September Update 2 (Attachments!)

Today I've a loop to show off.

I wanted to have more finished for today. There is no manual for this stuff, no helpful step by step tutorials. The most that can be found are snippets and hints here and there but nowhere has the complete picture. I've been getting the fur simulation running correctly by metaphorically bashing my head against a brick wall. For reference the simulation and render are different steps, the sim step takes an hour+ to calculate and cache (and I do have some ideas I want to try out to optimize this). Rendering takes about 4-5mins per frame using 3 GPUS, each camera angle for this loop is 410 frames to render.

Size matters (and size difference is hot!), I've had issues with the simulation guides for fur coming in a little offset, on the smaller characters this didn't cause a problem when combined with a collection of little fixes, this was working well... That is until the polar bear and his big jiggly tummy, the mismatch was bigger and caused things to be really out of sync at certain times exposing underlying assumptions I'd made that were completely wrong. The solution, when found was not tricky to implement, about 10 mins changing up the animation>simulation pipeline and altering existing automation scripts to allow for it.

Many hours spent in late nights/early morning sessions, grinding out altering simulation settings before having something that looked promising and hitting render. Only to find on waking (or part way through the day) the problems were better but not solved. Constant failure every day for weeks on end is a hell of a thing to go through, and my 'luck' meant no matter where I started the render in the animation there always seemed to be 50-100 frames where things looked 'ok' but then it'd further degrade into a big mess. I now have a much firmer foundation to work from. Overall the simulation is in a much better place and I can tweak and improve from here (now it's stable I'm going to dial back in a bit more 'reactiveness' to the fur).

I've included the loop I'm happy with where the fur is behaving, I've also included a WIP reel with a collection of the partially finished 'fail' renders. I've learned a lot and I'm sorry that more is not done for today, and not through lack of trying. Anyone that's been subscribed here a long time has seen me struggle with other setups, things that seem insurmountable that take a long time then become standard and routine and there are better looking animations because of it. This is just another particularly tricky one.

I must say, the only reason the characters look as good as they do and the animation is as refined as it is, well that's all because of you. Everyone that's chosen to support me over the months and years. I'd not be able to spend my time attempting crazy things to find the ones that pay off without it and I'm especially grateful for the support whilst I'm still going through health issues.

So there we go. Instead of editing this post to add the additional loops when they are rendered I'll make a new post after I have a some done and then edit that post as more gets rendered, so be on the look out for that coming 'soon'. After that's done I'm on to the next animation, the raccoon rimming the wolf.