Second Anniversary. (Patreon)

Two years. Wow… It’s been two years since I took a huge risk and tried to create a Patreon page to see if I could find some luck… and what I found, was amazing people supporting me through every good situation, and more importantly, supporting and understanding under the worst situations and helped me push forward these situations. Sincerely, thank you very much guys!

I cannot express how happy I am to be part of this. In a way, I don’t consider myself truly a “content creator”, but I’m more than happy that my work instead, gives current content creators something to work, and also gives aspiring content creators an incentive to start creating. I think this is the best part so far. And none of that, none of that could have been possible without you guys, so all of this, I don’t deserve any thanks from this, this is all you guys, so thank you, guys. You are amazing!

One years is a lot of time. Two years is even more! So, I had some surprises for the Second Anniversary, but since the fucking hard drive died, basically losing all my work (PLEASE BACKUP YOUR WORK), let’s instead of giving something good, let’s walk together on this empty street, on the boulevard of Broken Dreams.

The Boulevard of Broken Dreams

(True title: “Some failed experiments”, but that’s not dramatic enough!)

So, like you guys know, I always try to do some side work, sometimes in the form of models, some others in the form of programming to enhance my workflow, and in other shapes, I like to flat out experiment. So here are some of the “failed” experiments that happened through the year. It’s not sad, I swear! It’s inspiring!

• Experiment: Actual Anime Material.
• Current Status: Postponed.

Ok, so my patrons won’t lie, and neither my models do: anime is favored in this patron page. Because of this, regular stuff don’t work as they should with anime models, for example, regular Daz figures won’t look well, because of their detailed skins, whereas an Anime model has no detail at all. That’s why I use a different figure for anime models. However, still, some settings don’t work. I personally believe, except with Nami (whose materials I actually like), that some of the parameters don’t work pretty well. I wanted to get a current material setup that can take all of the benefits of Source Engine, where models shine. Literally. I had a theory and a custom VMT setup that I had yet to test, however, that VMT and the magic texture I had in mind was on that drive, so it’s pretty much gone.

• Experiment: Practice Model. 
• Current Status: Failed/Postponed.

So here’s the thing. In this Practice Model, I had this idea of looking for an old model that I personally like a lot and make a model with it. This model however, didn’t had any face rig, so this left me with a FACS model. We know pretty well FACS only is pretty much useless in a NSFW context. Because of this, I had to rig the face from scratch. After a lot of correcting, I face rigged a model by myself. This is not the first time. The first time was A2. However, this one was different. I did A2 because I needed to create flexes. I did this one because I wanted it. A2 was not an half-assed work, but it took me 4 days to do it because I had no experience. This one took me 1 and was done in one sitting: I’m not sitting up until I’m done. With that work done, I already had a proper base model, so all I had to do was creating a Figure for it and work on it. But then… well you know what happened. Because of that, I had to set this to Failed. However, I know I still have a few places to look for that model, so if I find it again, then this is only going to get postponed. Yes, I will need to re-rig yet again from scratch, but I have the experience now.

• Experiment: Creating an absolutely clean Rig Script so everybody can create their own Custom Groups as they see fit (long one, could be a post on its own.)
• Current Status: fucking forget about it LMAO

Ok so this one is hilarious. At first, I was having this thought that some of you guys might hate my fucking guts by using my Rig Script. The reason for that is some, if not every one of you guys, might use a custom DefaultAnimGroups (DAG from now on). If you use Red Menace’s models, there’s a huge chance you do. (NOTE: If you don’t know what is a DAG file, please stop reading. Forget you ever heard that. It’s a rabbit hole and you won’t get out ;-;)

So why would you hate my guts? Well, in my ideas to have a Rig Script that would never make use of the Unknown Tab, I assumed everyone used the original DAGs. So basically, I had this idea that people who used the original DAGs will now have all of the model’s bones in a easy-to-access group without any intervention. However, AnimGroups work last, as in “the last sort done is the one kept”. My Rig Script have a hardcoded sort, so it overrides other people’s DAGs setup. I didn’t think about that, so I could see it as an issue for some content creators.

With that in mind, I was thinking in an update for the Rig Script, where instead of creating every AnimationGroup by default, by the help of some tools, like Oatmeal’s Anim Group Editor, content creators will have the chance to create every single Animation Group as they see fit, and thus, having an ultra organized and unique Animation Group for each model. I did everything to start the setup, however, as soon as I applied the Script, I instantly thought “this is a very stupid idea and I should be ashamed of myself for thinking otherwise.”

Basically, Imagine the following. When you load a model and apply Valve’s Biped rig, you will see you are greeted with RigBody, RigArms, RigLegs and all those options. When you applied the Rig Script I did work on, you will get greeted by an Unknown Tab and EVERY. SINGLE. BONE. AVAILABLE. ON. THE. FUCKING. ROOT. 

So instead of:

• + RigBody
• + RigArms
• + RigLegs

You would see:

• + Unknown
• + Bone
• + Bone
• + Bone
• […]
• + Bone ad nauseaum

And then you would have to use Oatmeal’s tool and do that work by hand. Now, Oatmeal’s Anim Group Editor is absolutely fantastic and everyone should use it. Honestly, it’s a fucking amazing tool SFM should come with it by default. I cannot emphasize that enough. However, for this particular task, not even that tool would help you. The sense is so goddamn overwhelming that the only thing I could think of was I’m not even a content creator, and I would instantly say fuck this and load Valve’s Rig Biped Simple instead. 

Granted you would only do this once, but only for the “Rig” bones (rig_pelvis, rig_spine), since every model is unique, each model may have their own unique names, thus having to create the groups for each model’s custom bones.

I failed so spectacularly it was hilarious. By wanting to give Content Creators the power of organize a model as they see fit, I made it a pretty stupidly overwhelming task that no one will bother to do it and for Content Creators, well, they want to CREATE, so this was not really a waste of time, but a hilarious failed experiment.

But hey! None of that shit is inspiring! Everything is sad!

Huh? So you want me to let you know why is inspiring? Alright:

- I love anime models. Only if they have a proper face rig though, otherwise they are a nightmare. It pains me to see people not using anime models because they just don’t look good on SFM. Remember, I lost that VMT, but I still have my theory. It’s still in my head. So my hope to create that good Anime Material, is still there.

- Face Rigs are, in my opinion, the hardest task to learn on Model Building. You can get away with flexes, because flexes can be fixed. However, if a rig is bad, no matter what you do, you cannot get away with it. Learning face rig might not be important for model building, but more than once you are going to find yourself in a situation where a model you truly love doesn’t have a face rig, thus making it impossible to face pose it unless you do flexes by hand. I want to learn how to make face rigs, because I know every one benefits from that. This doesn’t mean non-face-rigged models are going to get out of the Ban List. There’s still a long time for that to happen.

- By using my Rig, you can use it on basically every model that supports Valve’s Rig Biped Simple. This gives to that model all of the functionalities of this model, even go as far as to sort the flexes and the bones in a unique easy to access group. That alone, is a greater benefit. Still, doesn’t change the fact that there’s people who is getting fucked over by the rig, so I have an idea to fix that.

That’s why it’s inspiring!

Model Changes?

Every year I try to come with some model functionalities, those changes also comes with a change of price. This year was different though. In the previous year, I made rig changes, updated the script, and added a couple of flexes. In this year, I didn’t think of any functionality change or adding some flexes. I mean right now I could just add some flexes, but I didn’t think making any changes to begin with, so I can’t give any ideas without thinking “am I sure I’m not ripping my patrons off?” So from the time being, no model changes, and no pricing changes. If there’s any change, you guys are going to be notified with anticipation so you don’t get surprised by it.

Well, I think that’s everything to say for now. Thank you very much for making this second year, a year filled with expectations, experiences, sweat, tears and happiness, because if the models we made together help you to create something, then all the work is worth it.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you very much guys. Thank you for supporting this page. Thank you for supporting me in my worst episodes. My most sincere gratitude to each one of you. Thank you very much guys. You are the best!