Exclusive dev update of No escape: Game edition! (174) (Pixiv Fanbox)

Good afternoon people, Scriptor here with a (long ass) dev update!

I’ve been using the past week for some long overdue self-study, so I don’t have any new stuff to show off for the game yet. However before you sharpen your pitchfork let me say that the self-study has been well worth it, and should pave the way for some interesting stuff in the future. A more detailed report follows below, with a handy TL;DR section at the end plus the schedule for the coming week. :3

Animation self-study

Hold onto your butts since this will be another long one: The past week I’ve mainly been busy with doing so long overdue self-study, mainly focused on animation inside of the Blender software. Normally all the images I produce come from DAZStudio, but making that exit animation for the upcoming short set made me realize just how… Lackluster DAZStudio is for animation purposes. I’ve know for a longer time that Blender’s tool-kit is much more versatile than DAZStudio’s, but held back on making the transition since it requires some… Effort into getting a hang of the process of exporting stuff from DAZ to Blender (which I didn’t had time to spare for), as well as getting used to Blender’s way of handling rigs, shaders and key-frame animation. Now I’ve finally made the transition, it’s kind of mind boggling just how much better it is for animations. 👀

First up cloth simulated pressure: Previously in DAZStudio I would make use of A-B sliders to “simulate” the inflation of rubber (like how I did in the latest release of No escape). The rubber surface on the model remains “static” however, making the rubber sheets seem like hard solid blocks when animated, see the example below:

BLENDERTEST

Pretty stiff right? However Blender has a cloth simulator that can also simulate pressure, so besides being a LOT more stable dan DAZ’s internal cloth simulator it also looks a lot more organic as well:

CLOTHSIMTEST2

CLOTHSIMTEST2_2

As you can see the rubber sheets of the bag behave much more naturally with the cloth simulator, especially when deflated (you can see the rubber flap around a bit when Kathleen bends). Stuff like this is simply not possible in DAZ (at the moment), and one of the key reasons why I’ve made the move.

Another thing that DAZ can’t (easily) do is animated liquid. With some large work-arounds it’s possible to get stuff from Blender transferred to DAZ for still images, but if you’d want to import liquid animations it becomes much harder. By switching to Blender for animations I don’t have to worry about that anymore, since I can just keep everything internal inside Blender. This also allows me to make the liquid interact with other animated objects, for instance when certain liquids pour through tubes:

LIQUIDTUBETEST

Pretty cool huh! Blender also handles collision between objects a lot better than DAZ, allowing for more versatile simulation/animation on this front as well. This is simple stuff like objects making indentations into rubber surfaces (and said surfaces bouncing back):

COLLISIONTESTBOUNCY

As well as colliding and deforming/stretching other objects:

TESTDONUTCOLLISION

And best of all, with some Blender magic these simulations can be “attached” to other object’s surfaces as well, making things like dynamic collision between suck-holes and (ugly ass) “bananas” possible:

BANATEST

Great stuff! And finally, thanks to the transfer tools I’m using (Diffeomorphic and the Daz hair converter, I salute both of the guys who made these plugins), I can also convert DAZ imported hair into particle based hair, with Blender creating individual hairs for each hairdo just like how it would be in real life. This gives for very fancy hair:

TESTHAIRPARTICLE

Which also collides/interacts with other objects on the fly (like the persons body). The above is a bit funky, but after some practice I got a bit more of a feeling for it. And imported Kat’s signature ponytail as well:

TESTPARTICLEHAIRKAT

Lovely stuff! ^^

Anyhow the above is just a test-reel to show off all the stuff I’ve learned in the past week and to substantiate the efforts into making the move. Blender’s cycles render engine handles ray tracing just as well as DAZStudio’s Iray, so I doubt anybody could even spot the difference between a render made inside DAZ or Blender (granted when not using Blender’s extensive simulation/animation kit). As such all future animations will be made inside Blender instead of DAZStudio, and I REALLY want to invest more time into making more quality animations as well.

That said, I will probably be using DAZStudio for still images (so No escape images) for the foreseeable future, mainly to safeguard continual graphic fidelity, as well as a (small) attachment to the software itself. Let me also be clear that work on No escape will also remain my primary focus; animation projects are planned, but will be on a side-project basis with no clear deadline/schedule. 💪

(TL;DR: Scriptor rubbed his two whole braincells together and made the move from DAZStudio to Blender for all animations, allowing for some super fancy stuff in the future. He also wants to do more animation stuff, but No escape remains the prized pony so animation side-projects will be on a unscheduled basis.)

Anyhow next week focus will be wholly on No escape again, since I still want to fill in all the placeholder stuff before the end of the month. I’ll first be tackling Primrose’s rooms and the library puzzle/trap, expect some teasers of those coming Wednesday! ^^

Greetz,

Scriptor

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Ps. For those interested I also have a Discord, if you’d like come check it out since it’s a pretty chill place! ;3 (Exclusive stuff will always be posted on the FANBOX/Subscribestar pages and not on the Discord, so don’t feel forced to join!): Send me a PM for the link! ^^