I really hate these text only posts, but I'm not sure what else to do right now.
Long story short, my workstation of 8 years just passed away. My new workstation is still awaiting a few extra parts after some RMA insanity through Amazon (a few things didn't work out, so I had to ship a bunch of parts back), which means I am officially without a functioning desktop computer for the first t...
2020-01-10 11:53:05 +0000 UTC View Post
In today's miniature rant on "why the heck do I need to jump through 5 separate layers of abstraction to make this happen in C4D"...
I think, though I'm not quite sure yet- that I at least have some sort of a usable solution in place for dynamic ponytail rigging. If this doesn't look very impressive, it's probably because it's not. There is absolutely nothing particularly special about th...
2020-01-06 12:23:05 +0000 UTC View PostSo I'm kinda back, though I suspect my presence will be a bit spotty until January 5th or so.
I figured I might as well toss up a general plan here so everyone knows what to expect for the next little while.
Long story short, I'm finally migrating away from Apple. It's been fun for the past 19 years, but now I'd like to get off Mr. Bones' Wild Ride. This has been a major source of c...
2019-12-28 09:50:27 +0000 UTC View PostSo apparently it's Christmas.
I'm still kinda wondering where the year went, but I guess that's life for you. In any case, I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday so far.
PS: I may or may not be around for the next week or so, since we've actually got family in from out of town and my days are getting pretty busy with other stu...
2019-12-21 11:25:37 +0000 UTC View Post
Another shot from the back.
The lack of density maps is really obvious around the hairline, which is absolutely killing me inside because I know that's not realistic at all. Unfortunately C4D's density maps seem to either be on or off with absolutely nothing in-between, which makes it extremely difficult to create hair styles that exhibit nice flowing layers of varying density (and thus t...
2019-12-21 11:14:33 +0000 UTC View Post
Found a few fleeting moments to work on Jessica's hair style.
I'm still not very happy with how clean and precise it looks, but I think it's at least a bit better than before. Truth be told, I'm not really sure how much further I can push this style inside C4D, since I need access to things like density maps and what not to really bring out the realism and it doesn't seem like those featu...
2019-12-21 11:14:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Back side shot of Jessica's current character design.
2019-12-15 17:12:16 +0000 UTC View Post
I really really really wanted to wait to release this until I had some sort of a 3-panel mini-OC sheet/comic done up that described some of Jessica's backstory (was going to do one for Vanessa as well, just to try and make things look a bit more legit), but I swear nothing ever goes according to plan in 3D these days (at least, not from my end).
Unfortunately I've run into some problems w...
2019-12-15 17:12:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Viewport teaser for the hairstyle I'm working on for the new character.
Suffice to say, this has been a rather interesting experience. Ponytails aren't all that complicated, but convincing C4D to make one has been rather enlightening (and I don't mean that in a good way- it would have been nice if they'd bothered to update the hair tools once or twice since 2005).
Still need to clea...
2019-12-09 12:12:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Needed a hair scrunchie.
Too lazy to figure out how to sculpt one from scratch.
Instead spent twice as long figuring out how to simulate the desired fabric deformations with soft body dynamics.
I now haz a hair scrunchie.
2019-12-05 06:11:57 +0000 UTC View Post
Close-up of the Quantum Splice suit design and the old Sequin suit, plus the new edges/stitching. Most of this detail was never meant to be seen this close up- while it is there in the render, the general ideal is to replicate the specular response of a fabric from afar (not under a microscope), which is why things start to look a little bit weird at this distance (the majority of the cloth sha...
2019-12-02 17:06:51 +0000 UTC View Post
Rendered version of the updated Sequin suit.
2019-12-02 17:06:47 +0000 UTC View Post
After I recently stalled out on the strap rigging, I figured it might be fun (well, as fun as this stuff can be) to try and change gears and work on something else for a while. One of those things happens to be a new character, but in a typical yak shaving fashion, I landed up going back and cleaning up some of the swimsuit stuff and redoing a bunch of shaders first.
One of the things tha...
2019-12-02 17:05:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Ugh.
To quote the professor from 1996's Chain Reaction- "We learned something very important today. We found another way that didn't work."
So as it turns out, the method I've been developing to handle my strap rigging... doesn't actually work. It kinda does, but it also totally doesn't. Part of this is my fault- I probably should have seen some of these issues coming from a mile aw...
2019-12-02 05:47:24 +0000 UTC View Post
Back side.
I am redoing the leg/butt morphs as well (not shown), though the primary focus at the moment is the breast morphs (specifically the sequence of progressive morphs that will be driving the full inflation process from start to finish).
2019-11-13 05:02:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Working on some new body morphs, which also kinda fit in with the new strap rigging system. Not quite sure if things are going to work out or not, but assuming they do, this will likely land up being the maximum size for clothed (swimsuit) inflation.
As much as I wanted to push things a bit further, a lot of stuff starts to break down beyond these sizes, and you land up in a situation whe...
2019-11-13 05:00:27 +0000 UTC View Post
Been busy trying to clean up some stuff recently and reorganize everything into some sort of a sane project hierarchy, mostly so that I can work on specific parts of this project without constantly screwing up existing characters/scenes/assets.
This was kinda a spontaneous test just to see if everything was still working. It was also an excuse to try out a simple "selfie" pose with a wide...
2019-11-09 13:18:39 +0000 UTC View Post
One of the things I really love exploring (and will probably be doing a lot more of in the future) is the concept of "not-quite-buoyant-acrobatics" (which differs from "just-barely-buoyant-acrobatics" in that the former implies there is still some tiny amount of contact with the ground).
I've always figured that if someone was being inflated, and slowly becoming buoyant while just general...
2019-11-02 16:40:30 +0000 UTC View Post
More Vanessa.
This was actually a leftover pose that I couldn't quite fit into Sequin Floatoshoot, so it landed up collecting dust in the back of my mind until I decided to do something about it.
I don't think anyone's gonna complain about more gratuitous bubbly curves though, right?
2019-11-02 16:22:57 +0000 UTC View Post
Well that took a bit longer than I expected.
As it turns out, solving for the tangents between two arbitrary curves in 3D space is not exactly as straightforward as I thought it would be. There is no direct solution, since there is no guarantee that the tangents are actually pointing at each other. This basically means that you're looking for the "closest possible" solution instead, which...
2019-10-23 14:00:38 +0000 UTC View Post
This is a little something I've been working on recently.
Long story short, I never actually intended on having my characters stuck in a permanent semi-inflated state. Would some of them prefer to remain at a larger size whenever possible? Sure, why not- I suppose that's just as valid of a lifestyle choice as any. However, I always assumed that most of them would want to return to a norma...
2019-10-03 12:14:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Another ceiling render, because apparently I'm having a lot of fun messing around with those lately.
2019-09-20 02:46:31 +0000 UTC View Post
I guess it's only natural someone stuck on the ceiling might want to come down eventually- though how you do that without the assistance of someone else is utterly beyond me.
On a side note- in retrospect, I didn't quite realize how awkward/vertigo-y this pic was going to come out before I'd posed everything and sculpted the hair. Whether or not that was actually an intentional design dec...
2019-09-19 04:25:55 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm pleased to announce the immediate availability of my first full length image pack, Sequin Floatoshoot.
I will be sending out messages shortly to all existing patrons with the download links and password to the ZIP archive. It's around 135mb in size, and contains 26 individual renders at 2560x1600 resolution. WIP images have been taken down (for obvious reasons), so apologies if you co...
2019-09-15 13:27:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Fourth preview panel of Sequin Floatoshoot.
All existing patrons will receive this pack for free. If you are not a patron as of the time this message was posted, you will have to purchase the pack here instead:
https://colortwist.e-junkie.com/product/1629151/Sequin-Floatoshoot<...
2019-09-15 13:26:57 +0000 UTC View Post
Third preview panel of Sequin Floatoshoot.
All existing patrons will receive this pack for free. If you are not a patron as of the time this message was posted, you will have to purchase the pack here instead:
https://colortwist.e-junkie.com/product/1629151/Sequin-Floatoshoot 2019-09-15 13:26:50 +0000 UTC View Post
Second preview panel of Sequin Floatoshoot.
All existing patrons will receive this pack for free. If you are not a patron as of the time this message was posted, you will have to purchase the pack here instead:
https://colortwist.e-junkie.com/product/1629151/Sequin-Floatoshoot<...
2019-09-15 13:26:45 +0000 UTC View Post
First preview panel of Sequin Floatoshoot.
All existing patrons will receive this pack for free. If you are not a patron as of the time this message was posted, you will have to purchase the pack here instead:
https://colortwist.e-junkie.com/product/1629151/Sequin-Floatoshoot 2019-09-15 13:26:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Excessive yak shaving can take you on a really weird journey sometimes.
So a little while ago I basically got annoyed at the way some of my skin was looking in a few scenes (hint: it wasn't the skin, it's probably the scene lighting). After chasing that down and promptly realizing that the way I had things before was probably best, I started going through a few of the other shaders and cl...
2019-08-28 07:03:43 +0000 UTC View Post
I really need to stop starting every Patreon post with "So I'm still here"...
Long story short, I haven't gone anywhere. I've just been busy trying to solve some scene management stuff inside C4D, which of course involved writing Yet More Plugins (TM) to get everything working properly. A couple of weeks ago I'd actually tried to pull everything together (so I could start rendering out st...
2019-08-15 07:02:39 +0000 UTC View Post