October ProgBlog 3 is technically November ProgBlog 1 and just isn't called as such because I was a seriously sleep deprived idiot at the time.

Where I left off, I'd started on the hairs by doing the reasonably easy eyelashes and eyebrows first.  Okay eyebrows are pretty easy, just make a density map and then comb.  Eyelashes I always have to keep painting hairs on carefully and then combing equally carefully.

And then had to tone things down a little so that they didn't look like oil painting strokes.

_{Only vaguely related, I have read about someone using hair particles as oil painting strokes previously but they were asking questions about it and I didn't see the outcome.}

Then there was a system update which let me use my gpu for rendering again, yay!

And then I actually tested hybrid mode and it was about 20 seconds quicker on my test render.

Something along these lines.

Along with my usual "I don't really feel like I've done enough to be worth a progblog" silliness, it's been a crazy few weeks.  Sprat came up late for her yearly holiday after being uncertain about whether she'd be able to come up at all (she normally comes during the July school holidays) and did all the Christmas shopping, which basically meant hitting the shops almost every day for a couple of weeks.  She eventually managed to get it all done.

Then this weekend I had to supervise a weekend long teenager party (long annoying story). 

A bit of unexpected chaos happened on Friday and it kind of wiped me out.

And then it was followed by a kind of busy weekend.

Which of course means being up kind of late Sunday night (right now) trying to bang out a progblog like people actually care about or even understand my delirious blender rambling XD

This week's shenanigans involved trying to get the perfect bake once I figured out how to bake.  I could not get the perfect bake and I suspect it's either something to do with my cage mesh or blender is super aggressively caching something or some combination thereof.  So in the interests of getting the hell on with it I managed to blunder my way to a good enough bake and hopefully I'll figure it out down the line.

Missed a week again, oops :S I was supposed to post on the weekend I posted the last songpic but stuff happened, just not that.

Over the last week I finally managed to finish the retopo and apparently it has 8k odd faces with the mirror modifier, more once the subd modifier gets turned on, and probably more again when I get around to applying the mirror modifier which will probably be pretty soon (after I version save XD).  I then chucked a rig in it and tried it out.

In the spirit of failing to do more in the same amount of time, I ended up having to clean out the art cupboard (a job I've been studiously avoiding for the last 5 years, I also bought a cube shelf for it that fits a bit more perfectly than I thought it would) and will over the next week or so probably have to sort out the rest of the crap that I've been putting off and should have probably done during covid except that I took the opportunity to go hard on this thing instead.

On the bright side the art cupboard looks organised now and I can't even share photos because trying to get photos off my phone is apparently incredibly difficult for linux.

The last week has been more about trying to fit more stuff in, so work hours keep getting cut more and more and more (because apparently I shouldn't be cutting sleep for some reason).

And then on Friday my problem shoulder exploded (either pinched a nerve or it decided to become a frozen shoulder, I will find out which presently I guess) because I had the audacity to...stretch (literally all I did was stretch upwards).  By evening I was popping painkillers (I don't take painkillers because I have an irrational aversion to them) so I could run kids to places they needed to be, yesterday it was less bad and today it's less bad again but still there and still occasionally annoying.

Those twisty horns from hell are so-called because they gave me a hard time when I was sculpting, a hard time the first time I was retopologising and a hard time this time round too but I got there eventually.

I started off using speedretopo.

It's the little things.

I keep getting told not to worry about the tiny little details, because no one will ever notice them.  I do sometimes (depending on how long I'm staring at something that I didn't make).  I'm reasonably certain that people might not notice the little details when they're there, but will definitely notice them or at least pick up something "wrong" when they're not.

_{Depending on the style of the artwork of course.}

Or at least that's what I keep telling myself when I'm obsessing about all those little details.

And even if nobody else knows or cares, I know and I care, and in the end I'm doing this thing for me first and if anyone else likes it, that's a bonus for me XD

And this is why, gentle readers, I am zoomed in this freaking close fixing up the wing membranes.

Finally got done with the hands (or at least as done as I can be/am prepared to do).

_{I really hope I don't regret the decision to try and fix some of the more finicky things in the normal map later x_x}

This is actually the right hand.  I usually work on the left side because I manage to get in my own way less on that side.  I am showing off the right hand because I had to hide the right arm so I could start working on the wings.

There has been some hilarity with some of my previous progblogs as I've shared the dodgy looking things that usually end up happening whenever I'm building (at least characters, I haven't done much else recently x_x)

The above screenie is not that dodgy, it's just highlighting those irritating bumps.  All I want is a perfectly smooth mesh but pparently there are vertices that just jut out for no apparent reason regardless of what I'm doing with autosmooth and the smooth brush settings.  I have wasted so much time on this that it's well beyond ridiculous.