Experiment - Scrunch Time (Pixiv Fanbox)

So I'm gonna do an animation where one of the main subjects is enclosed in an opaque box showing only her hands and feet. This creates a bit of a problem for people who don't share my nearly-crippling foot fetish: Basically, the smaller the scope of what you're looking at, the more detail you need to show to keep things interesting. How do I maximize what I'm showing on-screen? How do I get across the message with limited resources?

For questions like these, I always fall back to biology. It's interesting to look at someone wincing, groaning, or even smiling, as long as it's done convincingly. So, how do hands and feet wince?

Wrinkles! I figured if I can add them, it'd be a nice boost in realism (even in other animations). Unfortunately, there are some significant hurdles between the idea of dynamically wrinkle-able soles and the actual implementation of such a thing.

Source Filmmaker has rudimentary support for showing wrinkles, but it has to be compiled into the model itself (a luxury I don't have), and the wrinkles don't displace the skin at all (not as serious a problem, but not ideal). Furthermore, feet wrinkle in different ways depending on how they're flexing. Finally, not only do I have to implement them from a technical perspective, but I have to draw or otherwise create them from an artistic perspective too.

So I set to work. Reference photos and videos helped a lot, and looking at how real skin moves helped it all make sense. I was able to draw up two pretty convincing displacement maps— one for a straight, toes-downward scrunch, and one for twisted-sole stretch.

The implementation test went pretty well! It's not perfect, but it's just dynamic enough for me to control completely within SFM. I'll refine the approach when I've got real animation goals for it in mind. I call this a success :>

Check it out: https://gfycat.com/differentbountifulharborseal