Misc update thing (Patreon)

I've been working on a bunch of things as mini experiments- one is a new version of the non-dragon version of my sona.

I call him the NERD, some kind of being that exists in a digital world of his own making. One thing I wanted to do here is a better procedural scale system (or like, prototyping one). This is probably the best looking scalie skin I've done, really happy with the colors. I'd like to add in random scale colors too so there's some variation (and then make this into some kind of mega super duper material system for my scalies)

This character I decided to try doing a more fully featured cartoony rig. Here's an earlier screen I took of the leg- I don't want to use spline IK for limbs (because that's just like... a lot of BS for 4 limbs) so I opted for stretch to constraints and bendy bones. The limbs can be shaped in nice exaggerated ways!

Same with the dong (see the gif). It's a combination of bones and a lattice- the geometry can be deformed by either and the fluid emitter stays in the same place (not possible if it were just parented to a bone) I wrote about it on twitter:

https://twitter.com/velocirection/status/1657645733414043649?s=20

The idea is finding the direction that's "up" from the hole of the dong by parenting some empties to vertices on the mesh. This is also probably how you'd want to do jewelry or accessories on a character with lattice squash/stretch (but for stuff you might not want to squash/stretch with the character for whatever reason).

Also I was experimenting with beings that are assistants to the NERD. They're supposed to be a cross between a peep and a nerd (like the candy mascot) but also made of data.

I'll attach a video of a quick test animation I did with this thing!

I don't know what will come of this exactly but it's so much easier to experiment with stuff when it's something that isn't connected to anything. Like if it's a failure, it's not a big deal because it was nothing to begin with (and plus it's easier to fail in a helpful way when it's with something new, if that makes sense).