Kat Model Release and Updates

Firstly, after a lot of work, Kat has been released, completely free with no strings, with a model built from the ground up by General Buta and rigged by Mr. X. Opening up for an animation by me in the near future to use her for some high adrenaline gravity defying action! (And so others never have to deal with the horrible mess of the in-game model of her) And because of the no strings release, InfiniteTatami (https://twitter.com/tatami_DAZE) and other 3d model posers that went through hell to get nice renders of Kat are now allowed on a Gravity Rush fanzine coming out soon because this model is built fresh! I'm gonna attempt a render to apply as well!
https://www.gravitymemories.com/

https://twitter.com/AZmaybe9/status/1394020460338188292

Onto some Rendering and VR news! I found out how to scale the damn camera finally! I have to parent the camera to an object then scale that object! I'm wondering about making a soundless VR version and letting it render overnight.

I also figured out how to use raytracing, which is actually the key to getting much more cinematic polish. Funny enough, it never crossed my mind that I was using game-lighting in UE4. All those high quality UE4 projects I saw that looked cinematic were using raytracing of some sort! The Kat pic above is actually using it but here's a clearer difference from Kaiju Club scene alpha testing.

BEFORE

AFTER

So Raytracing takes lighting from game performance style to getting much more cinematic polish like Blender's cycles or Octane renderer used for movies!
Of course as you see the art direction i'm going towards isn't really realism but kinda like a mix with concept art. But look forward to raytracing making things look "Holy shit" in the future! Funny enough, all those lights I put around in the Michiru vid is almost like a remake of what raytracing already would've done so it doesn't really need it and I'd have to redo so much to add it. Also it hits heavy on performance but a DLSS plugin made by Nvidia is just NUTS at using screen percentage tricks to jump 40fps scenes all the way up to 120fps! 

I finally got past all my destruction learning/porting issues with Blender. I also learned of resetting normals so the feet don't look badly polygonal!

First the shoe rip I was scared about because my modeling antics usually land me into cursed spots. Just ask my rigger for Kat and he'll tell you I know how to fuck something up real bad. But here, I decided to take this step by step. Keep it real simple. Duplicate the shoes> Cut them in half from top and bottom> Study shoe rip stuff> Try to replicate how messy they are and use a plane and stretch it in weird ways for inner shoe tears still connecting to the top> Use a ton of shapekeys to deform stuff. It came out ok, but I feel like this video is a stepping point towards these things. It's ok that the destruction looks a bit polygonal. It all works and I can get better at it later.

I actually had lots of issues with getting the underside of the wood to have lighter textures than the outside. And it was all because Blender counts its material index from zero instead of 1 so I kept choosing the wrong thing for cell fracture to apply to!

This makes me realize that I should add a camera shot of this happening to the vid from this angle. I gotta work on all the B angles.

Maybe some more smoke will cover up this polygonal wood? Or maybe I need to learn to cut better? Either way, a good try to get more detailed Blender destruction working and ported to UE4!

Now this took some extra time but was worth it. Most of the books in here have real-time physics within UE4 and are gonna be knocked around all over the place! I learned from this earthquake video that even simple stuff getting dynamic physics can make a scene feel more alive! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yKbH5GEwzk
For mine, I had to have the collision not be from inside the shelves as those exploded the books from the simplified collision. Instead I made a bunch of invisible planes to interact and throw the books the way I wanted them to be at certain times. Same method I did for Yuri's roar in DDLC vid with the cars getting sweeped up by a huge cube! Using invisible basic pieces is a great tactic for... a LOT of real-time physics things, surprisingly.

I also got my 2nd Covid shot of Moderna today! So I'll be far safer from the virus and keep on living to make content. Man, too many people I know had family members that caught it or caught it themselves and have been going through a rough time or just had bad taste for a month. I know I'd fall into full sickness if I got it with my asthma. It's a load off my mind to avoid the damn thing finally.