Progress Report - October 15, 2024

Hello, everyone!

So fun fact, I didn't realize I used the same exact shot for a point of comparison this week as I did last week. Total coincidence that it just has the best representation of the changes made, within the first project file.

With that being said!

Every day, we step closer to the finish line. All of the jitter animation is done across the 15-minute project, as well as all of the camera choreography / animation. I'm now working on fixing hair clipping. I've gotten the first project file cleaned up, with two more project files to work on throughout the week.

The latter project files should be a fair bit easier to deal with, because there's only one long-haired character (Symmetra) in them, as opposed to the three characters in the first project file (Emily, DVa, and Symmetra). Pharah's hair is fairly well-behaved, with the only major issue being her bangs clipping through her cap - something I was able to largely fix by simply editing and recompiling her hair. Similarly, DVa's hair in the remaining project files is tied back, so it really shouldn't cause any problems. Ana's hair, when it comes up, shouldn't cause any issues either.

That all just leaves Symmetra's hair, which will definitely be the major hurdle for this pass. Unfortunately, while Source has a robust jigglebone engine for generating dynamic motion, it doesn't have any collisions. Meaning that while the hair can bounce around convincingly while characters talk (look at Pharah's braids in the WIP), it doesn't respect gravity or clipping - see how Symmetra's and DVa's hair are both basically just straight lines in the top GIF. And so any bending to conform to gravity or to shoulders I have to do by hand, which isn't too big a deal for most of the motions. It's really only when characters have major head motions, like Symmetra looking up at Pharah to talk, that things get complicated.

But that's where we are. We've gotten to the point that the focus is now on extremely minor details, which means the journey is almost over. As I've said before, we're now working on the things that people don't notice when it's done right, but definitely notice when it's missing.

After all of the hair clipping has been tamed, the next thing to do is go over all of the shots and make sure the lighting looks good, adjust the sweat values as necessary, and make sure I didn't miss anything obvious.

Then I do a low-quality full render and see how it all comes together in the edit.

And if everything is looking good there, I pull the trigger and do the final 4k render.

Like I said, we're getting close now. It is possible I'll be ready for the final 4k render by this time next week. It's not a promise, just a possibility.

Until next week, everyone!