"A Gift" - Animation update!
Added 2021-05-18 03:11:56 +0000 UTCThe animation is more or less finished! This is the 'quick' viewport render I'm showing the commissioner to get final approval before sending it off to render, but since I'm fairly certain they'll like it I'ma show it here too.
Now that you can see the whole animation, this is another chance to guess that new animation technique I tried out here, if you wanna! As a hint, it's nothing blender or even 3D specific, it's something that's been used in animation for probably almost as long as animation has existed, and I'm not clever at all for using it- I just never thought to try it myself until now for some reason.
If you don't give a shit, well I'd still be happy to hear your thoughts on the animation in general then. x3 Keep in mind, the glitchy weirdness you see in places, like the paintings and the shadows and lamps is down to this being a low quality render and should be improved in the final render!
Comments
This is great! Even with the mild glitchiness of the viewport render it is still insanely clean looking and feeling. I really haven't seen this kind of quality in a long while within the community. Props to you! I really hope you keep doing this for a long while, it's a nice breath of fresh air.
Zenithian
2021-05-24 02:13:50 +0000 UTCHeh. I must be blind then or it's very subtle :P I ran it through Premiere frame by frame to find an obvious example of it, looking hard at fast moving moments in time. Hell, I thought you were using Cycles. Blender has done quit a bit with Eevee it seems. Try as I might to give up the 3D game, along comes some quality work like yours to keep the spark alive. Two minutes per frame puts the entire render at nearly seventy hours, assuming nothing has to be redone as you indicated above. That said, it's rare to see work of this quality within the genre. Plenty of folks who can do very impressive 2D art, but those who can run the entire 3D pipeline on their own and output this level of work is very rare indeed.
Dayelyte
2021-05-23 05:10:56 +0000 UTCOh, look at that! I didn't even notice that one, hah. I had an issue in the background and had to fix it with a second set of renders, but to save time I didn't render the characters in the second set and just used a mask to overlay the fixed renders on the old ones. But it looks like for a frame or two I accidentally let the character-free mask overlap lizanne a bit so she starts to disappear a little. Oops! I don't think most people will even notice though so I'm not too fussed about it. It's a little funny that you caught that, but don't notice the stretch since it's happening at the same time pretty much. If you frame-by-frame it you'll notice her face gets a bit long as she's falling on to the bed. :P There are lots of other examples too, basically anywhere I went for a particularly snappy movement. I just render locally on a single 2080ti. I used Eevee so render times aren't nearly as bad as they could be- about 2 minutes per frame.
Ruaidri
2021-05-22 23:00:27 +0000 UTCThere is some oddity with Lizanne's head at frames 396-398 ( final render only ) but you would have to go frame by frame to notice it. ( No idea what would cause it either ) I did notice you even animated the movement of the curtains in the background :P Damn this turned out very nice. As for what new animation technique you speak of, I don't see any obvious motion blur or squash / stretch so if it is, it's very subtle. You use a render service for final renders or just load it up and let it cook for a few days on local boxes ? Curious what the render time per frame came out to.
Dayelyte
2021-05-22 04:18:29 +0000 UTCLizanne is such a nice character to see always, and Nidhala is obviously one of my favorites, this interaction is aces! Edit: I see the smear frames! I see one at 00:03.668 :D
Jykinturah
2021-05-19 17:08:40 +0000 UTCYour bodily motion is just unparalleled in amazingness. Your characters feel so alive and real, not to mention that you put them in wonderful situations. Always awesome to see something from you!
Ferric
2021-05-19 14:10:25 +0000 UTCWill have to do something with cheetah involving strap-ons, light bondage, and neck-biting sometime :3
Pojodan
2021-05-18 18:37:20 +0000 UTCAw, thanks man! :3 Someone guessed it in a comment up above- smear frames to smooth out fast movements a bit. Nothing huge, just something new I'm experimenting with!
Ruaidri
2021-05-18 18:15:58 +0000 UTCThanks! Sadly this one isn't going to get much messier than it is already. :P
Ruaidri
2021-05-18 18:15:06 +0000 UTCNice choice of wording there. ;P Hah, thaaaanks! I definitely don't do enough F/F stuff in my normal rotation, so it's always kinda nice when it does pop up!
Ruaidri
2021-05-18 17:45:01 +0000 UTCI do not know where to start The hat that flies away, the throwing and catching of the magic wand, the pulling away of the hand by taking hold of her bangle, biting the tail (which she often does and likes to do). There are many small things that have so much effect, make it livelier and make me want to see more. Great job and thank you RU Unfortunately I can't guess and I'm too inexperienced for that.
Chillum
2021-05-18 15:41:27 +0000 UTCLove the animation. Probably the cutest one of your making. Can't wait for the finished messy render
Screw the Shadow Walker
2021-05-18 06:22:15 +0000 UTCWew. Wew! Gosh you're good at this. Skilled as you are at fluid dynamics, having a nice F/F scene sure does rub in all the right ways for me. Thank you for sharing! <3
Pojodan
2021-05-18 06:04:21 +0000 UTCDang! Saw your reply below about squish and stretch/smear for motion, the movements felt so natural that I didn't even catch it! The jerkiness of your animation is a big positive selling point, but I must admit that it always has been a bit spiky. But for that small drawback it adds so much -oomph- that it was a no-brainer tradeoff. But if you can get rid of that minor negative by doing motion stretching... Oh man! Super excited to see where you take this technique, if it works out to your liking!
Bloudin Ruo
2021-05-18 04:09:08 +0000 UTCYes! Well, no. But it's so close that I'm going to call it a win. x3 If I understand correctly, squash and stretch is more about selling speed and impact- for example, a character landing hard from a fall would be squished down to make their landing look harder. The new thing I tried in this one was smear frames. Which is a very similar idea, but is also about selling speed but proves to smooth out really snappy movements. I feel like they're slightly different concepts (or maybe one is a form of the other?) but like I said, so close that it's basically correct. Nidhala's excited movements are so quick that at 24 fps they just look jerky, and I haven't had any luck with motion blur... I'm not sure why it took me so long to think to try it but it seems to work pretty well. With some refining it might look real nice. :D Anyway, my animation nerdery aside, thanks! I'm glad you're liking it! I had fun playing up the character's personalities in this one.
Ruaidri
2021-05-18 03:55:06 +0000 UTCSquash and stretch! (Unless you've done that before too) Also, I adore this animation. The details in the body language, the tail bite, the sweet expressions on Nidhala's face as she watches her prey- er, partner. It's all so good.
trashbyte
2021-05-18 03:49:09 +0000 UTCThis was a bit more of a gentle animation as opposed to my usual fare (where I'm throwing spunk everywhere, hah) so I really did try my best to make the body language as tight as I'm able because there's nothing else to make the animation interesting! Technically your guess is correct in that I did do that, but it's not what I'm referring to... and that's not really an animation trick I'd say. The thing I'm referring to is specific to the animation- the way the characters move.
Ruaidri
2021-05-18 03:46:03 +0000 UTCThose boob physics, those cloth physics, the deformation, the tail-nibble, the closeup! While F/F doesn't personally tickle my buttons, I of course can't help but applaud the quality! I love that there's so much body language and expression in here. Without even looking at their faces you can just feel exactly what the emotions and sensations are by the way you've animated the rest of the models. Wonderful work! As for the technique... Is that a real life still-frame as the outdoors backdrop behind the window?
Bloudin Ruo
2021-05-18 03:36:11 +0000 UTCI wasn't expecting it to be quite that funny, but I'll take it. :P
Ruaidri
2021-05-18 03:17:39 +0000 UTCi irl lol'd when she flipped the wand and caught it
James
2021-05-18 03:15:28 +0000 UTC
