Current progress towards 0.13

Hey all!

I thought I'd let you all know where I am currently and what I've been doing.

• I'm currently finishing up the third sex CG for the update.

• After that's done I can finish up the assets I need for the story and put everything together for a release.

• It's done when it's done, but first part of next month hopefully for the release.

(GIF above is a HL/light layer only as an example mentioned below, it is not the CG)

For those that are interested in a little more detail on what I've been working on:

I'll start with the first animation:

A PoV Cowgirl CG.

• Nothing special was done on this animation as I wanted to get an idea of how long it takes to create a standard animation I was familiar with to a state I can implement into the game and time it.

The second animation:

A none PoV view Cowgirl CG.

• First none PoV CG:

Of course being my first attempt doing a third person type CG, a few mistake were made that I had to correct and it took a while to get everything done but it wasn't too bad.

• Slightly modified version of the normal rig method that I used:

Normally I'd rig using a skeleton with bones linked together, which is simple and works fine but I'd have to animate quite a few of the bones individually in some cases. So I made a small change to how I normally do the upper half of the body to avoid this a little and it seems to work well.

While making this animation I had some ideas floating around for things I could do and I really wanted to try...

Which brings me on to the third animation:

A none PoV bj/hj CG.

• Rigging the images in spine in a completely different way than usual:

After tying out what I mentioned in the previous animation with the rig, It gave me an idea for a completely different method that meant I could have certain 'control' points that each affected the whole body differently without having to control each bone. It took a while to initially setup (and make changes as I go) but working on it, I definitely think it has potential and will probably give it another try on another animation with everything I've learned here.

• Trying a different way to do the lighting:

The highlights were done in a separate layer and rendered on it's own so I can have highlights on only when necessary (Light layer only example shown as the main image for this post, and in this case it's the light from the energy effect from the hand). This one has been a quite time consuming one, setting up separate images that mimic the main animation and making changes as necessary. And I'm not sure if the end result will be worth it, but I guess I can't judge until it's all together.

• Meshed the images using a dense grid:

Normally I'd mesh everything by hand where necessary but I wanted to see how using a grid mesh would look and where it would be better or worse for future animations. So I used it on everything but the face. So far it seems to have worked well for most things except for a few exceptions where it really didn't, but at least now I know.

• Different angle and sex position:

Not too much to say except, I wasn't a fan of the more side angle on this one as it seemed harder to get to get the look that I wanted, but it's probably just because I just need more practice using different angles.

With the third animation I think I had a little too many new things I'm trying at once. I should of seen that the second animation wasn't quick to make and limit which idea I was going to try instead of all of them, but I guess I let the excitement of trying all the new ideas get the better of me.

For the next update (as much as I like trying new things), I'll limit myself to one new thing per update if I can, or at the vey least 1 per animation... so I don't end up spending excessively long messing around with several ideas on one animation that may or may not work.

P.S. I've tried to keep things mentioned more on the generalized side in how I describe it, as I'm not sure if people are interested in this sort of thing or not. But if you are, let me know. I could try a more in depth explanation with more images showing things off in the future if it seems like something people are interested in.

Have an excellent day!