Sunday Progress report (Patreon)

Stuff done this week, further animation work on the fox and yeen animation, Fur has had some tweaks, Dynamics  explored with a proof of concept animation.

The animation:  Shot 1 another pass has been given to the characters along with refining camera movement, I'm quite happy where Shot 1 is, no major work should be required to get it finished. Shot 2 is getting filled out further, more connective tissue of animation between the blocking. Camera movement has been refined with an eye to 'motivated cuts'. Shot 3 is still in very early stages and will see a lot of back and forth between animation and fluid sim, due to needing to grind out iterations this will get more attention when the other two are closer to finished. I've included some stills from various shots, the lighting is currently in flux as I'm still working out how the final animation should look. (also as noted previously as more work gets done on the animation less completely 'new' shots will be shown as work is polishing and improving what's already there)  

Fur improvements, the 2nd graphics card I got a while back along with some recent updates to my render software means that renders are taking less time, I'm putting this into more dense and detailed fur. See the side by side comparisons and let me know what you think :D 

An aside, due to the increased support here <3 I'm thinking of getting an even beefier rig once AMD and Nvidia come out with new parts later this year. That will mean more refinements to the fur quality, quicker sim iteration, and in general less time spent waiting around for the computer to think about things. That all means better looking characters and animations for you all ^_^

Side activity for last week, Dynamics. Now I'm no longer getting cooked and have more time I got stuck into the chosen side activity. With this the goal is to provide a subtle amount of movement just enough to bring a bit more life to the animations. Here is a quick demo of the otter waving with and without dynamics, you can see the bulk (heh) of the effect on his tummy. This effect is being applied to one of my first animations so I apologize for it being a little rough around the edges. This might not make it into the current animation as more time is needed to dial in the settings. To get this running on all characters I'll need to spend some time setting up a test methodology, something like a series of canned animations and test renders to make sure it looks good individually and in comparison between characters. 

Side activity for this week, Character creation. the Executive Producers have decided that I'm going to be working on the Wolf this will mean giving him a nice shapely bod, refining the facial sculpt and if there is time working on the fur coloring.

So there you have it, a rather long rambly progress report, please feel free to let me know if you have any comments or questions :D