PxlFur

Starting things back up

I'm back and feeling a lot better.

I'd like to say thank you to everyone for the likes and comments on the 'pausing' post, it certainly made me feel a bit better about things at a time when I was very low. <3

Reading the concerns raised along with finally having some space to reflect, I'm going to restructure the way I work to try to make sure this burnout does not happen again. 

To give some context. The first week was tough, I felt like a failure when I ...

Pausing Patreon for a month

Hi everyone, 

I've dealt with depression on and off for years, normally it's a day every now and again, so I take some time and it passes. But this current low-point has been going on for several weeks now and I've not been able to shake it. I'm burnt out.

I've reached a point where just trying to plough through work and put on a happy face is not helping, instead it's making it worse. 

As I need time to rest and it coming up to the holiday season (and a week's bre...

Sunday Progress Report

Here he is, the Raccoon's animation debut

The first part of the week was finishing off the fur, the rest of the week has been peppered with loads of little fixes that crop up when a new rig finally starts getting articulated and errors show up, lots of annoyances that eat time.

I decided this week, because of trying out some new things I'd not concentrate on making one thing really polished, instead opting to make a few things and get them rendered so I could get feedba...

Sunday Progress Report

Hi, welcome to the Sunday Progress report.

This week I've finished off the simulation and released the animation and made a lot of headway in rigging and grooming the Raccoon.

You can check the previous post for the animation release and details of me fighting with the simulation. For the remainder of the week I've been rigging the raccoon and working on his fur, so far I've got the rig script setup with all the reference files. inital data has been filled in so now if ...

Midweek Update

Here it is, a bit later than planned, The completed animation, Moonlight Mischief :D

Why so late? The internal simulation was not cooperating at all, I spent a solid 5 days just altering settings and telling a simulation to cook for the internal shot, waiting between 5 and 30 mins each time (where nothing else could be done on the PC) If I could not get the shot looking good I'd have pulled all internal shots from the animation, several times I thought I had it only to get to...

Sunday Progress Report

This week I've been rendering the climax animation, working on the internal shot, work on the Raccoon rig. 

I've rendered the climax animation both standard and alternative, plan was to do this during the nights this week so I'd have a strait shot at working on other things during the day, got the animation done by Monday and then my computer decides to reboot during the night Two days in a row whilst I was sleeping, meaning to get the renders done for today I had to the...

Sunday Progress Report

Hello and welcome to a rather sticky progress report :D 

The Standard Climax Animation is done, I hope you enjoy it, this took over 70gig of geo data for the fluid alone, 4 hours for the simulation to cook, rendering all these shots took over 3 days. (loading that much geo slows down the renders so it takes about double the time per frame)

Got the animation completed for the standard shot on Wednesday and then worked long into the night (and finished early morning)...

Sunday Progress Report

Hello ^,^ 

This week I've done even more work on the climax animation, worked on getting fur nice and matted when it gets splatted, got a preview animation rendered and in general a lot of ground work has been done.

Part of the week got eaten by the fact that the thing I use for fur does not like working on referenced files and never got saved. (and I only found that when opening the file several days after :/ ) I needed to redo a load of work, (not going to make t...

Sunday Progress Report

Hi :D This week has been spent doing more animation work on the climax.

Part of the week was spent making the fox a bit stretchier (the preview animation shown last time only really worked from that specific camera angle) I've spent a bit of time reworking the 'standard' version as it required different animation from the rather knotty 'alt' one. (less push and tug more smooth glide) due to this some animation fixes needed to be redone a second time and there might be slight ...

Sunday Progress Report

Hi this week I've been making progress on the climax animation.

The climax will be an extension of the 'moonlit ride' loop (As voted for by the Executive Producers)

I'm breaking this down into several parts, first the characters get a bit faster, then even faster (with some knot riding), followed by  the climax with lots of gooey mess. Between these sections will be short linker animations with characters going from one speed to the next.

So far I've worked o...

Sunday Progress Report

Welcome to the Sunday Progress report 

This week has been a lot of setting up for audio work and getting more of the Polar Bear done.

I've now set up a little desk top Foley cove, to do this I've tidied and reorganized my work room, spent a few days sorting out various technical issues with the hardware (set of XLRs that I've had for years and were sold as balanced turn out to only have two cables so needed some more of those) now I've managed to do some...

Sunday Progress Report

Hello :D 

What have I been up to this week... animating, and getting the next Fox and Wolf loop rendered.

I've a few ideas for where to take the animation and the order of cuts but it all depends on where the climax shots of this animation happens and I'm left with a quandary of which to do, so why not make a poll.

moonlight riding, this one I can see having the wolf speed up and climax, the fox also does, (hands free) followed by a messy pullout from the wol...

Sunday Progress Report

Time for an update, got another loop of the Fox and Wolf animation rendered along with working on the PolarBurr

The polar bears arms and paws are now a lot more chunky I'm playing around with the base color, (there are a lot of shades of off white that can be used)

I've also worked on this rimming loop and got it rendered from 2 cameras. I've some ideas about extending it and going into another loop, but next week I'm going to work on something else that I ca...

Sunday Progress Report

Hi this week I've been working on the polar bear and have some animations rendered :D 

I've got the loops done of the 'moonlit riding' I've a few ideas for what the next sequence will be but I want to try out poses and lighting before saying anything. (want to make sure I can make stuff look good)

Here's a look at the Polar Bear, I do admit I may have leant a bit heavily on references for this sculpt I hope everyone is ok with me cribbing the style a little heavier than norma...

Sunday Progress Report

It's Sunday, time for the progress report.

This week I've blocked out some new animation, and worked on textures, lighting and fur.

As always when using a new character build (the wolf) things will need fixing up e.g. errant weight painting or the fur might not be dense enough when in something other than a T pose, so that's been worked on. As for texturing the fox and wolf now have a bit more... well, texture to their junk on the standard version adding a bi...

Sunday Progress Report

Stuff done this week, finished off work on the Wolf and an animation with him and the fox.

Majority of this week was getting the wolf fluffy and sorting out some more odds and ends with the rig (weight painting, scripting and texture work) that took a good chunk of the week, for the remainder of the time I've been doing this little 'Midnight Snack' loop with the wolf and fox. This is the first part of the new animation, and I wanted to try out some lighting, so this is going to take pla...

Sunday Progress Report

This week I've been adding and tuning the wuff fluff and also working on a short animation. 

The plan was to get the wolf done (rigging and fur) and get some animation blocked in for today with the fox, however reasoning it might be a bit of a stretch, (esp if the fur or rigging were to take longer than I think it will) there won't be any time left to do animation blocking. Due to this I decided why not do a quick loop of the ott and yeen who already were setup and posed, whilst al...

Sunday Progress Report

I'm back, This week I've animated and rendered the Fox giving the Ott some 'extreme nuzzling', I've also started adding floof to the wuff, and I've got a little preview of him in the attachments.

over the break (I say break it was more like a relaxed extended R+D session but still a nice change of pace), I cleaned a lot of stuff off my to do list, got software updated, tried (and failed) a few extensive things I've been wanting to try out but at least they weren't done during standard w...

Sunday Progress Report

Here it is, it's done. This week was setting up and rendering the nice gooey finish getting the fur all matted and clumped where it gets hit, what do you think?

As I said last week I'm going to take a weeks break, not had one since Christmas and it'll allow me to test out some new updates to software/benchmarking and making sure everything I've written works with enough fallback time to reset up what I have now if it doesn't. I'll also be allowing myself a little bit of R+R. ...

Sunday Progress Report

Hi ^_^ it's Sunday, time for the progress report.

This week I've been working on the ending. Got some new renders, and managed to get a nice squishy internal look, (two way soft body <> fluid interaction along with a cutaway is the most complex simulation shot I've designed so far and took a long time to work out how to do it) 

I've also included a 4K still of the gooey pullout to show what's in store for the next part of the end, this is only for the alt ver...

Poll: Character selection.

The upcoming animation is going to feature the wolf, but who is he going to happen to?

Sunday Progress Report

Welcome to the process report ^_^

this week I've been up to a few things.

Two way interaction between soft bodies and fluid. some RnD for making the internal shots nice and squishy, I've attached an Research and Development test render with a rubber, a single surface is far quicker to simulate (and debug) than full on softbody dynamics what was learned with this is sure to come in handy. Even if I can't pull off full on simulation on the internals the effect is rather pleasing, wi...

Sunday Progress Report

Tis Sunday, time for a progress report ^_^

Here is the first cut of this, I went back and re-rendered a few scenes with the new rigs and lighting (that I was still playing with the look when I did the initial loops) Next week is going to be looking at everything needed for  animating a big finish. 

I'm going to be doing some RND to get the fluid sim looking good on internal shots (I've already done some proof of concept work) once that's done it will be time to get the o...

Sunday (Monday) Progress report

This week it's a bit of a late one.

I've been working on various things, the Yeen and Tiger are now on the new rigs (I wanted to test out the yeen so you can see him and the ott having some fun in the attachments) 

Thanks to Yellow SnowLeopard for their comment a few weeks back pushing me in the right direction, I've  animated this little wiggle/licking animation. ^_^ Why is the progress report so late? because I had an issue last night and needed to start rerendering it...

Sunday Progress Report

Hello :D it's Sunday, time to let you all know what I've been up to this week.

Small note to anyone new, WIP animation can look rough, things clipping, movement missing etc. (it's the same if you see any WIP of any cg animation.) Everything needs to go through this stage to eventually be good 

I've done some very early WIP blocking on the fox giving the otter some nice licks :P I'm planning on finishing that up this week and getting it rendered by next Sunday. (and there is a...

Sunday Progress Report

Tis Sunday and I have some animations to show off ^_^

Wanted to add something slower, gentler , so here is the fox giving the otter some tender loving.

this is all on the new rigs, I'm still getting to grips with them and finding the odd thing here and there to improve. This week I'll be looking at refining some parts I bought over from the old system that could be running faster, (and with the speed improvements gained so far, that could be quite a lot) I'm aiming for that locked...

Sunday Progress Report

Hello, it's Sunday, time to see what I've been up to this week ^_^

I've worked on improving my auto rig setup, now rebuilds are all one click, zero interaction needed (I want to get it as good as possible using the fox and ott as the testbed then roll it out to the rest of the characters)

Something else I got up to, because of the initial work done on the AutoStretchSystem I had an idea and refactored it again so it's now fully general purpose... any time something needs to squish...

Sunday Progress Report

I've been a busy little beaver this week. Lot of code has been written (and rewritten), I'm now running fully modular rig builds and a brand new rigging system. Why is this a good thing? 1. quick iteration, if a system can be improved it no longer requires a complete manual rebuild. 2. prevents crud building up in files, old character were ~250mb, the new, closer to ~50mb. 3. reliability, If [x] breaks in the file, no longer need to spend time transferring hours of work to the last working ba...

Sunday Progress Report

Here we are again ^_^ Things done this week, got the insertion animation done and rendered for the new Fox and Otter animation (Will need to come up with a title at some point), again when the full animation is done I'll likely cut this before the loop and it'll play once but I thought it'd be nice to also have it as a loop so you can enjoy it whilst waiting for the full animation to be done :) 

Next week I'll work on another loop and try to have it rendered by the next progress re...

Sunday Progress Report

Hello it's Sunday, time for an update. ^_^ 

My 2nd dose of the vaccine wiped me out but not quite as bad as last time, To start with I was only up to watching stuff, so time was spent on tutorials that have been sat in my backlog (I now know how to use matrix math instead of constraints to get faster rigs). 

As I've started to have longer stretches where I'm feeling more awake I've been working on another section of this Fox and Otter animation. In the full animation thi...