Animation Test Render 2 (WIP) (Patreon)

The animation is nearing completion, but I've still got some stuff to figure out.

This test animation isn't even the full animation, I skipped rendering the last 100 frames as it's the same shot regardless, so while it's cut from this spot, nothing interesting happens, and it will be in the final animation.

The final animation will be 2000 frames long, which is about 1 minute and 23 seconds, my longest yet, and definitely my most technologically impressive animation I've made so far, from the soft body physics to the mocap animation. I'm really proud of what I've made so far, but its clear it's not done yet, and still needs some work before I can release the final animation.

I'm planning on reworking the lighting again, it seems a bit dull now, especially near the beginning of the animation. I don't have a specific idea in mind, but I might make it darker, but I want to keep it relatively well lit, so I'll need to spend some more time figuring out how to fix that. 

I also need to fix the hair, I made some changes to it so I could simulate the hair physics, and I haven't been able to do so yet. I ran a single hair dynamics test and it looked pretty good, but I didn't like the shape and quality of the hair.

I have the old hair setup from the glow-up post, so I'll probably fall back on that setup and figure out how to simulate that properly.

Unfortunately the hair physics didn't make it into the test render, but it will be in the next test render alongside the cloth simulation.

I also added the soft body and jiggle physics to the model, and it still needs some tuning, especially towards the end of the animation and the breasts, I think it turned out pretty well in the end. The soft body physics however aren't even technically soft body, it's a cloth simulation.

I've found after some testing and research that the soft body tools in Blender are pretty alright, but they don't fit this specific scenario. But in my research, I found people where using the cloth simulation tools as a stand-in for soft body physics, and not only does it look better, it bakes significantly faster too! So this animation's soft body physics are actually powered by the cloth simulation tools, despite the soft body tools being derived from the cloth simulator itself. I could not get the soft body tools to work well with the model, where as cloth worked wonderfully.

I also want to make the transition to the blue skin more dynamic rather than just a simple fade to blue. I have a test shader from the project this was derived from, the Blue Lab Subject, but it's specially built for that specific animation. However, that shader laid the foundation for what I need to make it dynamic, specifically the edge veins and spread technique. It utilizes vertex colors to determine where the blue should be and at what value, and while they're painted manually in the test animations for the Blue Lab Subject, there are methods to paint them dynamically, and I plan on doing so in this animation.

As for the watermark, I believe transparency is the best option for explaining why they're here. This version of watermark is only for work in progress art, and I really want to make it as non-intrusive as possible while still remaining in a sensible spot.

NSFW Versions will not have this specific type of watermark, but will have a version similar to the watermarks on public images, still as non-intrusive as possible, less so than this.

As I and some others who reached out to me have found, the test animation from last week was posted to various servers and websites, mostly without credit, and as an animator showing off my early work, it's really frustrating seeing it pop up in random places with no attribution or credit, on top of being unfair to all of you who support my content through Patreon or DeviantArt subscriptions. 

It's unfinished, I know it and you know it, and while I make it clear in my posts here, it might not be so obvious when viewing it out of context. I only post what I deem to be a certain level of quality publicly, especially after releasing some works that I don't think were as good as they should have been the first time around. 

I work very hard on these animations, as I invest a lot of time and energy into prepping them for prime-time, and it's demoralizing to see it posted elsewhere publicly, with or without credit before it's finished. Whether it's criticized or still praised despite it looking terrible compared to what the finished product will be like, I really am not comfortable with it being public yet.

As you're all my primary supporters, I feel comfortable sharing these with you as I know you'll have my back, and as a sign of my gratitude for the support, I love showing these tests and work in progress works, and describing what goes into them. You make my work possible, so I like to share my though processes and experiments with all of you to show you what I'm working on, and I only want to share more, especially over disappearing for a few weeks and coming back with a new animation.

I hope these watermarks will make it clear that it's only intended for a specific audience (you all) while also stating it's a work in progress animation. Most of the people who posted the animation didn't even know it was paid content.

This is not a call to action, please do not attack anyone for posting paid content, whether they know it's paid or not. You can reach out to me if you'd like to inform me so I can figure out how to handle the issue, but please keep it civil.

Thank you again for supporting my content through Patreon or DeviantArt subscriptions, I wouldn't have had the budget to invest in better hardware and mocap equipment without your help, and it genuinely means the world to me and helps me spring right back into creating these animations knowing you all have my back.

I hope these watermarks aren't a bother for you, and I apologize if it is. I'm always up to re-iterate on these things and improve on them in the future, and I'd love to hear your feedback on it, positive or negative, it really helps me improve on these types of things. I won't see you any other way even if you call me an idiot for adding watermarks to W.I.P content.

Thanks again, and now I'm gonna get to fixing the soft body physics!