BlueLightSFM

Lara Christmas Poster

With a spark of creativity, and the last bit of free time I have before Christmas craziness kicks off, I actually managed to do a thing! Have a great holiday season, guys.

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Holiday Update

It's not much of an update this week as I've been kinda busy, and things are only about to get busier. I'm frustrated that I haven't gotten more done lately, but there's not much more I can do with Christmas coming up.

There's a lot of exciting possibilities for next year though, whether it's a new PC build, Blender 2.8, or just improving animations in SFM.

Most importantly, thank you. I'm grateful for all the support and feedback you've given me. You guys have been incredibly enc...

Update

Hey guys, I appreciate all the feedback and support from last week, and I've put a lot of thought into it. I've still been busy and likely will be for the rest of the year due to the holidays.

I guess I'll start by talking about the movie. What I have done is go through loads of Mass Effect props to re-make some more Omega style builds. I've got a lot of suitable props selected and some ideas... though I haven't really translated it into much. It seems I've hit in inspirational low for the mov...

Year in Review

Welcome to the roller coaster that is my SFM work, this new low brought to you by the Tumblrpocolypse. I think most points in this post have been mentioned before, but this is a more comprehensive post, and I think that I can articulate a few things better.

I'll start with Tumblr. It certainly sucks that 10k+ followers are going down the toilet. Twitter doesn't seem like a great alternative, but it's also the most popular one for now. It's possible that branching out to other sites could be be...

Undercover ASSignment Scene 3 Update

Start of scene 3, take two. I've still been pretty busy after the holiday, but I've been thinking a lot about the movie, and I think I've got a better start on scene 3.

For starters, I've gone through the audio another time. Re-ordered some stuff, and put back in some lines that I took out.  It's shorter than the original script, but longer than the previous change. The scene will run about 64 seconds now, and the script has a better flow to it.

Secondly, scene build. This is still ...

Update / Ideas

It's American Thanksgiving this week, and I'm going to be pretty busy, so here is an early update.

First up, I've been tinkering around with Cora. I wanted to go for something I haven't really done before, and I think I came up with a pretty nice pose. I've had difficulty making a good scene build for it though, so pictured so far is the most basic one I've come up with.

Next, plans for December. The feedback from the latest loop got me thinking. Originally, I wanted to push Undercover A...

Undercover ASSignment Update

Excitement to begin a new scene quickly became frustration as I struggled to start work. It's fairly daunting coming into a 80-90 second scene. I usually start with lip-sync, and that would be a fairly simple place to start. But I'm not really all that pleased with the flow of dialogue and pacing of the scene. It would be a waste to do lip-sync if I end up changing some of the dialogue out. As it is, I've decided to get rid of most dialogue from the scene, and keep the moaning so it's more of a ...

Miranda Blood Pack Loop

This was a really fun one to work on. Credit to Zizzero for the scene build. It's an incredibly well set up pose, and that took a lot of pressure off animating it. Also credit to ZeroDiamonds for Miranda's audio. It's actually re-purposed from the movie since it was short enough and paced well.

Quite a different flavor of Omega to the movie. I wouldn't min...

Undercover ASSignment Scene 2C Preview

The third part of scene 2 is preview ready. It adds another 43 seconds to the movie!

Gfycat (No Sound)

Mega (Sound)

Undercover ASSignment Scene 2 Update

Working on that N7 day loop really helped the Mass Effect mood. I've finished animation on the third part of scene 2, which more or less completes animation for all of scene 2. I'll still need to fix some things like jiggles and lighting, but it is preview ready.

For some numbers: the third part of the scene 2 is about 43 seconds long. Scene 2 itself is essentially three separate scenes, and they total for 2 minutes and 24 seconds. Including the intro, the whole movie is up to 4 minutes and 39...

WIP Update

I wanted to do something a bit different for this week's update. I'm briefly gonna over some other animations I've been working on and things I've been thinking about doing.

Main picture teases Alexstrasza since I'm on a warcraft kick. The main loop is more or less done. The weighting on her ass is pretty nice, so I like how it's coming out. I'm also utilizing rotation locks more than I usually do for this type of animation, so it's interesting to still try some new techniques.

Next up i...

Witch Mercy Poster

I don't have an animation with her ready for Halloween, so I slapped this poster together.

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Jaina Poster Commission

Another WoW Commission. Jaina's new look for BFA sure looks nice.

Clothed 

Nude 

Undercover ASSignment Update + Suggestions

Continued working on the extra scene since people really liked it. I worked on her head motion and lips for the majority of the scene. In total, the scene is about 40 seconds long and I've got 30 seconds of it nearly complete. It's almost good enough to be released as a prototype but not quite. It's possible I could have it preview ready for next week.

I've also done some more thinking about the movie structure. I want a public release of the movie up to around scene 3 by the end of the year. ...

Dragon Age Poster Commission

A poster commission with Leliana and Morrigan.

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Sylvanas Poster Commission

First time doing some WoW smut. I have no idea how interested the rest of you guys are in WoW, but this poster commission came out quite nice.

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Undercover ASSignment Scene 2B Preview

Another 49 seconds for the movie!

Mega 

Gyfcat (No Sound)

To recap so far:

• Intro ~45 seconds
• Scene 1 (both parts) ~ 80 seconds
• Scene 2 (both parts) ~ 100 seconds

At 3+ minutes, it's finally feeling like there's been s...

FemShep WIP 2

I'm still not entirely satisfied with her shaders, especially her hair, but I think I've managed to make the lighting look a lot nicer.

What do you guys think, does it look better than anything I could make in SFM?

FemShep WIP (Blender)

Based on the poll winner. Opening this to all for more feedback. While I think it looks good, it doesn't really look great. Considering it takes about 10x the rendering, it's not really worth finishing until I can get something that definitively looks better than what I can make in SFM. Let me know what you think.

Undercover ASSignment Scene 2A Preview

Lots of refinement since the prototype build. There's still some things I already want to fix, but it is animation complete for the most part. Of course, it is still lacking editing and most sound, but I think this scene has really come together well.

Gfycat (No Sound)

Mega (MP4 Download)

Feedb...

FemShep Poll

The FemShep model is more or less ready to animate in Blender. I haven't done a poll in a while, so I thought to make one about the location to help determine the flavor of the animation.

I want to make a new scene build based on the winner. It'll be something simple so render times aren't crazy, but I'd like to try to build a nice Mass Effect scene in Blender.

Other models may need to be prepared for the animation as well. Ideas are welcome.

Blender FemShep Update

I've got her IK rig more or less done. What an adventure that was. The process itself was fairly simple though tedious. Ultimately, the rig is set up to use the weighting from her original bones. 

The main problem was with her spine, especially her upper chest and neck. It seemed to have to do with how poorly her original bones were weighted. In additon to her pelvis bone being too high and a useless spine 4, she has a spine 3 bone that's just awful. It's awful in SFM too, but you can eas...

Ciri Poster (Blender)

Very slowly adopting Blender. It took quite a lot of time re-rendering. I'm definitely going to have to think about upgrading if I'm going to use Blender more often.

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Jill Poster Commissions

Here's the latest group of poster commissions. I had some strong creative inspiration while making these, and they might just be some of the best posters I've made in a while.

One 

Two 

Three 

2018-08-24 17:36:59 +0000 UTC View Post

Undercover ASSignment Scene 1B Preview

I've been working on this basically all day, so I'm gonna keep the text short. Part B is about 42 seconds long.

• Updated the lighting
• Updated Miranda's lips and facial animations
• Edited the cameras a bit
• Finished animating the last parts of the scene, including a new transition scene

There's still stuff to fix up better, but the scene is nearly finished in SFM. Next, I want to update part A to have consistent camera and lighting work, for a full Scen...

Older Poster Commissions

Miranda 1 

Miranda 2 

Miranda 2 (Clean)

Cora 

FemShep Poster

First finished render with Blender! I'd really like to know what you guys think of it. I've spent so long working on this that I've lost all concept of quality. 

While the lighting and shaders are fairly basic, I spent a lot of time messing around with them. Also, I had to pose it with forward kinematics. It's doable for posing posters but very tedious.

As for what's next, I'd really like to learn how to set up IK rigs. That's going to be necessary for animating anyway. In the meant...

Undercover ASSignment Scene 1A Preview

It's a big update! Probably my most productive week in a while. With the change to blender, it's helped focus all my SFM time to the movie. First part of scene 1 is effectively done, and it comes out to around 44 seconds. This doesn't include final quality render, post processing, or much audio, but the animation is basically done. Quality of the file itself is especially low to fit on WebmShare.

Lots of non-loop animations and variation added. Some changes to camera work and lights as well. I...

Blender

My first cycles render in blender... I didnt say it would be a sexy render. I went through a popular tutorial series to create this. It was pretty great and informative. I learned quite a bit about modelling, materials, particles, lighting, and render settings.

Although I just followed along the steps, I actually created the models myself. The sprinkles are also a particle system. I probably won't do much modeling, but I think it's important to know the basics because I will need to d...

Undercover ASSignment: Omega Update

The restructure update. Thanks to your feedback last week, I've done some editing to the movie. For the most part, most scenes were only reduced by about 5-10 seconds. Longer scenes such as 2, 5, 8, 9, and 13 had reductions of about 20 seconds or more. The biggest change is that I think I will cut scenes 10 and 11 entirely as they were fairly redundant and got in the middle of the krogan scenes. Additionally, I think a shortened scene 13 will make more sense if it comes before scene 12.

The re...