Behind the Scenes: Fixing Messes (Patreon)

So two weeks ago I posted my latest animation and before the rendering process, I noticed a glaring issue that I'd have to eventually address before pushing these big breasts onto you. The above image is frame 71 and one of the most egregious examples of the issue. If you can't figure it out that's because that's the final frame that was sent out in the animation. Below is the same frame, just without the post-processing.

If  you can't figure it out, here's a crop of the issue.

Her arm is clipping through the jacket's arm! It's pretty noticeable as it happens throughout the entire animation.

So what happened here? Why didn't I try to fix it in the animation process?

Well let's go into the software I use for clothing physics to check things out closer.

Here's the animation for the entire sequence from a shifted angle in Marvelous Designer, and it's an absolute mess. The shirt seems to be sitting entirely wrong on her arm.

The issue is hinted as to what's going on and why the animator is wigging out with the jacket , so let's remove the jacket to confirm and explain a simple problem that is ruining the animation.

There. From here we can see that nothing really looks out of the ordinary. However, her arm is bending in a way that two sections of skin are clipping into each other. This really doesn't hurt the figures animation but for any physics simulation it starts to create a problem.

Looking at the jacket from mesh view, we can see how it's trying to compensate by working around the fold. The jacket just refuses to put anything in the bend of the arm. However the jacket's arm now needs to stretch to a wider area and that is where some pressure occurs that is enough to cause clipping.

So why didn't I redo the physics simulation? 

Well if we look at the render we can see that the issues is in an area of the arm that's in shadow. Likewise, I think we can agree that her arm isn't the focal point of the animation. So I labeled the issue as inconsequential and instead opted during post work to just go frame by frame and blacken it out. In the final render it looks no different than any other shadowed area; however now I bet you can never unsee the jacket completely losing it's shit in that area.

Oh and for some fun, please enjoy this gif of the jacket in mesh mode doing the full animation. There's less issues in this angle so maybe I should've just done the final render from here. 😕