September ProgBlog #3: retopo home stretch 2 the sequel

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.

September progblog 2 retopo home stretch

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.

September ProgBlog #1: playing with retopo addons

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.

I initially had some confusion about how to use bsurfaces with it but got there eventually (something about being in edit mode on existing meshes otherwise it helpfully starts a new one). I loved the space and bridge tools (wasn’t smart enough to figure out the gridfill and gstretch tools, think I did work out when to use relax eventually).

August ProgBlog #1: and then one thing led to another and...

WARNING: if you’re an ultraprude there’s a nude character in here but only the breasts are somewhat detailed, while you can see the crotch area due to lack of clothes there isn’t even implied genitalia.

So there I was, just smoothing out Red’s feet and toes and fixing toenails that needed fixing

when I decided that I should draw Zara in a hive hoodie since I’ve drawn her in a steem hoodie previously (and Kurenai in a steem shirt). Hot on the heels of that I figured I may as well use the 3d model of Zara seeing as it’s more or less finished. So of course I had to fix the proportions of the model first. After a lot of glaring and trying to figure out if the legs were too long or the torso too short, I finally decided on the former and ran it past Sprat who helpfully marked up a screenie for me.

November ProgBlog #5: and we're back

What is this 5 weeks shenanigans.

So pretty much trying to pick up where I was before I jumped back to do more retopo. That texture baking tool in 3dC is a lifesaver when you’re inept like me x_x The skin texture is now reasonable enough for in your face shots:

And an in your face Eevee render as close as the clipping distance would let me get (I’m not even sure I have many if any extreme closeups like this):

November ProgBlog #3: dense

That’s what the head is at the moment and I’m not even done.

Wait what haven’t I done this already? Well yes I had, but while I was working on the skin shader and trying to work out if you can keyframe changes in nodes (which I’ll need for the procedural eye texture, and apparently yes you can though I will have to figure out how) I realised I should probably do fingernail and claw procedurals as well so I don’t have to keep repainting them each character, so I jumped back into 3dC to add actual geometry for the finger and toe nails, as previously they were being done entirely with normal mapping.

November ProgBlog #1

I missed two aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Anyway. I’m currently stuck with the dance animation because the characters didn’t end up where I wanted them to be due to a severely truncated tumble run.

I originally planned for Zara to do a proper diagonal with at least a slight run-up and 4-5 tricks. Then I had a problem of Rei’s tumble run being not nearly as long because she’s just learning and doesn’t know nearly as many tricks as Zara, plus she does a slower and more graceful one that doesn’t utilise a run up.

September ProgBlog #2: off on a slight tangent

Only a very slight one though.

This is the first of four panels on that rather large songpic that escaped from my head (that obnoxious white line on the left is the frame border). Think I’ve levelled up or at least gained a lot of xp with shadowing as normally I still need the lineart layer after light and shadow 1 but it’s currently off, guess dark scenes are good for something XD (or maybe I should just not be so afraid of the shadow layers in day scenes).

June ProgBlog #2

I was actually intending to do this on Friday, but I was also setting up some new backup drives (my original drive was appropriated) and needed to copy the old backup from my computer (where it’s currently taking up a HELL of a lot of space!) and I found out the hard way that I can’t use 3d Coat and have big copy operations going at the same time because it makes my computer run out of memory.

June ProgBlog #1

I forgot to mention last update. Ages ago (6 years eep) I mashed a calendar for AER. Years later (because I always seem to notice glaring things years later, this does not bode well for whenever I finally get around to animating x_x) I suddenly realised, all the scientists in the Tranquility Calendar are guys.

They were all great and interesting people but seriously?

I mentioned this to darqx and said I wanted to “even” it out a bit (there’s 13 months so it’s going to be slightly lopsided but near enough is good enough as far as I’m concerned). So being the awesome sibling she is, she helped me find a whole pile of notable female scientists from a variety of fields (and by that I mean she found most of them in the time it took me to find a few because one of us can just do things and the other only just do things when the focus is there, and then I somehow had to choose which was bloody hard work).