Powergirl x Catwoman Exclusive Backer Preview + Insight! (Patreon)
Content
Hello! Here with an exclusive preview for Backers, along with some insight on how I created the "nipple cord" effect.
First up, the preview!
Unwatermarked version is in the archive for Barons.
This scene is followed by some tummy tickles, some whipping (not going to pass up that opportunity with Catwoman), and a few surprises which I won't give away until the final is released, ideally later in the month (I want to avoid an exact date per usual, as there's always unforeseen challenges, but progress is going steady and productive 🤞). Do expect it to be around 8 minutes (and it might end up being longer than Brigitte's Gym, the record holder so far, but we'll see).
I want to share the approach I used for creating the nipple cords, or more exactly, simulating the tension effect.
So, our goal is to create the feeling that the breasts/nipples are being "pulled" by the cords with a consistent force. To do so, the first step was un-parenting the breast bones from the chest, as we can't have them following perfectly.
This is done with the breast bone selected, and then tabbing into "edit mode." The breast will likely have to be re-positioned after this.
Then, we want to RE-PARENT the breast bone right back to this same chest bone, but this time we're going to use a child-of bone constraint, so that we can gain access to the "Influence" slider shown below. We can set this slider to something around .5, so that the chest still effects the breasts, but not at full strength.
We create two empties, one for each breast, and place them at the point we want the tension to occur.
Back to the breast bones, we're going to utilize two different bone-constraints. A "track-to" to point the breast at the empty (the point of tension), and a "stretch-to", to simulate the "tugging" effect.
You can play with the value of the "stretch-to" to your liking; there's no right answer, as long as it looks good!
We could stop here and have a decent effect, but I want to really sell the "stretching" as Powergirl writhes around. So, after we've completed the animation on the body, we're going to find the relevant bones (the chest twisting and the chest up-down), and COPY these keyframes (in the graph editor), FROM the relevant bone, TO the EMPTIES (not the breast bones, but the empties, which are now controlling the breasts. At this point it's unlikely we'll touch the breast bones again).
It'll require some manual clean-up, but the extra movement really sells the effect.
I hope this was insightful! Lots of cool tricks you can do with fairly basic rigging; I'm still learning everyday, just like any creator here! It's a never-ending process.
Hope everyone has had a good start to the year! Back soon with more goodies leading up to the release!