of the bend is, rather than alter each joint that makes up the tail independently (think posing an action figure, needing to move one joint at a time) more natural looking poses can be achieved quickly. (this is not just limited to tails, expect other places to be a lot more malleable ^.^) Also done some script work in this area so new/existing characters can have this set up quicker. 

Tummy Bulges (OwO) The fox is getting pounded in part 3 of the animation and I want him to be nice and stretchy. I needed to get to grips with how to do bulges and I've found a few solutions (these are not featured in the blocking pics this time, maybe next week) what's even better this is not just limited to large changes now I've got this it allows for doing smaller shot specific changes and corrections to make the animation look even better. 

Animation Blocking, Staying In Eating Out Part 3. As can be seen by the blocking put up for the last animation these should be thought of as rough sketches rather than 100% fixed ideas, camera position, lighting and framing will come later. I'm just getting something down to get a handle on the flow this animation will take. 

Side activity from last week was: Fluid sim, I've started blocking out the 'basted otter' animation, as you can see from the attachments there is going to be use for the work I put in two weeks ago getting multiple emitters working at the same time. Also looking at Staying In Eating Out Part 2, I could go and add some fluid sim to the bit where the Yeen is holding the Fox down and finally releasing him as a bonus clip. would anyone be interested in that?

Side activity for this week is: Joint based dynamics this week I'll be finishing up my work on this and seeing what combination of animation and settings allows for nice swishy tails completing this will allow me to start doing dynamics passes during animation to make sure everything plays nicely together once done along with using the already ballparked ear movement to make them a bit more flexible. (also toying with some scripts to bring this movement back from joints to keyframes on controls so it can be modified/'art directed' further)

Moving forward this week is going to be continuing to work on blocking out Staying In Eating Out part 3 and getting Joint Based Dynamics working. Phew that was a long one, if you read it all <3 (but I totally understand if you just skipped the wall of text and looked at the pictures)