Models, Blender 4.2, and Where I Should Focus (Poll)

I think it's time for another update to let everyone know where I'm at with life and art things.

I'm in a much more comfortable situation right now than I was previously which means that I can hopefully begin to dedicate more time towards producing content. It's been extremely slow for quite a while now and I will try to move back into a more frequent upload cycle. Of course that is highly dependent on what sort of projects I'm working on.

I've shown off some of the work I've been doing to the dinosaur models (the Tyrant and Interceptor ones) and one feature I was really trying to experiment with was the ability to have a genitalia toggle. In theory this feature would allow the user to quickly change out the genitalia with the click of a button. Say for example, if you wanted to make multiple versions of a render or an animation and all you would need to do was press a toggle instead of transferring animation data to another model.

But unfortunately I will likely not be going forward with the feature due to its rather complex implementation. I can't really find an easy way to work it into my pipeline when it comes to texturing. So I will just continue to have separate versions for male, female, etc.


With the long awaited release of Blender 4.2 LTS I have decided to finally update from 3.6. But with updates comes relearning of features. I've spent a very short amount of time in 4.2 and I can already feel that whatever they decided to do with eevee is going to lead me to using cycles. I had a pretty decent understanding of pre-4.2 eevee and despite the newer version moving towards ray-traced shadows, I for whatever reason cannot prevent light bleed from affecting deeper cavities and parts that otherwise should have complete light occlusion.

Needless to say, there will be a bit of a learning curve as I reorient myself with new tools and features.

And now, the important stuff!

I have been stagnating in my decision to work on either updating my existing models or creating new ones and I wanted to see what everyone would want.

The Interceptor dinosaur species was the first model I released and based on content I've seen from others, I would wager it's my most popular model. However with it being my first, it's become rather dated and my rigging capability has improved tremendously since. For example the version 1.2 beta. With and updated 2.0 version of the Interceptors I plan to completely rework the textures to have less of a bland scale pattern and to overhaul the rigs to be similar to the beta version.

My second dinosaur species, the Tyrant, is my larger T-Rex inspired model. It too has a beta version but is extremely bare-bones in comparison to the Interceptor. My ideas for the Tyrant are the same as the Interceptor.


Alternatively, I could try for something slightly more draconic. And while a typical western-dragon would likely be a more fitting choice I just feel like an aquatic hybrid would be much more unique. I know a lot of people are big fans of the things I've been doing with the model I did for my friend, Nidalee, and I've really been looking for an excuse to make a dracophin model for myself.

This option will definitely take much longer than the other two because all I have to start with is just the head.