Activity Report

Well after a fun few days with a cold, here’s a report on what I’ve been up to for the past week.

As I posted on twitter, I am taking a couple courses on rigging and animation in blender, I’ve been studying so I can build a more powerful rig for Izumi, so I can animate in blender and then export my work to MMD, these courses are for rigging and animation aimed at game character but should work nicely for Izumi and some sexy stuff, although I need to learn more to make this new custom rig optimal for my kind of work, right now I think I can already make a nice new rig for Izumi’s legs that has all those nice tricks like foot roll and a pole target and done in a way that has minimal if any popping like IK chains usually have for some reason, as for her arms even though it should be the same and I already have some ideas, I am not sure I can produce a rig that is good for Izumi since I want to incorporate those twist bones without causing any major issues, there are some methods here and there but I quite honestly don’t like them, also this time the shoulder will no longer be part of the IK chain, I think I want the movement of those bones should be automatic in a different way, maybe drivers, but who knows.

Also in preparations for Izumi’s future blender version, I am modifying her current MMD rig to make the re-targeting from blender to MMD seamless while trying to minimize issues while building her blender rig.

For instance, her head and neck bones have a new locations, for a long time it kinda bothered me that when she looked up, her neck looked way too long, but it wasn’t to big of a deal I though, and of course the cause was the location of those bones I mentioned, well now that I’ve seen some recommendations from the rigging course I had to correct that.

Also, her Upper body, Lower body, Groove and Center bones are in the same location and that is the center of mass, the same place the Groove bone is in the latest public version, of course I made a bone morph that moves the Groove and Center bones to the more common MMD location for those bones, for compatibility purposes.

Even thought the upper and lower body bones have new locations, the effect on my old animations due to this is negligible if there is any at all since the change is very small, I tried it with the fire pole dance and I couldn’t see a negative effect, you’d notice it in the positions of Izumi’s hands but it looked fine to me.

The new location for the neck and head bones however, does have a noticeable effect in some motions, mainly those that depend on the position of the head to work, you know what type of motion I am talking about, the ones that came to my mind where Loop 13, Loop 27, Loop 28 and one of the motions from Izumi’s part time jobs, but I already corrected them, I don’t remember if there was any other but if there is I will correct it later and upload a new versions of those motions when I finish the updates to Izumi and make her public.

Those same motions I mention where also affected by another change I made to Izumi, or rather an improvement, the weight of her lip bones was increased, for example, when you used the Upper lip_L bone before, you’d have to move it more that necessary to deform her lips noticeably, now that’s not the case anymore and her lips have a more reliable deformation, also, Upper lip_L and Upper lip_R where parented to the center Upper lip bone, similar case for the 3 lower lip bones, that is no longer how they work, now all 8 lip bones are independent from each other.

Finally I did some clean up on Izumi and removed some hidden bones that where pretty much useless, in total, 28 bones where removed from every Izumi model, among those the only ones that had some use were the ones that I used as pivots to pose the IK leg bones, they were part of the auxiliary bones in the display panel, I had those there only for animating purposes, however they will be no longer required, I forgot to mention that due to the change in Izumi’s lip bones I had to add 4 more bones for to assist with the movement of the lip bones, these however do their job automatically and are hidden.

Aside from that, I’ve been working on a short dance that I started before I worked on the fire pole dance, something I found called Hip Sway Dance, I think it has something to do with Genshin impact because the dancer is cosplaying as characters from that game, not very sure about it since I don’t play Genshin and I didn’t read the description, anyway I think I can get it done in 10 more days I think and right after I finish that I will start with the Oppa dance, and of course I will still be studying my book and those courses for Izumi’s blender rig.

I honestly don’t have an ETA for that but I hope that this will take me no more than 6 months, and of course, that Izumi version WILL be part of my rewards for you.

Thank you for your patience and support.