W.I.P. August 2021 (Patreon)

Hello Loyal Patreons,

Another month down and it's time for another re-cap of all the things that have transpired this last month.

Well we got the Nani x Lifeguard joint released. Probably not the best feature in my library but it was supposed to be hard and the challenge was to figure out how to pull it off. In that sense it was a success, but there are some awkward parts & to be honest they probably weren't the best models to do something so complicated with. They are pretty old now & models are much more flexible these days. Not really my concern any more though since Blender ladies are always exactly as flexible as I need them to be!

In a break from our regularly scheduled programming, this month has largely been about me doing a course in Blender & trying to get the first Aqua test setup for animating.

The course has been really interesting. Had all sorts of neat projects to learn the basics of that side of Blender so I've made some fruit, I made the Delorean from Back to the Future & I made some characters from Owl House:

The characters came out a little iffy, but the Delorean came out really well I think. These projects may seem silly and pointless but what's going on here is some karate kid shit where I'm learning one thing, but I'm actually learning something totally different. This is because in the making of the models & rigging their expressions & are nice simple little examples of more complicated & far reaching practices. Like the way Luz's eyelashes always stick to the side of her eyes. That's because they are parented to individual bones which are then restricted to only move along a fixed path. Moving some eyelashes up & down isn't that impressive, but the same principle can then be applied to say Aqua's hip bone, which can then be given a fixed track to move around in an animation. And then it's progress around that track can be used to control other things. There is so much potential in what Blender can do that's it's really hard to see it all, so we start small with these little exercises & build on that. 

I've got a few more courses I want to take in the future, the next being 'Blender - advanced character animation' which (based on the workload) seems to be about right for what I want to learn next. But we'll worry about that in a few month's time. I realize that's it's meant a very slow month, but that all finishes tonight because the blender course is done. The test animation is finished:

And I'll render it tonight & show you guys once it's finished. Nothing major really, just some simple shots of a flying car, but it is my first official blender animation & that's something worth celebrating. Then it's time to put what I've learnt to the test with Aqua. She's not been without her own issues. The most recent one being that when light hits her, the whole back face of her glows bright red. But that was a texture setting I was forgetting to turn on. Here's where we got to last weekend:

I don't have a lit version yet because it took forever to figure out the glowing problem so I only got the first light in place before I had to starting troubleshooting that drama. But's it's getting closer to being ready to go. I'm happy with the pose & the camera placement. Lights next, then we get to animating.

And finally, the part that you all skip straight to, the Eldar Narn update! I got stuck a section where I couldn't decide what they were going to say to say, but I've filled in the final blanks in the script now and we're moving along nicely. Almost got this chapter done now. Meredhel & Kala flirt some more then everyone leaves through a secret passage & we're done. I'm really looking forward to finishing this chapter because I hate the garden. It's such murder on the memory because there are so many fucking flowers everywhere. One day, far from now all this will be in Blender too & my life will be so very much easier. But until then we just have to make do. There will be 'porn' in the next chapter. Technically.

And that's all she wrote about August. An educational month. Maybe not an exceptionally explicit one, but now that Aqua is right at the top of the to do list I I should have delivered something positively filthy by this time next month.

Take it easy my dudes,