Progress Report 3/3/2023 (Patreon)

It's the third day of the third month of the twenty third year of the third millennium! And even better, it's Friday! Here's what I got done this week:

• Set up the initial pose for the animation
• Animated E V E R Y T H I N G!
• Modeled a "desk"
• Modeled a "room"
• Found and made textures for the desk and applied them
• Found a room to use for my room's texture

I tried so, so hard to get this animation done today. Alas, it wasn't meant to be.

I did get it 98% done, however! The key poses and in-betweens are all done, the movement arcs are all nice and smooth, the setting is in place... All that's left to do is the lighting and then exporting it!

Getting to this point was neither easy nor quick. I actually had to restart the animation halfway through because it just wasn't turning out the way I wanted it to. In the second version I toned down the movement quite a bit and slowed things down. The particular pose and angle I chose for this saved me time on rigging and modelling, but came at the cost of extra work trying to figure out the logistics of such a bizarre angle. You'll probably see what I mean once the animation is out.

But right now, you might be wondering why "desk" and "room" are hyphenated. And what do I mean by "a room to use for my room's texture"?

If you want to enjoy the animation before learning how it was made, stop reading here. It should be out this weekend, maybe even tomorrow! After that, you can read ahead without fear of spoilers.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Still here? Good! Now then, let's start with this "desk".

It's... not really a desk. See, I tried to find a good, royalty-free desk model but just couldn't quite find a good fit. So, I "made" one myself. "Made". Here's the trick: the only part of the desk you'll see is the front of the underside. No other part of the desk will be seen, so why put in the time and effort, ya know?

Now, how about the "room"?

Looks promising, right? Well, I "made" this "room", but not in the same way that I "made" the "desk". Unlike the desk, I found a room that was perfect!

This room -- or should I say, stage -- was made by Maddoktor2 on DeviantArt. It was made for MMD, but with the help of a Blender Plugin called MMD Tools I was able to import it and edit it. A couple of hours of editing to make it look right in Blender, to be exact.

So, I added some blur to it and called it a day. What's so "" about that?

Weeeeeell... It's not exactly a rooooom, per se...

Yeah, for some reason the depth of field -- a feature in Blender (and cameras) to focus on one thing and blur everything in the background and/or foreground -- just didn't work for me in this animation. I think it's because everything was SO close to the camera in Blender that it logically couldn't blur the surroundings. Whatever the case, the depth of field didn't work.

But I really, really wanted depth of field.

So I brute forced it! :D

So how did I end up with this monstrosity? Simple! I set up a camera in the room by itself -- no other props -- and cranked up the depth of field that way. It worked! So I took a screenshot of the room with the blur, saved that image, applied that image to a half-cylinder, and bada bing bada boom I have a background with depth of field! Sorta!

What's that? You think the half-cylinder room is a silly idea? Oh boy do I have news for you!

Does this room look familiar?

Yes, that's right. The office in the original Five Nights At Freddy's was actually a curved texture -- animated fan and all! It's pretty genius when you think about it! This is what gave me the idea for the room texture to begin with!

The main difference is that FNAF's was an upright cylinder, which is good for looking left-to-right. Mine is designed for looking up-and-down, hence the C-shape.

It's all part of the movie magic! :D

Well, that about sums everything up! I'm gonna finish setting up these lights and then render this bad boy while I eat some Taco Bell! I'll see you guys... soon, actually! Very soon!