Sunday Progress Report (Patreon)

Stuff done this week, more work on Staying In Eating Out Part 3, I've extended the current camera angle, added in some more movement refined what was there and will be looking to continue refinement and maybe get off to simulation for some test passes to see if there is anything I've overlooked, This is the second to last camera angle, the fox is going to get sticky and in the final camera angle the yeen will be going all out on the fox ^_^ 

I've also done a load of work on R+D this week, I've included a few things in the attachments, I honestly didn't think I'd get as much done as I did. The system I've come up with, (tentatively the Automated Stretching System but I'm willing to change it if anyone can think of a more amusing backronym ^_^) is a rather complex little setup. This has multiple systems working in concert and having everything play nice together is tricky. One of the bigger time sinks after working out the initial setup has been refactoring and scripting it, doing it once by hand was tedious, doing it for every character would be mind numbingly dull and with this amount of 'wiring' a lot of chances for something to be done wrong. I succeeded in modularizing it so any character with the right topology can have it set up in seconds, (that's why taking a day or so to get the scripting working was worth it) 

Version 0.1 is with 24 points tethering, this worked perfectly fine close to the tip of the toy but fails when it gets further down as the more the points get spread out the less resolution they have and more clipping happens (see the v01 attachments) there is also a little bit of juddering around the one second mark (frame 26) that can no longer happen due to changes in 0.2, this is the only one I could fully render with texture and fur as the character needed a topology change for version 2.

version 0.2 was finished up and shown to the Executive Producers on Thursday, V0.2 has double the amount of points (48), refactored the system and added some offset for manual tweaking (I didn't need to use them for the playblast capture). V0.2 required redoing the topology on the tiger (and eventually the other characters) because of this topo change I've only got a 'clay render' playblast to show the output (I've not even UV unwrapped this version of the tiger yet, let alone done any fur work so no textures for now)

Version v0.2a On Saturday I had an idea, due to this being more rigging than simulation I could add a control to hand animate the friction effects. the included playblast was done very quick proof of concept of this but as you can see 'drag' can be added, and changing the look is altering keyframes (fast), not rerunning a simulation (slow)     

All this work opens the possibility for appendages that are a lot more.... adventurous. I didn't want to go crazy on making fantastical shapes when first starting, as the complexities in animating them kinda put me off the whole idea, now I've got this tech up and running however... lets just say a dragon or horse (or any other interesting species) are a lot more possible. Along the same lines the general package area was designed with the idea that I'd be doing clean work as well with these character, (that didn't last long) so I might look to incorporate them into the main body, either with or without the sheath and work out how to go from soft to hard. in a more aesthetically pleasing way, To give you the general idea I've dusted off an old sculpt (bog standard human) and put it on the tiger (this is very early proof of concept, without fur and as a sculpt so no optimization with animation ready topology) 

and to reiterate, this is the majority of the rigging solved, this Automated Stretching System was a big one I've been trying to find a solution to for over half a year now looking at simulation and a few other rigging techniques. The characters bodies and faces are now up to the standard where I feel I have plenty of control over them. (including the spline IK stuff I did a while back) and the last thing rigging wise will be refactoring the junk area in general. At that point I think I'd be happy to declare the rigging systems as a 1.0 where (short of something really interesting in terms of speed improvement or ease of animation) they are done and I won't need to rerig the characters that have already been done again (going back and constantly redoing work is in no way a satisfying experience.) 

The one thing that's a bit tricky is all this new tech is coming in the middle of an animation. I put it up for a vote of the Executive Producers and it's been decided I should go and add the wang tension effects I showed off last week to the fox and yeen then re render the last camera angle from part 3 with the skin tension in effect. And go on to alter the foxes topology and get the new Automated Stretching System installed so it's ready for the final camera angle where the yeen really goes to town on him. ^_^

This week is going to be adding tension effects, prepping the camera angle 3 for rerendering and continuing on with the animation. Next week will be rebuild of the fox + animation work so there won't be an Executive Producer poll as I know what I'm getting up to (though I might make a post for the EPs on Thursday anyway to show where I'm at ^_^) 

Let me know what you think :D