My very first Blender animation (+FAQ, long post) (Patreon)

"And future Blender videos from me" - is what the full title of this post should be. I have been messing with Blender over the summer and I reached the point where I can create simpler (sexy) animations. I shall use this new power for good-- I mean for depravity.

The way I was creating all my videos - until this day - was kind of underhanded, heavily reliant on post-production, and while I was able to make decent amount of content quickly - several minutes of video per week - it came at the cost of animation quality.

Well, the 3D animation maker Blender is the exact opposite - confusing, deep and tricky app with awesome potential that can make some of the best 3D pr0n out there. It is likely that many of the best nsfw animations you've seen on the internet were made in Blender.

So, you can understand why I was eyeing this app for quite some time. And today, I am releasing my very first work. It is a video with Tifa Lockhart and a truly massive shaft. Theme could be described as... an attempt to create the biggest bulge of all times, maybe?

Video is 1 minute long and available on the usual sites right now. Check it out - even as my first animation, it certainly isn't perfect, but you should see real difference in motion variety and quality, compared to my previous work.

Since I was working on this in the background for weeks, I had plenty of time to mess around with various ideas, and I put them together into bonus video - it has "Extras" in the name, and works as a companion video for the main file. 

It is 3min long, has a few alternative animations and some comparisons to my non-blender models and different renders used.

That is the new content for this week - I hope you'll like it, I worked hard on that video. But there will be another post this week, with second Waifu Wars poll, so stay tuned! 

Next week, other than poll results, I'd like to deliver second Blender animation - assuming everything goes well.

Extra notes and FAQ - feel free to skip if you want

Since some of you will have questions about this new change, I thought I should post something like FAQ to deal with the most common concerns right away. Hold on to your hats, this is a huge post already!

1) "Does this mean you'll stop creating your usual content, made 'the old way'?"

No. I will alternate between these two approaches, one or two weeks this, another week or two that. I am at the 'advanced beginner' level in Blender, I can't commit to weekly new content anyway - undoubtedly there will be times when I make no progress. 

Furthermore, nothing forces me to abandon the 'old way', so why should It? These two ways of creating videos can coexist. In more distant future, we'll see.

2) "Will my favorite girls / characters go away?"

No. Latest characters in my vids were 2B, Tifa, Aerith, Jill, Cortana - all of them (I think) have Blender models available. For my own original characters, there will still be non-Blender vids.

3) "Will you stop focusing on strange erotica and do vanilla 'girl x guy' videos now?"

No. I still want to make unusual content, that's the main advantage of animations anyway. Tentacles, eggs, weird creepy things we best not mention here.. Even today's video, it is taking belly bulges to the extreme, so I see that as unusual. I doubt you'll see much 'vanilla' stuff from me.

Fun fact: I wanted my first Blender vid to have tentacles, but the damn thing had like 100 moving nodes to control, moving it around was like wrestling with a huge snake. It was giving me headache, so I switched to rigid stick instead. Tentacles are hard.

4) "Will you make short loops now? Will there be fewer minutes of new video per week?"

No and possibly yes. Most blenderists create 10sec long loops that are meant to be on constant replay to seem longer. I am more drawn to videos that go somewhere. Take today's Tifa video. What if I kept adding different scenes with her in that locker room, combining it to create several minutes long video called 'Tifa's Extreme Workout Routine' in the end?

However, it is true that working in Blender is slower. No way I could create several minutes of video per week in Blender. Posing and keyframes takes time. Rendering is slow.
Postproduction and sound design take their own sweet time too. I have no idea how much content I'll be able to produce yet, but it will be less. That's the price to pay for better animations and better quality, no way around it. :-(

5) "Why Blender in first place? Why not SFM, DAZ or Maya?"

SFM is very popular smut-making tool, but fairly limited in capabilities and in my opinion, Blender anims just look better, especially lighting. I know, some people will disagree with me.

DAZ is often seen as being between SFM and Blender in terms of what they can do. It is its own thing, some love it, I always thought girl models (mostly faces) in DAZ look weird, uncanny valley and all that. Might be just my own personal bias.

Maya (and tools of similar level) is something big studios/companies use, very expensive, very complicated, very powerful, but not something one small-time artist like me could utilize well. Since it isn't free, there isn't community of nsfw enthusiasts sharing and helping others. 

Basically, Blender is the "high-end" tool for lone artists on the internet like me.

6) "Eevee or cycles?"

Whatever makes the scene look better. Cycles produce photo-realistic lighting, but take forever to render (create the final video). 10sec of video can take an entire day to render, that's pure pain. Eevee is much faster, but isn't always suitable.

7) "Is anything changing for patrons?"

Not really. You'll still see my videos first, public version will still be shorter or just snippets from the full videos offered to you on my file storage places.

Videos here will still be in top quality while public sites like Twitter will still absolutely butcher the quality of any video uploaded there, making it look like ass. No-watermark version is still only offered here (for tiers 2 and 3). Pretty much the same.

8) "Patron requests? At least for rendered images?"

When I have a library of assets and the knowledge to pose characters fast and well, that could be in the cards. Right now, this would consume huge amount of my time for results you might not like. So maybe someday in the future.

9) "What is the 'old way' of making your videos?"

Hah, I am sure many of you know exactly what it is. If you don't, trust me, you are better off not knowing. :-)

So, as you can see, there isn't some radical overhaul going on, new Blender anims will supplement my usual work - on fairly loose schedule, as I learn new things. 

As I get better at animating, perhaps the amount of Blender content eclipses my other stuff over time, but that would still take a long time - we'll see. I might also put up some polls in the future, letting you state which videos you prefer.

If you have a question that isn't covered here, you can ask in comment or direct message, and I'll add it here.