Project D.Va: 3rd Mission

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Quick Note

This analysis of what I did since the last proper update post is relevant to previous content released in the DVa quickie updates, in case you didn't catch my other post today. The relevant information I'm posting here, however, is completely new and fresh since the last major update post I made, so don't tune out just yet!

Recap

Last time, I set out a pretty big goal for myself: draft everything! Whew. Obviously, I'm not done with that yet. However, there are some significant milestones I've hit, and also some fun and interesting things I've done along the way. I'd like to go over a few of those with you guys! I'll start off with the more technical stuff, then get down to the fun stuff, like the first belly inflation segment.

Lighting

An important part of just about any 3D animation you make is lighting your scene properly. How hard can it be, you ask? Just slap some relevant lights in your scene and call it a day! Well, you can do that, and admittedly I kind of did do that in basically every video I made before Arcane Aphrodisiac.

The problem is, poor lighting is one of those things that can really deteriorate the visual appeal of your scene without most people really being able to put their finger on why. Let me demonstrate how you can improve lighting in a scene using a frame from Queen of Pump.

This is basically what it looks like in the animation, except I added the shadows that I didn't include to save time on the original render.

Keep in mind that she's in the exact same pose here as in the first picture. This is what happened after I spent about an hour messing with the lighting on the same scene, as well as fixing the normal maps on her body. Which I accidentally left out when I made this. Whoops!

So what is it that makes this scene look so much better in pic 2? Even ignoring the technical fixes, like getting Queen of Pain's details back and fixing the color on her shoulder armor, pic 2 uses a variant on a common lighting technique in film dating back decades: 3-point lighting. This link is pretty concise and explains the technique well, so take a look: https://www.mediacollege.com/lighting/three-point/

In Arcane Aphrodisiac, I used a more conventional version of this technique. Queen of Pump's lighting setup is a little different: it's supposed to resemble a stage with spotlights focused on the subject, so I made some adjustments. With that in mind, the basic principles still apply. The center, brightest spotlight serves as the Key, or the primary source of light on our subject. The two side, dimmer ones act as a Fill, decreasing the darkness of shadows on her figure. Without those, it's hard to see any detail that's not being directly lit by the Key, as it becomes pure black. This might be more accurate to a standard theatrical setting during a dramatic moment, but this is a lewd theatre. You need to be able to see everything on the stage if you catch my drift. The Back lights are subtle, but help catch any dark areas that the fill missed. I placed two of them floating in the space about 2-3 feet (a little less than a meter) behind her ass. Thankfully, unlike film, you don't need to use physical lights in 3D. They don't have any physical presence in the world, so you can stick them wherever you need them.

So let's get back to DVa. What did I do with that scene? Let's take a look.

So here, the key light is pretty obvious: it's the glow from the TV screen. So what'd I do with the others? I made this next shot for this post to demonstrate.

Ignoring the little problems with the way the light is hitting the ceiling, take note of two things here: the little, dark blue "blacklights" along the ceiling on the left and right, and the light leaking in from the next room. That light is not actually visible in any current frames of animation, but will be eventually. I'll also tweak it to look less sloppy, of course. Point is, these actually serve as the other two lights in our 3-point setup. The light from the next room is sort of a fill light, and the blacklights are backlights. You can see how dark this side of DVa is, too. Let's try a little closer angle:

Notice how extremely dark the shadows are, especially on her butt, boobs, and front arm and leg. This is basically what tends to happen without a fill light, and was the reason I originally flooded Queen of Pump with so many lights trying to fix this problem. I could add additional lighting here as well, but for now, there's no reason in my script to whip the camera around this way. It'd also be disorienting without accomplishing anything that any shots from the opposite direction wouldn't. Most shots in this are from the front, or from DVa's left when facing the TV, for consistency's sake. I also do want to keep the lighting kind of dark and high-contrast to help set the mood for a living room with the lights off. I can always make adjustments later, and if push comes to shove, Mercy can flick on the lights in the room before calling DVa a dumb asshole and trying to pop-reset her.

So with that out of the way, let's get onto some more direct, visual things I worked on.

Inflating the Gum

I won't lie, this was tougher than I expected to animate. One of the few parts of my progress so far that I animated completely instead of just making slideshow stills of, because I wanted the motion to be believable. I needed it to look like it was resisting its inflation, slowing and sometimes shrinking a bit as it grew bigger, pushing back more than DVa could blow into it. More importantly, there's a lot of face-fitting you have to do with what seems to just be a sphere. I've X-rayed the bubble gum in the following screenshots to show how this works:

I did this using Shape Keys, i.e. the same technique I use to inflate women. Makes perfect sense, gradually changing the shape over time in a way that's not straightforward. There are a few little details that make this trickier than usual.

First of all, when you blow a bubble with gum, you have to push it against your lips in a sort of "film", then push it out with your tongue and inflate the resulting bulge. The first two screens show off this part. The part that extends backwards doesn't matter too much, since it never be visible in the final product, and makes shaping the important parts easier. Second, when you inflate it, it doesn't move from where it's initially contacting your lips much, if at all. Gum is sticky! This sounds like a given, but it means that I needed to decide exactly which parts of the gum are going to become spherical right from the point where it's pressed against DVa's lips. If the gum slides around the lips while inflating, it won't look right. It has to be shaped around DVa's lips the whole time too, so it doesn't clip, looking like two video game characters glitched into one another.

The Belly

Alright, here's the good shit. I also fully animated this part:

The gif doesn't really make it super clear with the lower FPS, but there's a nice little "jiggle" at the end, like flicking a balloon. Believe it or not, this belly expansion has 3 shape keys associated with it, and not in a gradual progression either. It's actually 3 similarly-shaped versions of the same belly bulge: one normal one, one slightly stretched vertically and shrunk inward, and one slightly squashed outward.

To make the jiggle, I rapidly shifted between the final results in a ping-pong fashion. However, for the expansion itself, I also shifted between the 3 shape keys, making for a more organic-looking inflation, like the air's shifting around inside her as it comes down from her throat. It was surprisingly easy to do, because when I the original bloat with Blender's Cast tool, I put a constraint on the dummy object used to blow up DVa's mesh, making sure it kept consistent volume when scaled up or down, meaning that you could fit the same about of air in a sphere of that size. The result of that is that, when I adjust the shape keys and animate them, all I need to do is make sure that their values all add up to the same value I'd set a single shape key to. That is, if I had her halfway inflated, I could set the three shape keys to any numbers that added up to 0.5. The key is just pacing it to make it look natural and satisfying to look at, which I think I did a pretty good job at for a first attempt!

Next time...

We actually make more progress on the animation! Don't worry, you'll get to see something new next time. For now, hope you enjoyed the analysis and gif! I'm off for now, and I'll see you guys when I repost my old animations later this week! Thanks for your love and support as always! 

RoboBro out.