Progress and New Tech Updates

Hey peeps!

I've been spending the past month or so rekitting a lot of the things I'm doing for animation production. New materials and shaders (improved textures, like sweat and wrinkle maps, see Captain Clayton below :3), better physics simulations and environments, and motion capture!

Yes, it does mean I've taken a little longer than I would have liked to release Part Two of Stellar Surf, but there's good reason, and I sure as hell haven't been twiddling my thumbs!

(New pata/sweat textures for the Captain)

A lot of time has also been going into the new UI design for interfaces present in the film, as well as improvements to Clayton's bath water sims (not currently sold, he's got too much paperwork to get in on that market)

An early ref of the pullout mobile workstation Clayton has in his tub (just in case shit hits the fan on his hour off)

And a complete overhaul of Griff and Coby's shuttle UI from Part One. I decided I would prefer a more detail than what the SFM model offered, and wanted to improve my HUD skills also for other interfaces in the future.

Something I've been striving particularly for in the past few months is a set of better rigs for my boys. Improving facial rigging/tails/jiggle physics has been my priority over the past summer, and the results have been promising thus far.

PAR EXAMPLE with widdle Gwiff (raw data with minimal cleanup, face courtesy of the boyf)

Combining my custom shapekeys alongside the mocap also has the added benefit of making the pair truly expressive.

On Coby's new facial rig here, the raw cleaned data before any additional animation.

And after, the changes may appear subtle, but significantly improve his characterisation. A nice balance of performance capture augmenting my traditional techniques has excited me the most.

Aaaaaaand some shots below incorporating said tech, where the boys discuss Griff's blunder ¬_¬

I really appreciate all of your support on this major project thus far. It's been incredibly ambitious in retrospect, with its ups and downs, but I've loved being able to improve my workflow for better quality furry spaceman bara. Check out the MEGA WIPs folder for additional shots from Stellar Surf Part Two! <3

TLDR: I'll be dropping a longer preview of Stellar Surf Part Two on Monday, with more goodies over the weekend~ :3