Poll # 21: Pearl necklaces! (Patreon)

Hey y'all! You know what time it is. I've been experimenting more with ooie gooey. This time, I really wanted to push the techniques I've developed as far as they can go... and a little past their breaking point. That's the best way to find out what you're missing!

As I detailed my hopes for in the last post on the subject, adding and removing various different kinds of component is easy and fun! It comes with it's own challenges, though, as there are still some shapes and behaviours that are really hard to capture realistically. However, the workflow is pleasingly linear and there's a lot of control to be had.

You can see I really pulled out all the stops on the angelshy piece, and there are some real cracks showing. As I found before, the simulation gets really unstable with jerky movements and complex geometry. We don't like little spheres of the stuff flying everywhere... The simulation also gets much heavier in a scene like that.

However, as you can see in the rainbow dash exercise, it's much more well behaved! Mostly. There are still some issues. This one really shows just how bad the volume preservation can be. That said, I've really finessed the shape of the mesh when it's resting on skin, and it feels much more surface-tension-y now!

On the topic of the shape, though, I tried going for more efficient smoothing with the angelshy example and you can see the highlights dancing around. It needs to be heavily smoothed, no way of getting around that.

The next frontier? I've worked out a way of fully integrating dynamic paint into the workflow, so that the stuff finally actually stays where you put it, and leaves nice slimy trails everywhere! As a bonus, it might also be able to solve some volume preservation issues if properly managed. Stay tuned...