How are projects going?

Hey there. Figured it's been a while since I posted so I just wanted to keep you updated on what I've been doing.

So black outs normalized and I've been just working on scenes. Specifically the Rise one has a few more frames done, but Gosh the script I made has changed so much by now It may be just too short for it to be worth the wait. Regardless I just wanna finish it and get it, not out of the way, but make it good enough to be worth at least some wait, but I also wanna release a couple more stuff for the complete materia at the same time to make up for the wait. So as I rendered stuff I made some more projects on the side and hey, I also found out some nice things while I was on it.

Important note:

Starting the next model updates batch, I am permanently moving to Blender 4.3. 

I think it's time, it's been out long enough most bugs must've been fixed by now, EEVEE next also finally has light linking which was what I was waiting for, and the MustardUI tool now includes a perfected Physics tab between other new features that just makes it too good to not move forward.

Good news for persona projects!

First off, I was kinda frustrated of how badly I rigged and ported the male Persona models I had, they need a LOT of texture work and rigging fixing for them to be functional or at least to be on par of all the other male models I use. That's the main reason why I started using those (foreigners and gang members random male models lately). So I went out of my way and commissioned a 3d model maker colleague to port a male persona model that had a lot of features to be fully nudeable, that one is Kanji's beach model from the dancing games.

 He did an amazing job and even made some extra texture work for the missing cropped body parts. Now I have a full DAZ body base model for the anime males I will make in the future :D

In another model related news.

Tekken models realization 

oh boy where do I start.

So basically, Tekken models are quite an interesting problem to have as someone who really wants to make models that look as canonically accurate as possible.

Tekken models use an unique method to make their models look unique and have each their unique proportions.

Ok this is gonna be a bit technical so you can skip until after the screenshots bellow if you are not interested in the technicalities of model making/mesh modding, if you are or you've made mods in the past, well you may already know this.

So, the way tekken rigs work is that they are VERY detailed, things like trapezoids, busts, side waists, pecs, tricepts, bicepts and quads all are rigged BESIDES the usual limbs (neck, spines, arms and shoulders). This is a very detailed type of rigging, and you wonder why? Well you can think it's that way because the devs use them to animate more realistic muscle and jiggling movement in real time. And yeah, that can be part of it. The thing is, all Tekken models, especially the male ones, share an initial "shape" by default, if you have come around and opened the raw ripped tekken models, for characters like Jin and Kazuya, Hwoarang, if you put them side by side, you may notice how similar their proportions are, and how ridicously and unrealistically SWOLE they are. Well, there's a reason for that. All the models share this base shape, and have those special bones, and look way different in their base forms because the game engine uses those special bicepts/quads/trapezoids etc bones to actually give each model their special unique proportions IN GAME. Yes, the game animations themselves scale the models muscles, to give them their unique proportions for each character, and the models we rip, are just the default shape the game NEVER USES for them.

The reason: Customizable outfits, basically to avoid having to make an entire unique outfit model mesh for each character in the game. There's only one or two versions of each outfits for male and females, and since they all use the same rigs, the game just applies every outfit rig just has an unique "scaling" animation that gives it the shape of the character that will wear it.

Heres an example of In game proportions.

Ripped models proportions

So, there's a way to get the actual game 100% accurate proportions, and that is using a program named Ninja Ripper. Which basically "brute forces" it's way to rip the model that's literally on screen, last time I used ninjaripper (free version) back to rip some wwe 2k models but the version that works with Tekken 8 is actually a paid version available on the creator's patreon. I will try to get it eventually to see how much difference there is, but for now I am sorta "eyeballing" the proportions with references like I usually do with characters that don't have a proper realistic body proportions.

Asuka Model

I was trying to Update my Asuka model and as a perfectionist I was really frustrated I couldn't get this cropped sports bra right!

There was not a single resource out there that matched this V neck in any model and modeling it by myself would take me a long time. So to solve this skill issue related setback, I did what any lazy bump that takes shortcuts would do. I used AI lol

I used a site named hyper3d.ai, the site is a bit... well it's not something I was eager to try, but after seeing Royal Skies (someone who's tutorials are literally half of the reasons I managed to make these models nowdays) tutorial for how to use it, I figured I had not much to lose other than a bit of time.

Here's the link to the tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_eMcl4DkfM

Anyway, the site generated this for me, far from the real thing but at least useful enough.

I of course needed to clean it up quite a bit since the topology was double faced, meaning there was a lot of pointless faces in it, which in the big picture is one of those things that makes models slower. So I had to optimize it a bit, and use a new Blender 4.3 included add-on named UVtoolkit to actually give it a good proper shading.

The end result, is looking decent enough. Also if you've played Tekken 8 long enough, you may have noticed my Asuka model neck looks too long compared to the actual game model, what do you think, should I change that? I do believe the game model of Asuka looks a bit goofy with such a short neck.

It's just ridiculously bad looking lol. But if you guys really want that part of the accuracy to be implemented to my model I can work something out with it I guess.

Reina Status

So another new thing that is helping me speed things up is a script I wrote for Tekken models specifically, using again AI, I used ChatGPT to help me write this script that basically just converts the actual Tekken game face rig to the regular Autorig Pro rig structure. Basically saving me hours of rigging models from scratch and fixing vertex groups manually, and at the same time, preserving the game accuracy some more.

 So far the shading is looking good, her somewhat petite but fit body is an interesting thing to play around, didn't gave her man extra body shapes yet, she will end up very similarly to my Xiaoyu model.

 And there's a plus too >:3

 This one seems tricky tho, this form will need a bit of baking body textures to my model once again and setting that up takes a bit of time so I will leave that for last. Rigging her clothes is already a chore.

Tifa and Aerith's models

Topology hell!!!!

The new Rebirth models are out, and of course that means my Tifa and Aerith models are once again outdated.

Well I will work with them at a slower pace as I mentioned since my priority are tekken model and animations.

Here's how huge the difference in the model topology is compared to my Tifa model (head hack from the PC version of Remake). Overall, the actual proportions are the same, just more detailed, the higher polys are just basically to smooth out the hard edges since the game ran in higher hardware like the PS5 and PC, while Remake models were meant to run on the PS4 and just ported to PC as they were. But I already replicated and smoothened the hard edges to my model by using the subdivision modifier on the body, so I really doubt doing the whole head hack process again is actually worth the trouble, the textures are basically the same except for the eyes too. So I think I will just port the new hairstyles and outfits for these ones.

Also, I already backed the body textures from Rebirth in to my model so yay, more Tifa HD canon abs!]

Arho Angels Kasumi model update.

I also wanted to make a Kasumi animation for later, last year I worked on it and did a quick update for it on blender 4.3 with an autorig pro rig because the Rigify one was too outdated and almost non functional.

This model is basically finished, I made a mistake that didn't allowed me to release it before the new years and moved on but an ARP update helped me solve that, but now, with Ninja Gaiden Black remaster release I am tempted to add some of the new Kasumi model into this, dunno, this model will be released publicly day one since it's not mine and is basically an update, Ahro retired a long ago and all of Arho's models are publicly available on smutbase now as well, this one was just so god I felt it needed to be revived for modern blender standards.

Tekken animations! 

So I found out how to actually rip the in game animations, but only a few of them are actually rippeable, specifically just menu animations, some idle stuff and poses etc. It will be still useful for some future projects tho.

Animations teases:

Tifa cowgirl, literally. This one I made a basic loop a few months ago when I updated the model and never went back on it. I recently found a Nibelheim map ported being shared on Smutbase, so the bug caught me again. I really want to make a long Tifa project someday, but I may just leave this in the back burner for now as I don't wanna stray too much from current projects.

Nina gangbang! A project made in a day, positive thing about ADHD and hyper focus, is that you just do things like this in a whim, now if only I had that same energy to do a quick intro? Well this loop and another "ending" for this scene are done, but I wonder if I can expand to it a bit more. Basically this worked for me as a warm up to go back into animating instead of just working on models all day.

 And finally, yes I need to sit and work on Rise's animation. I really want to finish it. As I mentioned at the start, getting it out of the way sounds bad, but I need to focus on it, believe it or not that has been a huge issue for me and it's a frustrating thing about how unreliable I can be with my own projects. I don't wanna always go back to the ADHD thing but just by looking at the ammount of stuff I've been doing mentioned above you realize how I've done a lot of everything, BUT finish that animation. I paid for the audio, I have it for a while now, I rendered 4 scenes and I am sure it won't live up to the expectations. But somehow I need to find that motivation or just focus to finish it once it for all, I will sit this entire next week and do my best to do nothing but just focus on it. And finally be free of this curse that doesn't allow me to move on with doing content at a pace I want. I know it sounds grim, but it's just how it is. So much happened last year that I want to start this one to have a good kickstart of content, keeping my word of not giving any promises, I just say that I invested in this animation and it'll be too much of a waste to not finish it and many others I have queued after it, because if I finish it I can finally start to finish the rest as well. So pray for me to get out oft his hole because I really need to find a way to face these kind of mental setbacks somehow :/

Thank you all for reading, I also been reminded of some animations I haven't released in the past (from a year or two ago by now) that I finished or were scrapped but were finished enough to share. One is an Ann/Panther one so I will be releasing that soon.

Much love MH!