ano_delta

"1 Gold Portal" and "Pair Cleaning" - Now with sound!

And as I said before, two animations got their SFX versions.

GIFs are the same as on original release posts.

(MA1) A little misstep

"As some paths lay on territory with corrupted trees, Hoodwink starts practicing dodging corrupted tree roots. The zone she picked consists of less aggressive roots, but with one thing. Even if they don’t harm the prey, they won’t leave it without proper care. After a while of training, she gets tired and makes one small but critical mistake, which leads her to discover what the price is for getting out alive."

The first big project made with new tools, hope you enjoy it!

Full...

(MA1-15) Progress so far

It seems that the Environment-Lighting-Rendering part has become significantly larger to fit into one WIP post, especially for such a "big" project. Therefore, making just one WIP for the final steps, as I always do, leads to large gaps of silence between each post.
So, this means that this and a few new posts won't be the last ones. :(

I don't know when this project will be finished, as I slightly misjudged how long it would take to create the environment, lighting setup, a...

(MA1-14) Update

I'm still working on MA1. And yes, it does take a considerable amount of time.

Currently, I'm struggling with the environment and lighting. Can't properly make props for each scene so they look good and merge into the next shots. The same goes for scene lighting. Despite how good Unreal handles lighting (especially in the first shot), I still manage to screw up with it.

I am also experimenting with cloth physics and liquid simulations, which is a lot easier to work on than lightin...

(MA1-13) A little misstep - The current state

Woah...

Porting this project to Unreal was a correct move. Correct, but insanely painful move.

Here’s how it’s looking now. It’s still a work in progress, but you can already see the direction it’s heading. This is the last time you'll see this part of the animation in WIPs.
Speaking of WIPs, I'm not sure if there will be any WIPs after this one, as I'm working on final touches for each shot. Most likely, the next MA1 post will be a release post.

The en...

Info post

CA12 has been finished, now it's time to continue work on MA1/R1.

It has been a while since the last post with some sort of progress, I know. I am currently working on MA1, more specifically, I'm polishing the intro part animation and working on VFX for it. I don't know when I'll post a new WIP post as I need somewhat good progress to show you. Next R1 WIP post won't be anytime soon unless I decide to make a separate WIP posts for each limb in a rig.

Hope you understand the week+ ...

Are you interested in VR animations?

Question is in the title.

Was thinking about making an experiment project for VR in the future, and would like to hear your thoughts. Obviously, it won't happen soon as I have current projects to finish.

(R1-8) Mouth rework

And here is a replacement for the old mouth. Looks a lot better, and allows for juicy "oral invitation" shots.

It's sculpted and retopologized. In the first image, you can see a sculpt, on the second and third - retopo version. Material is temporary, I'll make textures later. Teeth are taken from the original model as I don't think I can do a better-looking teeth. Tongue, on the other hand, is replaced with a thicker and longer one.

Made slight improvements to other parts of her m...

(R1-7) Lower body rework and some info

A new and small post to shake the silence while I'm working on CA12.

Model progress

I continued working on reworking my Hoodwink model after it failed miserably in A16. I've finished working on the bottom part in my Hoodwink model and... It's kinda ok. The main task was to replace genitals, as recent animations showcased how bad they were made. Perhaps it was due to a lack of bones in the genital area of the rig, but I feel like mesh in these areas simply was lacking in density....

(MA1-12) Ending is done

The ending is now done (mostly).

Next thing on my list - environment rework. I still have the polishing stage on my list, but it goes right after environment.

Table of contents: A different animation technique - Fluids - MA1 - Progress post frequency

A different animation technique

And I changed how I animate once again. If you followed me for a while, you know that I change and adapt different animation techniques from time to time to find the most suitable one.

(MA1-11) Ending and improvements

A wild MA1 WIP post appears!

On a serious note, MA1 is getting close to the release.

The ending is ~60% done. The first half of this part is done and polished, while the second half (with egg) is animated on a basic level. I discarded the idea with gel seeds as I fear it won't look great in the end. Also, I got rid of the camera tilt that was present on the whole part with loops. After I finish animating the ending, I'll do a final polish pass on the whole animation to fi...

(A16-2) Animation gets reworked

Welp, that's not the WIP I was talking about before. It's not as extensive as I had planned, but it covers most of the things I would like to share. A16 paragraph is right after "Animation quality downgrade".

A16 will be finished, despite the one major issue I'm trying to fix.

Animation quality downgrade

After I switched to Unreal and began using my new model, I began to see a significant quality drop in the animation itself. Yeah, in terms of graphics, it...

(CA11) Forgotten trap

"Running is fun... until you get into your own trap..."

Commissioned by nixdano (FurAffinity)

GIF is low-fps as it's 17 seconds long

(CA11-5) Pre-release WIP

GIF is low-FPS as it's 17s long.

This is the last WIP for this project. Animation is pre-final, I need to fix some stuff. The environment is almost done, I'm glad how it looks inside Blender. I hope it will look the same in Unreal, as I've used my old systems, which are made to be used inside Blender.

About foliage tools I wrote about in a comment under the previous post - they are still in development, and sadly, I didn't get a working prototype to use here. I want to ma...

(CA11-4) Lights, environment and animation progress

Another bit of progress.

Lights and environment are temporary, I'll change them when animation will be done. I'll be honest, this project took more time than it needs. But I guess this becomes normal for me when something "simple" takes too much time. There isn't much left and I'm looking to release it next week.

A bit of info about A16. Despite me marking it as a failure, I'll continue working on it. Yeah, it's quality may be worse than usual, but that's OK. I specifically used w...

(CA11-3) Another animation progress post

Main part is nearly done. What's left is to polish this part and do a calm part.

A16 failed.

Currently it's on edge of being cancelled.

What happened? Genitals on current iteration of my model broke in worst way possible. Due to how this model was created and lack of bones on genitals, it's impossible to fix current issue. Why other projects with this model didn't had this issue? They do have the same issue, but I managed to hide it. In A16 is near impossible as one of the main view angles is showing in all beauty how screwed up her genitals are.

Remember when I said in o...

(CA11-2) Animation Progress

A bit of progress.

(A16-1) Base animation

And here goes a base for this animation. For the animation itself, it's a short loop with two view angles and an ending part.

I'm thinking about how to make the ending part. Looking at the positive comments about egg laying in my tentacle animations, I want to try to make tentacles pump liquids with eggs at the same time. This will also show how it may look in MA1. For the eggs themself, I would like to make them like semi-transparent gel ball with a seed inside.

The texture on ...

(CA11-1) Progress

And here is a progress for the hardest part in animation. Yep, this is the hardest part. The rest of the animation is a lot calmer and without any major movement.

The "freeing" part was changed to a longer and better idea. The main point here is to show how tired she is, and show it wasn't a first attempt to free herself.

(A16-Poll) Images for a poll

And here is what these two options look like.

(A16-Poll) What version is better for you?

Before I make a mistake and ruin this animation with my initial idea, I would like to know which version will look better for you.

But before that, here's what it should have been like in the first place:

Backstory - "In one of the books stolen from a nearby witch, Hoodwink found an interesting way to refill mana. Inefficent, but insanely pleasurable"

The idea of this method is to spill a few Clarities (Mana-refilling potion) and use some magic on it. After ...

(CA11-0) Start pose and basic storyboard

This time, it's an animation with silly Hoodwink trapped in her own trap.

It will be a short animation where exhausted Hoodwink is just hanging from a tree while trying to free herself from time to time.

Animation by itself is quite easy to make, but the part where she tries to free herself is quite challenging. Particularly in achieving realistic and logical movement.

Info post

CA10 is near release. Currently, I'm fixing model clippings and working on the environment with lighting. It will be finished this week.

Meanwhile, I'm collecting details on CA11 and will soon start working on it. In a few days, I'll post the first CA11 WIP with more details.

I also continue learning Houdini, and currently looking into how to ease my struggles with animating tentacles. Most likely, it won't make a difference for the main tentacles, but for secondary ones, it may d...

Houdini...

So, remember when I was talking about effects for A16, I mentioned Houdini and how it would be better if I made effects for it using this software? I am now thinking about adding a last nail into my workflow coffin with this tool.

I know you may not have heard about this software. Houdini is an insanely powerful tool for creating effects. 90% of the effects you see in films and cinematics are made using it.

I've spent a week fooling with it and I LOVE IT. It's so fun to learn it a...

Has quality of recent projects improved or not?

So, after releasing 3 animations rendered in Unreal I would like to know your opinion:
Has the quality of recent projects improved or not? (Without taking into account the first test animation)

From my perspective, it improved a lot in graphics but decreased in details. I'm currently looking at how I can improve collisions and how I can add physics into new projects.

(A17) Pair Cleaning

A continuation of the previous animation "1 Gold Portal" in which Hoodwink and Kiro help each other to clean their tools for the next part.

It's a 30s long animation with 2 connected loops. You can see the full animation here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/a2t8729uklm37ciranedb/A17_Release.mp4?rlkey=9nuo8b2zcfctgkih1tj659hxh&a...

(A17-3) Pre-release render

And here we are, animation is almost done. It needs a bit of refinement, and I'll release it. But before that, I need to take a good nap. While I sleep, I would like to hear your thoughts on this animation and what needs to be fixed or added.

It's a 30s long animation with 2 connected loops. I tried to make transitions between loops as smooth as possible, and would like to hear your thoughts as well. I also tried to solve issues with clipping models that appeared after I switched render...

(A17-2) Last WIP with some progress

This animation got its codename as it grew from a simple and short animation. Now it's a ~20s looped animation with 2 connected loops, kinda like A15 but without ending.

This time it's "rendered" in Blender as I'm making this post in middle of working on it.

Can't really say anything about progress, as there weren't any interesting challenges or issues I could talk about.

Wait for a release tomorrow, maybe even today if I don't get any issues working on final touches.

(A17-1) 1 Gold Portal part 2 WIP

Yay, issues with low-framerate GIFs were solved! It wasn't on my side, so I was sitting here waiting for a fix. BTW, I've updated the last post with a working GIF.

As you can see, something changed, and this WIP was rendered in Unreal despite it being unfinished. I've learned how to import everything into Unreal. Now it doesn't take a whole day to import stuff and troubleshoot it.

I'm thinking about how I should approach making lighting here. On one side, it's a continuation of th...