Updated Goal (Potentially major one) (Patreon)

I don't think the goals I've had set for the last while have really excited or motivated people. So I've decided to up the ante a bit and make known something that I've been looking into the past couple of weeks.

It's come to my attention that it's very much possible, and even relatively affordable, to do mocap recording and put it into MMD. It does require some setup and the purchase of a decent bit of equipment, and at the moment money is still tight, though that situation has definitely improved. I'm still doing research to figure out how to go about this, but it really does seem feasible to make this a reality. And let me tell you, if this happens? It's a major, major breakthrough.

You probably already know but mocap essentially means tracking real people's movements and translating that directly into the animation of 3D models. When done properly, and with some tweaking, it can both greatly speed up and improve animations. While I dig the big cartooney poses sometimes, I do also really like having more naturalistic movements compared to other MMD folks so I think I'd get a LOT of use out of this. 

I always knew MMD had some compatibility with the Kinect, but the results there weren't promising and didn't seem that useful. But then I learned about Ipisoft and their surprisingly affordable setup with a buncha PS Eye cameras... I've been fascinated ever since. This clip here (not Femdom related) is what convinced me that this would be incredibly valuable if I actually got my hands on the same level of compatibility. From my understanding, that is an unedited animation of pure mocap that took like four attempts to make. 

I know the content isn't super impressive but just focus on how fluid the movement is, because of course it's emulating real life movements. None of the jankiness or jerkiness that comes with an amateur or even intermediate hand animator. No trial and error to make sure everything is timed correctly and weighed correctly and that every body part moves at it's own pace; basically all of the really hard shit, just becomes automatic. There's barely any drift there too - and what is there is easy to fix... the idea that I could make something like that in basically the time it takes to act it out, the possibilities make my head spin for how much this could mean. 

I was hesitant to make any big promises in the actual goal section because a lot of this is still an unknown, but basically WHEN we get to that goal, and I WILL manifest this, I'm gonna be trying it out. And if it's even close to as helpful as I think it is... we're talking animations not only coming out much more frequently, but being much more complex. 

Imagine if I were able to make every animation required for a UFG-style game, in the span of a day. Remember the debut Hibiki animation from way back when, her wrestling match against Simmons? Or her fight scene in the alley later? Those both took weeks, on-and-off to nail down. I've improved a lot and they'd be more polished now but I don't think they'd come out any quicker, if anything I'd probably want to spend more time on them to make sure every scene of it looks as smooth and as properly timed as possible. But with this... I really think I could remake those in a matter of hours. Atleast the raw animation, before all the editing and sound effects of course. 

It's very possible that I'm building this up too much in my head, but if other people can do this, I can too. The idea that quality mocap could actually be applied to the tool that I animate with and the models that I use, I didn't realize it was possible until a couple of weeks ago and now I can't stop thinking about it. Video commissions would probably be viable with this, that's something I never really gave much serious thought to before but if I could make a 2 minute animation in a day, what's stopping me from having that as an option? Projects like CYD would become a lot easier and more fun too... 

I could very quickly build up a catalogue of SFW-ish stuff that I could put on YouTube too, I've always wanted to make a channel but I've never been confident that I had enough quality animations. I was always wary of the fact that I wouldn't be able to stay on there long so I've been plotting to have a sort of quick, concentrated attack of a buncha uploads that would get as much awareness to my work as possible, so that even if I were just on YouTube for like a week I'd still potentially reach a lot of new eyes. Ipisoft would make this a looot easier...

I'm rambling but it's because I'm excited. Anyway, yeah, that's a goal now. $500 monthly, I'm taking that plunge and seeing where it takes me. 

PS. I'll still get Nitro at $400 and I still believe it'd be a great boost to the Discord, but I think having that as the first goal people saw wasn't bringing much hype. I can also still do the big E-book catalogue idea at $500 if there's demand for it. People never talk about the goals so I dunno how much attachment there was to them!