July 2023 Update [Video]

Sorry for the late reply! Yeah!! I am also really happy about how comfortable it is to move the mouth! --- [<33 I'm so glad you liked the countdowns! I thought it would be a useful visual! Helpful to skim through the video or skip to certain parts! There's some big chunks of silence too.] --- That is a really good question about the strange shadows! And to be honest I'm not 100% sure! I've not experimented with shaders, lighting or rendering yet. -For example if I were to have flat shading then there would be 0 problem as long a the textures don't stretch in weird ways [but that area is smooth colors so there would be no problems]. -Even with normal lighting it might not be an issue depending on the way I light the scene. -And I imagine, even if it does show up, perhaps I could look into the methods used for anime characters, where that area around the mouth often leaves very ugly shadows, but there's ways to change the "normals", and you can get smooth shadows. [I don't know how to do it but there's lots of "normal editing in blender" tutorials!] --- I feel like those areas are tricky for sure, but the biggest contributor might be the lack of resources! It's not something easy to share sadly, so you really have to dig around to find stuff, or end up "rediscovering" things on your own that have already been done before and probably better;;;. But you're right, in general there's a lack of focus in that area, from riggers and animators. The mentality seems to be "All it needs is to open & close". Or having it 100% automated (with the only focus being penetration). Sometimes animators will opt for anal, not as a preference, but because it's simpler to animate (or because the rig doesn't have decent options for animating the pussy). For my models I'd really like to make that area feel soft and plump/fleshy. And I'd love to animate stuff like rubbing, frottage and cunnilingus. For me, topology was the most intimidating! But I applied the same mentality as the retopology of other areas. Like the face, creating loops around defining areas and edges, and then connecting things! The rig can be as complex or simple as you want/need. I see it as being easier than the mouth for example. No phonemes or lower lips following the jaw. But I've seen complex rigs where for example, as the character's legs open, the lips follow a bit and open and everything feels connected. My approach makes rigging simple, but it might make animation more time consuming if I add those types of details. I am really looking forward to/scared of making a character with a dick though! It seems like the rig can get quite complex and I don't fully understand the requirements for it, but I've seen that it usually points to a target or these rigs usually have the shaft follow a curve? [I think it's called "spline IK"] Then there's realistic foreskin roll... how...!? A whole different world! My first phallic rig might just be a dildo for Tekki though!

That's an impressive amount of movement you can do in the mouth without having to do much manual work! I mean, posing work. Seeing you grab it and shift it around and only have to play with the teeth in a few positions is pretty great. (also, little details in your production, like the silence countdown, are nice touches, thanks for that!) You referenced "strange shadows" on the "small mouth" part, do those follow through in an actual render, or just in the...uh...for lack of better terms, "workspace"? Maybe that's a silly question. I'm mostly asking because of very very old knowledge in other programs. XD The crotch rig sections of the video are interesting to me because I've seen some SFM (and now Blender) artists doing similar things with models, and it always seems like an area that's hard to do right if it's going to have any kind of real focus, which is why so many people doing pics or animations have to only partially have it shown, or cheat. Impressive that you've gotten what appears to be a lot of flexibility without too too much complication. Either that, you're doing so much of a better job of explaining and illustrating in the video that it seems way less complicated to me. Either could be true. Audio quality was very crisp and understandable the entire video, and your narration was great! Thanks for the update video, and hope you're doing well! ^_^

epyon_avenger