5/29/19: Small update on Neko (Patreon)

5/29/19: Small Update

After trying all day to fix the bone that just doesn't want to have an ik constraint, I finally gave up and Neko's left and right bangs won't have physics. It's surprisingly hard to notice.

Anyways, progress on her in part 1 has jumped to where I'm getting the hair physics down near the end. It really was just that one bug stopping everything. (and wack physics that require lots of patience to get through)

The partial exporting of the scene has vastly sped up this part of the process. So i'm super thankful for it. Even though I am having to animate her hair manually in a LOT of tough parts. But that's just the nature of how badly her hair is rigged. For the month ending, I'll definitely get the $15 polished tier part 1 out just before it ends!

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5/27/19: Busy day away from home, here's my plans for DDLC to make up for it since I got home and went straight to sleep. Woke up again to write this. It's all alpha, but feel free to suggest scenes (definitely for Yuri's rampage) and I might find a way to add them.

Starts off with Natsuki finding the Dictaphone in a trash can.
After making a change to make herself into a cute cat girl, she goes mad power crazy in her mind. (In which we see)

Natsuki: I could be all-powerful! Towering over a city underneath my feet! Playing with the cute fire truck toys and making people do what I want! Hahahaha- wait!
But if I'm so big... People can see my... My- n-No!
(Natsuki immediately crouches down to hide her panties)
Natsuki: Ah! And then I'd be bigger and bigger! Big enough for the whole world to see!
Ahh! No, no, no, no, NO!

She then grows to mega sizes on the city and the dream ends as her head shaking is in sync with her real self.

Natsuki: That's way too embarrassing. But what about...

After the camera pans to see Yuri pleasantly reading under a tree, switch to MC-cam walking up to Natsuki. Catching her by surprise.

Natsuki: NYAAAA! Why do you have to be so quiet! Don't sneak up on me like that, baka!

MC (no voice, just have a text box pop-up that's based on Persona 5 with ridiculous options. Yes, the wrong game text box):
. You're cute when you're startled.
. Damn. You saw me. I'm trying to stealth but I'm dummy thicc and the clap of my ass cheeks alerted you.
. What the fuck did you just say to me? You little shit. *continues with copy-pasta

Natsuki: hehehe... You know... You're awfully cute. I kinda want to just put you in my pocket and have you all to myself. I think I will.
*He shrinks down to the size of a cute toy*

The first person pov camera slowly moves down in spurts until you're level with Natsuki's shoes. Natsuki picks you up.

Natsuki: Nyaaa! You're just so adorable! Here, I'll put you on my shoulder so I can be your ride! (She turns around and faces Yuri) Now then, I think someone else might enjoy my dream VERY MUCH!
*Yuri will grow to 30ft tall*

Camera cuts to Yuri reading a hilariously twisted book that has some dark humor towards her personality. Then do a whole growth scene thing there.

Yuri: What the-! What's happened... Why am I gigantic!?
Natsuki: OMG, she's so huge! It's AWESOME!

Natsuki wraps herself around Yuri's leg. Yuri then picks up Natsuki. Camera switches to MC on Natsuki's shoulder for a moment so we get a huge size comparison.

Yuri: Natsuki, what's come upon me!
Natsuki: C'mon Yuri! You're huge! Enjoy it or I'll make you grow even bigger!
Yuri: Eh-what!? You can't do that! That's-
Natsuki: *Yuri grows even bigger*

Yuri gets even bigger to a size useful for later. Accidentally stepping on a tree afterwards.

Yuri: Oops! I'm so sorry... (faces Natsuki) Although that did feel... Unnaturally powerful.
Natsuki: Awesome! Let's start this show by crushing that van! Let's take the world!
Yuri: Natsuki! That's another person's property! There'd be lawsuits.

Natsuki's face is that of complete anguish!

Natsuki: Yuri, I can change anything! Whatever you do, I can just reverse it!
Yuri: Oh!... Then I have SO MANY IDEAS!

Yuri then goes on a rampage montage. All destruction she does is reversed immediately after she's done as if it never happened.
These get crazier until Yuri demands to be WAY bigger. Natsuki then takes a selfie, using the MC in her palm, from afar as Yuri's shoe crushes an entire city. (titled, Enjoying the Apocalypse! XD)

But the damage is so much that Natsuki resets them back to school. This throws Yuri off-balance and she falls backwards. Crashing through the classroom and into the courtyard in the back of the school. Her leg cuts the classroom Yuri and Sayori are in in half.
Natsuki slides down Yuri's leg into the classroom.

Natsuki: Wow. You guys are big! Guess you're into this too, huh?
Monika: Will she be alright?
Natsuki: She's fine!
Yuri from offscreen: I'm fine!...

Yuri's current position is kinda like Alice in the Rabbit's house in terms of feet position. Both on different ends of the school building facing the entrance while she sits in the courtyard.
And at this point, MinMax3d and I converge storylines!

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5/24/19: Export Success!
Exporting in parts and switching from physics on to off in the middle of the transition is a NICE success. Not only are the exports bloody fast, the transition is seamless! 
Turning the physics on after the transition allows the physics to reset like a forced "CALM DOWN" option. So this should make the exporting process SO much faster for me.
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5/23/19: Hey, it's my birthday! Here's a chunky update
Let's start off with DDLC:
It's completely set up and ready to start animating. The most jarring thing I fixed about the models was the horrific cheeks! Jeez, so thicc.


Not so dummy thicc anymore! After fixing their armature, next up was finding a dictaphone model. Nothing existed in the mmd style, so I made one on my own!


What's interesting about this is that now I know how to go about creating destruction for buildings. I had no idea how to remake a building because of all the texturing involved. Making this device taught me how to unwrap and how to apply textures! This is massive for me! Because I feel like I can fix almost any problem once I get building destruction going with correct details! Hell, maybe put together my own mmd models sometime!


Yuri having a read while Natsuki will find the Dictaphone first. I'm gonna post my big idea on this soon so you guys can see if you want to add anything to it.
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Now let's move on to Neko. (I swear I get double the amount of work done because of waking up earlier and starting work)



First of all, the big change for Neko is that I reduced her hair to a manageable size. This is a huge change because any problems I used to have were literally reduced to being like anyone else's hair. It's also a bit cuter now!
On top of that, I've fixed animating the tail to be smooth, all animations fixed, etc. It's JUST the hair that i've been testing the physics out.
Now my plan for exporting has changed as well. In Samus's vid, I exported the whole part all at once with turning off the physics and turning them back on when they were calmed. But this animation just doesn't seem to have many calm parts.
This time, I'll record the physics and export up to the time where I usually have to turn them off and adjust manually. Then I start the next part from there when I reset the physics. UE4's sequencer will easily crossfade the animation in a smooth blend (like a video editor) while the physics are off and nobody will notice! Not only that, if I do it this way, it makes exporting FAR faster. I no longer have to wait for the entire section of the animation to be rendered just to fix a small thing that happened way late in the export.
This should also help vastly with times of the subdivided model exports!
Lastly, for Marin:
Telehypnotic seems to have progressed pretty well with making the model look good. If anything, having him work on Marin has helped me more than the model since he taught me quite a few things. He's definitely still more advanced than me, obviously, but it's because of him that my models will look smoother in the future for all videos. I'm pretty sure Marin is done and will just require my personal rigging. So I just need to finish Neko vid off!

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5/18/19: What's on my mind

Ok, so I'm a bit behind due to the hectic weekend and the mental break I needed Thursday due to the heavy amounts of effort 3 days prior that almost went nowhere. (Anime shader is a great find, but will require lots of practice)
I want to list down what I'm thinking about so you guys can know what's on my mind. Feel free to talk about what could be added in these since my ideas are always half-formed to allow additions.

List of stuff I need to do:
. Etna destruction test. (Very short test for ground and building destruction. Already animated and done, just need to figure out the simulating)
. Polish Neko vid.
. Marin Vid.
. Star Guardian Ahri vid.
. Collab with Minmax on Doki-Doki Literature Club Vid somewhere between all this. (He's WAY ahead of me since I've been working hard on my stuff, but a successful collab will lead to speedier work together in the future)

List of stuff I'm thinking about:
. Persona 5 Vid. (Multiple gts)
. Xenoblade 2 Vid. (Multiple gts)
. Mt. Lady Vid.
. Short tests with VR vids like being the gts and gts girlfriend scenarios.
. Idk enough about Fire Emblem for a vid, but I can imagine a full scale war one.
. Pool 2 being in the far future now.
. Why my pc crashed and I had to rewrite all of this on my phone.

List of stuff I need to learn:
. Modeling/Texturing to look more Anime in UE4.
. Normal mapping because the shader relies heavily on it.
. Simulating destruction properly.
. Jiggling T&A.
. Smoke & Fluid effects.
. City Engine for easy super-full cities.
. Camera 360 for VR.
. A more Concept art style that returns to the Anime feel the models used to have.
. Time management.
. Actually start working on the game I want to work on at some point alongside all this.

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5/15/19: Neko Polishing
Well this has been a hell of a fight for 3 days in a row. Only today have I felt like I got a step somewhere, but it's kinda a side-step at this point since the new character cel-shader i'm using is causing some weird shit going on. (Lights have explosive bloom, weird edge flickers, light bleed from shadow profile somehow)
But I do think it will be important in the future to figure out a good mix of flat shading and regular. Just look at these differences!


This really hides the low polyness of the model. It's exactly as I imagined this scene and it's a bonus that the face light is disabled. So this will help a ton in dark scenes with less requirements of touching up in multiple areas to hide how bad it could've looked.

I've been trying to hunt down this visual style now ever since watching these pairs of videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egHSE0dpWRw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppDfdCnOF1o
I found the shader in this youtube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u-pyWSpoxw
very simple to install. Just copy the files within the project to another one you want. As long as it's not an older version of UE4. It doesn't like you doing that.

I want to start heading towards this Anime style because it's SUPER CLEAN and clearly matches the model types I use. A huge step forward if I want to reach my goal of a Concept Art style. It's gonna be a tough road to learn the proper texturing, normal mapping, lighting, and more to pull this off, but it'll be worth it for the visual upgrade.


As you can see here, the testing so far has flattened out the terrible shadows that I didn't like. Yet something tells me that a normal map would probably fix these.
Anyways, if this keeps up, this might be a good lookin' video in the end!
I'm still looking into the characters having no shadows at all on the world. I'm thinking it has to do with the scale they import as, but that's just a hypothesis.