I just added Discord integration and i'm working on getting my own up and running. It feels better for a more direct connection from me to you. This page should be able to help out when it comes to how to get the tier benefit thing when joining. It's like you gotta join from Patreon's link so that their bot on Discord can read the connected account used. https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/212052266-How-do-I-get-my-Discord-Rewards-
The Patreon benefit channels I have up so far are a general Project Tracker with bios and a Project Discussion channel so that we could go into much more meaningful conversations on your ideas for things I do.
Still thinking up more ideas, but I should probably get the Discord fully up and ready before Neko vid is finished so I can share it with the rest of the world when that video releases.
This pic might also help when nothing but the benefit thing is showing up without a link. (Hopefully this solves it)
Another thing you might have to do in case you're already connected is to log out and reconnect through that app page above. The it should be working. (Thanks, Sayer, for the test!)
Patreon has a knack of going down right when I'm in the middle of making these huge posts.
Let's get started with the notes. When loading up part 2 of the project, I worried that my experimentation in the past with ik bones might mess up the import of the animation into the final models in UE4. SURPRISINGLY, just because the bone structure was named the same, UE4 instead re-targeted the already-imported model bones to that one of part 2. Which means everything imported perfectly! I was also worried about Neko's IK bones that were used in this part but deleted in the previous one. Nope, all good. Ik bones won't be shown in UE4, but the constraint was recorded into the movements of the bones connected to the ik anyways. In other words, that worked flawlessly too. What this means going forward is that I don't need to mess with editing the model all over again. (as I feared going from part to part) I can just focus on animation fixing!
For the bags, I was trying to parent them to an empty axis point so it's origin can be attached to zero for UE4 to recognize and not have the items fly everywhere. It's best to do this at frame zero when no constraints are on, because for some reason when they're on, it adjust the bag to the wrong position. As if the origin became the parent instead of the model it was attached to. Weird. After creating a new mix from shape keys set to zero to fix the glitchy bag mess, it was time to get it flawlessly into UE4. I only missed UV-Unwrap fixing the bag. I'll go back for that later.
A lot of shots are being adjusted to be even sexier with animation and slower so it can be taken in. This one above was actually slowed down so the foot loom could last a second rather than a frame. It turns out that to accomplish this in UE4, you split an animation layer in the sequencer and then adjust the play rate for that part. But what about the established camerawork? I just figured that out today. The background of the sequencer layer keyframes is always green and extends infinitely in both directions. It turns out that, once you turn on autosize by right clicking the background for the layer, the background will fit to match the keyframes from first to last. Another tricky thing about it is that you can now edit that background as if it was an animation layer. So splitting and stretching the part by holding ctrl to match the newly adjusted play rate of your animation works PERFECT. The only thing to be mindful of is to make splits on top of a full stack of keyframes. Not doing that messes up the gradual interpolation between keyframes when time suddenly changes. (Jolts or judders in camerawork for example)
Check it out, I turned the anime shader off. "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!!"
Speaking of lighting, I set the lighting build quality to medium. It has the least harshest shadows and keeps the lighting light for the rest of the house without looking unfinished.
The subdivided model that took an hour to import into UE4 absolutely shows why it was so worth it in this shot. The toes are actually smooth rather than harsh blocky objects!
Same goes for the subdivided fingers. Honestly, this shot was super hard to light correctly, but it's so much easier now that I don't have to deal with face lights left and right. I still would like a bit more splashes of color around the edges. might add unnecessary light to pull that off.
Now on to the part that was never released! Rin has fallen off of the rapidly growing Neko and is making a run for the treat bag.
Epic slowmotion jump. Thanks to the help of the new technique of stretching keyframes, this wasn't a bother at all to add!
This ending looks more unfinished the more I look at it, but the basics of it are done. This part might require more animation fixes than part 3!
So I let the "Production lighting" build for an hour or so after getting my lighting just right in the preview mode.
With the production mode's added shadows, it really changed the atmosphere of the house to be darker. Darn it. I'll just add a few more lights near the ground or lower the lighting build to high or something.
Anyways, I've been working my ass off to get this looking good. I've still got a few things to change, but it's looking solid so far!
After trying all day to fix the bone that just doesn't want to have an ik constraint, I finally gave up and Neko's left and right bangs won't have physics. It's surprisingly hard to notice.
Anyways, progress on her in part 1 has jumped to where I'm getting the hair physics down near the end. It really was just that one bug stopping everything. (and wack physics that require lots of patience to get through)
The partial exporting of the scene has vastly sped up this part of the process. So i'm super thankful for it. Even though I am having to animate her hair manually in a LOT of tough parts. But that's just the nature of how badly her hair is rigged. For the month ending, I'll definitely get the $15 polished tier part 1 out just before it ends!
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5/27/19: Busy day away from home, here's my plans for DDLC to make up for it since I got home and went straight to sleep. Woke up again to write this. It's all alpha, but feel free to suggest scenes (definitely for Yuri's rampage) and I might find a way to add them.
Starts off with Natsuki finding the Dictaphone in a trash can. After making a change to make herself into a cute cat girl, she goes mad power crazy in her mind. (In which we see)
Natsuki: I could be all-powerful! Towering over a city underneath my feet! Playing with the cute fire truck toys and making people do what I want! Hahahaha- wait! But if I'm so big... People can see my... My- n-No! (Natsuki immediately crouches down to hide her panties) Natsuki: Ah! And then I'd be bigger and bigger! Big enough for the whole world to see! Ahh! No, no, no, no, NO!
She then grows to mega sizes on the city and the dream ends as her head shaking is in sync with her real self.
Natsuki: That's way too embarrassing. But what about...
After the camera pans to see Yuri pleasantly reading under a tree, switch to MC-cam walking up to Natsuki. Catching her by surprise.
Natsuki: NYAAAA! Why do you have to be so quiet! Don't sneak up on me like that, baka!
MC (no voice, just have a text box pop-up that's based on Persona 5 with ridiculous options. Yes, the wrong game text box): . You're cute when you're startled. . Damn. You saw me. I'm trying to stealth but I'm dummy thicc and the clap of my ass cheeks alerted you. . What the fuck did you just say to me? You little shit. *continues with copy-pasta
Natsuki: hehehe... You know... You're awfully cute. I kinda want to just put you in my pocket and have you all to myself. I think I will. *He shrinks down to the size of a cute toy*
The first person pov camera slowly moves down in spurts until you're level with Natsuki's shoes. Natsuki picks you up.
Natsuki: Nyaaa! You're just so adorable! Here, I'll put you on my shoulder so I can be your ride! (She turns around and faces Yuri) Now then, I think someone else might enjoy my dream VERY MUCH! *Yuri will grow to 30ft tall*
Camera cuts to Yuri reading a hilariously twisted book that has some dark humor towards her personality. Then do a whole growth scene thing there.
Yuri: What the-! What's happened... Why am I gigantic!? Natsuki: OMG, she's so huge! It's AWESOME!
Natsuki wraps herself around Yuri's leg. Yuri then picks up Natsuki. Camera switches to MC on Natsuki's shoulder for a moment so we get a huge size comparison.
Yuri: Natsuki, what's come upon me! Natsuki: C'mon Yuri! You're huge! Enjoy it or I'll make you grow even bigger! Yuri: Eh-what!? You can't do that! That's- Natsuki: *Yuri grows even bigger*
Yuri gets even bigger to a size useful for later. Accidentally stepping on a tree afterwards.
Yuri: Oops! I'm so sorry... (faces Natsuki) Although that did feel... Unnaturally powerful. Natsuki: Awesome! Let's start this show by crushing that van! Let's take the world! Yuri: Natsuki! That's another person's property! There'd be lawsuits.
Natsuki's face is that of complete anguish!
Natsuki: Yuri, I can change anything! Whatever you do, I can just reverse it! Yuri: Oh!... Then I have SO MANY IDEAS!
Yuri then goes on a rampage montage. All destruction she does is reversed immediately after she's done as if it never happened. These get crazier until Yuri demands to be WAY bigger. Natsuki then takes a selfie, using the MC in her palm, from afar as Yuri's shoe crushes an entire city. (titled, Enjoying the Apocalypse! XD)
But the damage is so much that Natsuki resets them back to school. This throws Yuri off-balance and she falls backwards. Crashing through the classroom and into the courtyard in the back of the school. Her leg cuts the classroom Yuri and Sayori are in in half. Natsuki slides down Yuri's leg into the classroom.
Natsuki: Wow. You guys are big! Guess you're into this too, huh? Monika: Will she be alright? Natsuki: She's fine! Yuri from offscreen: I'm fine!...
Yuri's current position is kinda like Alice in the Rabbit's house in terms of feet position. Both on different ends of the school building facing the entrance while she sits in the courtyard. And at this point, MinMax3d and I converge storylines!
----- 5/24/19: Export Success! Exporting in parts and switching from physics on to off in the middle of the transition is a NICE success. Not only are the exports bloody fast, the transition is seamless! Turning the physics on after the transition allows the physics to reset like a forced "CALM DOWN" option. So this should make the exporting process SO much faster for me. ----- 5/23/19: Hey, it's my birthday! Here's a chunky update Let's start off with DDLC: It's completely set up and ready to start animating. The most jarring thing I fixed about the models was the horrific cheeks! Jeez, so thicc. Not so dummy thicc anymore! After fixing their armature, next up was finding a dictaphone model. Nothing existed in the mmd style, so I made one on my own! What's interesting about this is that now I know how to go about creating destruction for buildings. I had no idea how to remake a building because of all the texturing involved. Making this device taught me how to unwrap and how to apply textures! This is massive for me! Because I feel like I can fix almost any problem once I get building destruction going with correct details! Hell, maybe put together my own mmd models sometime! Yuri having a read while Natsuki will find the Dictaphone first. I'm gonna post my big idea on this soon so you guys can see if you want to add anything to it. - Now let's move on to Neko. (I swear I get double the amount of work done because of waking up earlier and starting work) First of all, the big change for Neko is that I reduced her hair to a manageable size. This is a huge change because any problems I used to have were literally reduced to being like anyone else's hair. It's also a bit cuter now! On top of that, I've fixed animating the tail to be smooth, all animations fixed, etc. It's JUST the hair that i've been testing the physics out. Now my plan for exporting has changed as well. In Samus's vid, I exported the whole part all at once with turning off the physics and turning them back on when they were calmed. But this animation just doesn't seem to have many calm parts. This time, I'll record the physics and export up to the time where I usually have to turn them off and adjust manually. Then I start the next part from there when I reset the physics. UE4's sequencer will easily crossfade the animation in a smooth blend (like a video editor) while the physics are off and nobody will notice! Not only that, if I do it this way, it makes exporting FAR faster. I no longer have to wait for the entire section of the animation to be rendered just to fix a small thing that happened way late in the export. This should also help vastly with times of the subdivided model exports! Lastly, for Marin: Telehypnotic seems to have progressed pretty well with making the model look good. If anything, having him work on Marin has helped me more than the model since he taught me quite a few things. He's definitely still more advanced than me, obviously, but it's because of him that my models will look smoother in the future for all videos. I'm pretty sure Marin is done and will just require my personal rigging. So I just need to finish Neko vid off!
----- 5/18/19: What's on my mind
Ok, so I'm a bit behind due to the hectic weekend and the mental break I needed Thursday due to the heavy amounts of effort 3 days prior that almost went nowhere. (Anime shader is a great find, but will require lots of practice) I want to list down what I'm thinking about so you guys can know what's on my mind. Feel free to talk about what could be added in these since my ideas are always half-formed to allow additions.
List of stuff I need to do: . Etna destruction test. (Very short test for ground and building destruction. Already animated and done, just need to figure out the simulating) . Polish Neko vid. . Marin Vid. . Star Guardian Ahri vid. . Collab with Minmax on Doki-Doki Literature Club Vid somewhere between all this. (He's WAY ahead of me since I've been working hard on my stuff, but a successful collab will lead to speedier work together in the future)
List of stuff I'm thinking about: . Persona 5 Vid. (Multiple gts) . Xenoblade 2 Vid. (Multiple gts) . Mt. Lady Vid. . Short tests with VR vids like being the gts and gts girlfriend scenarios. . Idk enough about Fire Emblem for a vid, but I can imagine a full scale war one. . Pool 2 being in the far future now. . Why my pc crashed and I had to rewrite all of this on my phone.
List of stuff I need to learn: . Modeling/Texturing to look more Anime in UE4. . Normal mapping because the shader relies heavily on it. . Simulating destruction properly. . Jiggling T&A. . Smoke & Fluid effects. . City Engine for easy super-full cities. . Camera 360 for VR. . A more Concept art style that returns to the Anime feel the models used to have. . Time management. . Actually start working on the game I want to work on at some point alongside all this.
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5/15/19: Neko Polishing Well this has been a hell of a fight for 3 days in a row. Only today have I felt like I got a step somewhere, but it's kinda a side-step at this point since the new character cel-shader i'm using is causing some weird shit going on. (Lights have explosive bloom, weird edge flickers, light bleed from shadow profile somehow) But I do think it will be important in the future to figure out a good mix of flat shading and regular. Just look at these differences! This really hides the low polyness of the model. It's exactly as I imagined this scene and it's a bonus that the face light is disabled. So this will help a ton in dark scenes with less requirements of touching up in multiple areas to hide how bad it could've looked.
I want to start heading towards this Anime style because it's SUPER CLEAN and clearly matches the model types I use. A huge step forward if I want to reach my goal of a Concept Art style. It's gonna be a tough road to learn the proper texturing, normal mapping, lighting, and more to pull this off, but it'll be worth it for the visual upgrade. As you can see here, the testing so far has flattened out the terrible shadows that I didn't like. Yet something tells me that a normal map would probably fix these. Anyways, if this keeps up, this might be a good lookin' video in the end! I'm still looking into the characters having no shadows at all on the world. I'm thinking it has to do with the scale they import as, but that's just a hypothesis.
Time to go back to the beginning and fix everything! There will be a little extra ending to show off the bag warning label, as said in the script notes so long ago. But I'll get to it on the fixing pass. Even her tail will be on the fixing pass since i'm having different ideas on how to animate it.
I can't believe this was yet another 30 seconds to make! This is a LONG video!
So youtube has sent me a warning due to something that happens in this particular area of the video that doesn't follow their sex or nudity guides. I bet it's when Rin steps on the random dude and grow-crushes him. This would be humiliation fetish, but that's not really the goal in this video. Plus he comes out fine AND the video is already age-restricted by me for fucks sake.
If it's flagged here, then it'll be flagged in the main video upon full release. Something to watch out for and might have to cut. (Not planning on it. Will take strike 1 if I can still appeal it later) Might have to make it more obvious the dude is fine. Maybe far more comical should help.
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I swear I just keep adding stuff when it comes to making an ending. I'm SO CLOSE to the end! After the end of this snippet, Rin and Neko cuddle with their faces for a moment when Neko spots and chases a helicopter.
Even then, much to fix. It is pretty cool that the video has gotten so far now!
It was a fun day and I REALLY like how this is looks!
She's gotten MUCH bigger here. Which is also a reference of the growth scene in that one Satsuki vid... I think that's the name. Anyways, inside helicopter view.
I gotta figure out how to get rid of that weird layering effect. Maybe I just gotta build lighting? Nah. Something else.
Here's the blowing scene of Neko having fun. And then here's an outside view of what happened.
Seriously MASSIVE!
You can see the helicopter at the top right for a size comparison!
As said from stream chat, bridges don't have a good track record in my videos.
With this shot, I wanted to capture Neko from the ground level as she began a massive pounce! Lots of cleaning up to do here.
And off she goes for a sequel within Pool 2. Or maybe I should set some other things up before going to that? Either way, it's kinda far off. Let's focus on this for now. Only Rin needs to be animated for this ending now and then I can start going back to fix EVERYTHING!
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5/8/19: A Vision I just woke myself up with a vision of the true ending of this video. I hate myself for it because I know full well I'm going to go for it even when Neko has no room. So I envisioned the helicopter that comes in to stay in place and shine a spotlight on Neko from above. Neko grows yet again here until suddenly she's face-to-face with the helicopter while sitting. Do some nice comparison shots here of it being smaller than her nose. Then have her blow her breath on it so it flies off and she chases it. Good idea about it is that I don't need to animate Neko turning around. I can cut to her already done with that. (I'll probably do it anyways since it's hard) Bad news? She's way huge for Pool 2, but that's fine. If the girl doesn't also outgrow my script, then it wasn't a good script!
----- 5/2/19: Huge Progress! I'm just gonna post it all in pics for you guys! This shot finally looks great! Rin accidentally tramples a dude. She gets her foot off in time, but something else has other plans. Yikes! What a lucky guy to most of us here! I wanted to try out the comical stuck-to-foot after crushing idea here. The dude bugs out a bit here, but it went pretty well. This is probably the update pic. Rin picks gu-you up for a heartfelt apology. I admit that I did this because I didn't want to spend time animating the dude anymore. Especially flailing from being picked up. So pov it is! Rin accidentally bumps into the fire escape she sets you down on. I was gonna have her turn around and put you down, but some people want the RinButt. So having her not turnaround AND do this was a perfect opportunity! Neko has finally woken up! City block-sized kitty? Hell yeah! Here's a pic of her standing up. I'm very close to finishing this. Just need a helicopter... With a red laser coming from it. ----- 4/30/19: Insert Good Title Here Ok, the two shots I've enjoyed making fantastic are these two. I do have animation of Rin stepping on the random dude, BUT I just don't like how the flow of the shot or how the cinematography is at all after these shots. I've really gotta focus on taking my time with shots rather than having everything in the scene all at once. It's actually making my shots weaker. ----- 4/29/19: Getting Closer The general animation section for the $5 Snippets is almost complete. I absolutely feel that the animation will be finished this week and I can start polishing up going back!
So here's a summary of the events so far and what's next: Neko has outgrown the building is lying on top of the one next to it.
This will definitely be the most explosive shot! I realize that I posted this everywhere else before and will update with the new roof I created for it tomorrow. I've already tweaked the timing and the way she falls from the picture. It's more impactful now rather than floaty.
Then I have Rin animated on the side trying to avoid Neko's body. Just enough to make the cut of her standing up make sense. There's a fuckin' awesome shot near Neko's knee in comparison to everything around it. No screenshot yet because the size of the cars compared to what's next to them are really weird and will fix tomorrow.
Rin stands up to knock her head into the street light. She backs up into a dude who's just trying to avoid everything and accidentally tramples him. Before she can get her foot off, she gets one last growth spurt, because I never know when enough is enough. As she puts her foot off and picks him up from the ground, Neko finally wakes up against to see how big she's gotten. She then freaks out and runs off. Accidentally causing a lot of damage!
Rin drops the random guy off on the stair escape nearby, (Something I've wanted to do for 3 videos now) then chases after Neko.
----- A really bad week.
So, i'm not one to tell personal information because I want to keep things focused on the art, not the creator. But damn do I need to vent real quick about how much has happened just recently and why there will be a delay to working on stuff for a moment. Cons: . All cars in my family's driveway aren't able to drive for very different reasons. Sis's car has broken key thingy, my car needs license plates, (that my dad took to get done at DMV, but is now sick out-of-state) and my mom's car didn't pass smog check. . One of my cats died. Rest in piece, old man. . House was flooded yesterday morning and will be expensive to fix since we can't afford insurance. . Family won't ever go to sleep til 4am. I CAN HEAR EVERYTHING! My sleep schedule is really screwed. Pros: . Got my car back from the body shop looking great! . Gonna make a resume to apply to Retro Studios for cinematics. (Metroid Prime 4) I did make an action-based Samus video after all, so why not? I'll get back to work as soon as I can re-balance life issues thrown at me. Shouldn't take too long, but this is why there's been a slight delay for a few days.
I didn't get to any destruction because of how intricate the movement for Rin exploding out of the building was. But I'll get to it next time!
I also realized that to make mesh objects, like the car Rin slams into, behave without flying all over the place, since the origin was changed to the center of the object for the specific animation and then changed back during export, all I gotta do is add an empty axis at the center of the map and parent the mesh to it.
This creates a point at the center so the car doesn't have its origin moved back to it.
UE4 uses the empty axis instead and the animation is exported properly. If you ever wondered why the one cop car slides up from the ground in Bowsette, it's because its animation was flying all over the place and I needed it to work for the destruction shape keys later.
Ok, here's the primitive process I've currently got for Destruction. I feel that I will get better at it once I learn modeling and texturing to create better details.
I first export a selected wall from UE4 into .obj file format. Then import that into Blender. Scale will be large, so reduce it to 0.1 to fit Blender's scale. (With metric settings set to 0.1 in Blender, it'll scale right back up on export)
Now with that object, turn on the cell fracture add-on and cell fracture it. It will be placed into another layer. In order to get the physics to work, you gotta select 1 piece and apply rigid body physics.
Once you apply physics and turn on 'start disabled', highlight all the other pieces and use 'Copy from Active' to apply those same settings to the rest of the pieces.
The green box is actually just a cube with visuals set to wired in the display setting. You want to set its rigid body settings to PASSIVE so that it interacts with the wall pieces. That's technically the only ground those pieces have, so spread it out. Another factor you'll need are the wrecking balls for the destruction. See that weird snowman? It's objects parented to Rin to act as collision. The thicker the object, the better the collision.
You'll want to set these objects that are parented to the correct bone to 'Animated'. This way it actually follows what your character does. Another important factor is collision groups. I wanted the wall corner to be destroyed first without the rest of it falling, so I set it to collision group 1. The rest was collision group 2. I shift-clicked the green box to be both collision groups so nothing falls through. This also applies to your parented objects. Speaking of those, make sure all destruction-based objects are on the same layer or they don't work. Use 'M' to move them to the same "layer box" as the broken wall. Another thing about the wall is that sometimes you don't want a piece to fall at all. I set those pieces to passive so they wouldn't budge. I did this for edges of the wall.
Last bug fix about gravity if things look floaty. Go to world settings and HEAVILY increase the gravity! Also, while you're there, you can set the range for rigid body cache. Pretty important for timing when your destruction works. For export prep, you need to create an empty axis. There needs to be one at the center for the object to act correctly in UE4. Then create a bone and parent it to the empty axis. Lastly, parent every piece of the wall to that bone. You can select them all at once and parent them. The reason for this process is so the UE4 object is all counted as ONE skeleton. If you don't do this, then EVERY SINGLE PIECE has its own skeleton and its own animation. Yikes!
There IS baking keyframes, but I just found out a few minutes ago that, as long as the rigid body cache is set up in the right time-frame, the export process will record the physics anyways!
So you imported the wall and everything. How to use it? It would just intersect with the wall that's already there! In the sequencer, set the perfect wall to hide and the broken wall to unhide at the exact 2 frames when the destruction is expected! Nobody will notice with the smoke and other stuff going on.
The door was manually animated in UE4. Some things don't need to be cracked to get the job done, you know.
Here's what my destruction looks like for now. Very basic, but it's a start. As long as the actually destruction workflow is there, I can begin to work on getting better at it.
And another angle. The best part about all this is that, since it's also an imported animation, I can set it to reverse itself! I'm gonna use that trick for Marin's vid! Oh! I also suggest re-applying the original wall's texture to the broken one. Although that's probably not gonna look as good as it did before, at least the textures will match up.
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4/21/19: SUBDIVISION
I know I usually don't work on Sundays, but I couldn't resist researching.
So my models have looked low polygon at times due to the fact that subdividing the model, for export to UE4, was impossible since the shape keys kept getting in the way.
Telehypnotic told me he cut body parts off and subdivided them. That didn't click with me until just right now in how it could be used for Unreal Engine! You're supposed to cut off the head from the body so that the body can be subdivided FREE FROM SHAPE KEYS! Although cutting off body parts near clothing leads to less fix-editing in the future for edges. It also allows hiding the seam.
Ok, so that's cutting for subdivision that I need to master. This is definitely a process for final export since it can easily slow down animations further.
Once those areas are cut and subdivision is applied, (don't forget to delete shape keys on cut body parts) then you're free to export! Since the parenting stays correct, the bones still affect everything correctly!
Here's a pic cut at the neck. I did that as a test to see the difference. MASSIVE. You can also see weird edges on the clothing. This is why clothing doesn't get subdivided.
Huge difference for appendages! I'll be able to use this technique for Neko vid! Should absolutely boost the quality! The model will probably still require some edge fixing in areas like Marin's sandals sinking in here. To do that, I can use shape keys to "edit" the mesh without screwing it up in some way. Just have those new shape keys permanently on.
So model quality will be permanently boosted in all future videos starting with Neko vid.
THAT ROCKS!
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4/14/19: Long Week & Weekend
A lot happened, so I'll try to sum it up. Most of the week was slowly animating Rin slowly walking up to Neko and doing a down smash- er, I mean doing a swing with the bag into Neko's mouth.
I decided to try doing an advancing throw myself to see what a sloppy technique would be like. Not only is it sloppy, it was incredibly hard to animate! Swinging counter-clockwise, your left foot pivots for a bit when your right foot steps forward in an L kind of formation and it kinda keeps this weird rotation setup going until the heavy object is thrown.
Of course, maybe I just throw really frickin' weird.
I believe Wednesday was when I decided to redo the part after Rin throws the bag into Neko's mouth. It SUCKED! Literally! It looked like Neko vacuumed her into her mouth like Spaceballs does with the air of a planet. So Thursday was spent redoing this entire part to make Rin be more like spaghetti and boy does it look like a damn good slurp. I also slowed the part down and had Neko move less so the shape keys making Neko's cheeks puff a bit when Rin would "hit" the inside was more obvious.
I thought it'd be cool to have a costume change to Rin's classic clothing. Another thing I worked hard to bring back was spurt growth. That was really weird to figure out again, but it looks smooth yet sharp as it should for Rin here.
Friday: Now for things to go sideways starting Friday. Rin's legs were having the judder again and I had to dedicate a 2 hours or so stream to just fixing that bastard. Very boring, but jesus did I finally fix it. It's straight up parenting issues in the armature. But not quite like what I was used to with double parents. No, this time it was the shadow bones causing the problem due to their "bridge-parenting" technique to do... idk what.
So there's a dummy bone on the knee that simply hangs out there. The shadow bone copies what it does while being in the exact same spot yet on a different layer. Then a LegD or KneeD (Knee 2) simply adjusts the rotation of the shadow bone to fit back into place for some reason. Idk wtf all this is for, but I deleted the shadow bone and had the 2nd Knee thing copy the transforms of the dummy bone. I STILL don't know what this is all for, but it's one less parenting object for UE4 to be pissed with and the judder is gone!
I was absolutely exhausted from all the problem solving and Neko isn't even animated after spitting out Rin. So it looks very bad and I needed to sleep immediately afterwards.
Saturday: Prime Saga is here! I can show off my Samus gameplay I've worked months on! Except I went 0-2 against 2 incredibly easy to fight players simply because every single possible bit of bad luck was helping them out. I've just had to drop Samus from my main because of how I was fighting the game for her to work right rather than the person. Now I realize I was playing like Greninja within a tank, so I've switched to him and can't wait for Joker to come out! Anyways, after hours of driving and feeling like I wasted everything, I decided to help my other Samus buds get to top 128. So it wasn't for nothing and I got some sweet posters. Still, going 0-2 in my first major has absolutely destroyed my attitude then. Good thing I can hang out with my friends over at the local gaming lounge...
Sunday: Hey, that gaming lounge shut down and is selling off what's inside. Goodbye to my relaxing days with friends at the good ole' D&D table. We're currently trying to find another spot to play it with so many people. The GOOD news for work is that I picked up a new monitor for cheap from the lounge so I can get UE4 work done more efficiently. I also took that damn Titanfall poster I always wanted from them since day 1!
Back to work topic, I'm sorry for missing the snippet this Friday, but I feel like everything that IS there so far will probably require re-doing or more editing just to be in a spot that's acceptable to view to me. It was a lot of testing to see if the judder was gone right after Rin got spit out. The thing that's worrying me most is that the video just doesn't feel polished to look at. But that should go away after everything is fully animated and I get back to polishing with stylized lighting and post process.
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4/8/19: Cat & Mouse
Starting off, we have the wall breakthrough part but with changed lighting to make things more bright and colorful.
I did the same technique for Rin here that I used with Green dude in Samus vid. She's actually running in place and the root is moving her forward. That way, it's easier to loop the run for long hallways like this. Wow, i'm tired. I already said this just below.
A small detail here, literally, is that Rin trips over and has the loaf fall onto her due to Neko's accidental growth spurt here.
Well I BET you didn't know that I added a second shot to when Neko grows in the hallway, but from what's going on in the room behind her! I can't wait to smush that bed into the wall for this!
Instead of running in this shot, I had Rin trip over for Neko to feed her a treat. It still establishes the size difference, but I have an even more powerful shot after! I swear Rin was supposed to be more forward for this shot. I'll have to double-check this. Anyways, you can totally tell just how much I changed the lighting to be softer here compared to the shots below in a previous post.
I took an editing shortcut for this part where Rin is dropped from Neko's hands as if she was turned around. We never actually see her pick Rin up to do this, but it's implied and works a bit since the audience can fill in the part with their mind. It'd also be kinda tough to animate the whole thing. No facial expressions for Rin done at this part at all, but the motion does carry through enough where I can continue without them for now.
After providing face lights, the close-up scenes look much better. I still want to find a way to make the shadows better, but it's good enough for now. I definitely want to add little chunks of bread flying all over in the corner to imply Rin eating the HELL out of that thing!
Awesome size comparison shot here! I had Rin wave just to have the shot last longer. Also because people want more filler shots to make things last longer. I'll be practicing that!
Ok, I fixed Neko's finger with a shape key before this. I just have to import a brand new version of her into UE4 for the shape key to show up. (Mesh re-import surprisingly doesn't work for this)
Kinda cool dynamic growth thing here for Rin. Now to figure out how she'll get the treat bag to Neko and have Neko fully in the living room. Maybe while Rin goes for the bag, Neko slips through? Worth a shot.
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4/2/19: Animating Part 3
With all that I want fixed for part 3, I decided to start from there. I finished animating up to Neko getting stuck in the hallway!
Already, my work on Samus's vid seriously helped with Rin here. She had a shitload of space to cover and because I took a day to learn animating that one dude running away from Samus's hand, this part took half the time due to the practice! I also found out that the lighting is kinda weird because the cameras seem to be WAY overexposed as there's no ambient lighting or sun lighting. I guess I turned them off because that = night time. Nice past self. Still looks pretty good so i'll keep with it.
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4/1/19: Wall Destruction
First, export the wall from UE4. I found out the best scaling in Blender is metric 0.1. So when you import that wall into Blender, you have to scale it down by 0.1. Which is totally fine since exporting it will be back to normal scale... Or this project is screwing me up and I need to double check again later. I know that Marin exported perfectly at 0.1 and I never changed her scale at all from when she was initially imported.
Once the wall is in, crack it.
Idk what the hell any of these options are, but I bet once I do, everything will look better than the basic look I have now.
Once it's cracked, you're free to edit the pieces as you wish for creative control in the second box layer. It's ok if not everything matches up for now since the wall isn't the focus of the video.
Next is to pick 1 piece and add some simple rigid body physics to it. Turn on start deactivated too. Then select all of it and use the copy from active thing in the physics tab to make everything have physics. All outlines should turn green.
Also turn on start deactivated. Next will be to create a ico sphere or whatever you want and animate it going through the wall at the same time as the character. Turn on rigid body physics and animated for it to react to the wall without dropping from the sky.
Use passive rigid body boxes (not collision) to somewhat stop the destruction from going everywhere then boost the fuck out of the gravity so it looks natural. You can make the boxes be in wired mode by using the display tab under the object settings tab. Very useful!
Choose the pieces around the edges you don't want flying all over and set them to passive. I do this on wall edges that should stick around.
Bake physics using the physics tab in the left viewport toolbar before parenting. Next create an empty axis for everything to parent to, BUT also make a root bone for it. THEN parent all those pieces to the root bone. This will make sure that when you import into UE4, every single piece isn't its own skeleton! Do parenting last or your active wall pieces will be rotated weird after the baking process.
Save often because you might crash any time. Select the empty axis hierarchy and export as if a model. Once imported into UE4, everything acts as if it was a regular skeleton model. I grab the original wall texture and apply it to the destruction one. Lastly, the technique for destruction at the moment is to have the perfect wall visible until it's hit. Then swap out to the destroyed wall. It all happens in 1 frame so it still looks really nice. Especially when smoke and particle effects are added.
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4/1/19: EVERY PROBLEM IS HERE!
Hoo boy. My decision to back off Neko vid for smaller vids was completely correct! I didn't realize just how bad everything was.
Every problem from each video I made after Neko has shown up. Solved every single one because I could focus on them individually.
Pyra: Corrupted shape keys. Ik bones that don't scale. How to bloody use the UE4 sequencer properly. Perfect hand ik figured out.
Bowsette: Vertices randomly weighted to the wrong thing. Causing spike to show up on a mesh. Found add-on for Shape key vertex resetting to help with BAD shape keys.
Samus: Figured out hair physics without need of ik hand-animating hair. Using the action editor for new parts of an animation without creating a new project. Turning ik on or off in the middle of the animation.
Neko vid: ALL that but add being a novice to it. Half-knowledge hand ik where Rin's right arm was done but the left... wasn't? Not only that, it didn't use hand rotation with it. NOT ONLY THAT, but I decided back then to delete animated work to make room for the new technique when I could've just animated the ik turning on. Splitting the project into 2 different files with model edits that are different from each other. Just a mess. I wonder what I'll run into next? Can't possibly be too much more in the way since I solved all of this. Oh yeah, hair has about 10 - 11 ik joints because I was all about that back then. Nice.
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3/26/19: We Gotta Go Back, Marty!
Oh boy. Neko vid is a mess. I'll start in Unreal Engine since that's the easiest. It seems that I cut each little part into its own level sequence... Wtf was I thinking? That's about it on UE4. So that's great!
But everything else was just botched incredibly bad in some way. I'll start with the textures and saving. I seemed to have lost my folder with the environment textures so I had to re-export some stuff from UE4 for the textures. Luckily the character textures were safely stowed in their own folders.
Unluckily is how I saved this project. Jesus. I have part 1 and part 2 in their own project files rather than using the action editor to simply create a new animation layer. (Learned with Samus) Not only that, part 2 begins on frame 976 and there's no way to bring everything back without losing timing. So I'll just start rendering from there.
Here's something fun. Part 1's rig had half-hand ik because I never fully learned that technique yet. Yet part 2's hand ik is like I finally got a handle on it. Sadly, I moved the bones in edit mode and there's a massive difference between the 2 points where animation import is impossible for the hands. So I gotta keep both project files separate. Which is ok since I can do the hair physics easy. The models will have to be swapped out at a camera swap somewhere in UE4.
What else was a mess... OH right! The vertex weight mess is now completely fixed! That's where there'd be random spikes coming out of the person. Not only did I learn how to remove bad weights, but fix ones that were missing from the list when they should be there. Look up the vertex next to the spike and see where its weight is parented. Then assign that vertex group to the selected spike. Takes some slider adjustment in the vertex weight tools on the right of the 3d viewer but it will fit right back into where it should be soon enough!
Lastly, I ended up finding out I need to animate Rin's right arm in the 2nd part but with her "new" hand ik. Guess that's where I left off. The project is back in working order again! Whoo!
From 2:30am to whenever Neko is finished. I need this done today.
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I want to post more on what's going on, but the information is kinda there. It's all just cleaning up scenes that are messy here and there. Cleaning up animations, physics, etc. Not hard work, but time consuming.
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I actually don't remember much from the Sunday morning 4am stream.
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Rin is 99% done and just needs hair physics and subdivision for her model
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The end is in sight! Just got to put my notes down and get there.
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After more thinking, creating my own discord would allow much easier contact with me and building relations with you guys a bit more. Plus, discussions on projects can be carried out easier. Currently working on patron permissions to see such channels so that the benefits here cross over to Discord. (Like having a patreon category show up that tracks project progress and a suggestion box/discussion channel for projects)
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Nuttin' but exporting to UE4 and doing final shot work on part 1! That's a relief!
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At this point, I just want to get done with Neko vid. Gonna spend all day to get a polished part 1 finished and uploaded. That part has the least amount of things going on. Now that I have a good export process idea, now is the time to put it to full use.
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So this is working out so far. I'm getting a few more hours of work done. So that should help with things going faster. Other good news is that I recovered the original part 1 of Neko vid's animation. Was really worried I lost the animation data somewhere down the line.
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I'm gonna wake up and work earlier so I can get more things done. Like my collab with Minmax 3d on Doki-Doki Literature Club.
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So I think the lighting is frickin amazing for the environment, but merely ok for the characters. I'm gonna look into some more consistent shading to make things look like a nice mix.
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Trying to figure out how to go about the paintings and artists to go on them. Edit: Probably put past vidoes up there but... it'd be interesting to feature other artists.
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New ending has come out fantastic! Let's get Rin to not look like she's frozen holding a Popsicle.
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It's been irl hectic for me, but I can finally work now. Ending it with a face snuggle into helicopter chase from Neko.
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Ok, my cat seems to be returning to normal and I made surprising progress yesterday. Feeling much better today!
Also, I found out that Patreon may email you on every update. Terribly sorry if this involves one thousand emails of me setting up for streaming.
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The bad week STILL somehow finds a way to continue with one of my cats having liver problems. Just gonna work through this.
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I wasn't able to get to destruction last time due to how hard animating Rin's part was. But this time, I'll get straight to it!
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I'm going to be putting down notes on what works for destruction here, then putting them up in the next huge scroll update. My destruction isn't going to start completely detailed, but maybe the notes can help me and others with a basics tutorial kinda thing.
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Ok, it looks more like pulse spurts. I'm ok with that.
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Stutter spurts are back! I'm super close to figuring them out again! -----
I've been setting them up but organizing tutorials can be tough.
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So it turns out that the bags were under the same problem as Pyra and I've finalized a tutorial for fixing the shape key problem! But for now, I've got to animate Rin feeding Neko.
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I'm so tired today. Maybe I shouldn't stay up til 6am 2 nights in a row
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After not running into another problem, I think I may have passed that hump where problems needlessly pile up because I'd be new at this. So maybe I can start speeding up again.
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I'm so expecting to run into another problem
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Let's see what to do: Tutorials for Blender. (Goin' ok with setup) - Try 'subdivided' Marin shape key creation. (FAILURE. Shape key distortion in UE4) Check out CityEngine trial sometime. - Continue Neko Vid. (Part 3 ready to go)
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With Neko vid back in order, I should take time out to do some tutorials today.
I also want to check out a model subdivision technique for Blender so my models can be less polygonal.
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Going back, there's SO MANY mistakes I made.
Trying to animate everything all at once for VR while still framing everything as if a camera was watching is the biggest mistake I've made.
I'm going to get this done the regular way so that it gets done. VR content needs to be thought about in its own perspective and I can't "frame" things as if a camera is there. It needs to be where the person is.
Not only that, but Iost pretty much all the textures in the project and need to hunt them down again. Good news is that the UE4 version is untouched!
Edit: You know what's super COOOL? Because the destruction is an animation like Marin, I can reverse what happened! So I was thinking it'd be super cool if Marin had the power to reverse damage that she's done! Maybe add one where saying she wants to be bigger makes her bigger. Like a gentle goddess power video. Those stories were always kinda cool in how they wrote off damage. Now I could animate that!
I know this is out of nowhere, but I was so damn happy discovering a method for this that I just had to do a complete scene! Yeah, I know wood doesn't break like that, but I'll get to more detailed destruction soon because of this! What I did was import the floor from UE4, then use the "crack it" thingy to crack the floor, then I deleted any weird pieces, then I re-exported back to UE4 after simulating everything in Blender! This required ALL the pieces to be parented to a root bone in an empty axis or each piece would show up individually as its own skeleton in UE4. This is the best tutorial I've found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CUBagJDtxI
Whoo! This involves all of the finished core video that I'm extremely happy with! I'd love to hear your feedback on what you feel could make the video better for full release too. (I can only fix so much though)
I'm gonna be working on placing names, correcting more little stuff, adding in the secondary shots, and then working on the extra ending all next week to make sure everything is polished up!
Otherwise, enjoy the core idea I intended!
The thumbnail is also something I'm still working on, but I definitely love the way it's headed.
Jam packed with everything I've got so far except 1 extra scene where it's another angle of her crushing the overpass. I actually placed those cuts pretty badly in this overall and will fix it in the next one.
(Even missed the train cut-back and now there's a duplicate scene)
But this took forever to render and was slow to edit.
3/22/19: Just Wow! I honestly can't believe how far this Patreon has gotten. This is just insane and I truly hope I can impress you all with each further video! Thank you! Currently, I'm post-editing the final version of Samus's vid. Everything is rendered!
I currently have plans to use CityEngine, Camera 360 for EASY UE4 VR stereo rendering, (JUST came out) and then more simulated stuff. I actually think I know enough to go back to Neko vid and fix all its problems!
One thing I'm considering that seems to stray me off the path are the speedruns. I clearly am still at a learning point where I want to slow down and try new things while having nice and lengthy videos. This causes each speedrun to be handled as if a full video. So, I plan to finish most of what I've already planned before doing another one.
----- 3/15/19: SO CLOSE: There's not much left! I've got hair physics done for all parts of the video! Now everything involves UE4! Checklist: ✔️Hair Physics and reimport a new Samus. ✔️Fix animation in part 2 and 3. ✔️Add landscape to areas that can be seen on camera. Especially non-existant streets. ✔️Depth of Field for each shot. But this goes last due to self-deletion bug every time I load the project. Edit: This ACTUALLY saved! Whoo!
✔️Destruction in part 2 almost complete with only extra scenes to work on. (Raise some rocks and particle effects) ✔️Destruction in part 3 at 1 part where she drags her foot across the entire strip. (Still no idea how to approach) 🔜Add Patreon names across the video.
I'm gonna wake up super early tomorrow to try and finish this! I might add the extra shots on full YouTube video release to give them extra time.
Edit: The work I did this morning was MASSIVE. LOTS of destruction at the end got done! I'm gonna do the Patreon names throughout next week as I work on the extra detail scenes for full release. What's coming out tonight for Early Access is the "core" video that was meant to happen without any extra stuff that popped up and still needs work. I've rendered part 2 and 3 and will render part 1 tonight then put it all together!
----- 3/12/2019: HAIR PHYSICS I finally got this shit working right now this morning and it's glorious! I've been following this youtube video: https://youtu.be/c11l2o5uCQs To get this youtube video's results: https://youtu.be/NpuhgbSbXEE Ok, so right here, you see a bone chain, right? But it's not. That's actually a thin line mesh with a bunch of vertex points. Those boxes are parented to each point. I did this by going through Samus's hair bone points and putting Blender's 3d "cursor" over the point for the box to spawn there. That technique also helped created areas for the vertex points of the thin line mesh to copy. Those boxes are what Samus's hair bones follow. Then the thin line mesh gets cloth physics with weight painting/pinning from the top gradually loosening up towards the bottom. Now the thin line mesh is parented to Samus's head bone to follow it correctly. So each of Samus's hair bones are following the bottom box of itself with an IK follow constraint. Which means the top box doesn't have anything following it. The trickiest part was connecting Samus's hair to be actually normal. The bones were a mess! Flipped upside down each and not even connected to each other! This technique finally properly worked this morning when I finished connecting them as you see. Now the results of all this work and setup is being able to simulate/animate the hair til it's exactly how I want. I can record the keys of Samus's hair bones for areas that I like, in which this is SUPER stable without much performance impact, and if I don't like an area, I can simply delete the keyframes there to animate it myself or change the physics to what I want from then on. Because the keyframes of the bones were recorded previously, the previous parts don't matter. I do wonder if it will 'snap' into place the moment the keyframes are unlocked. But that's a theory for later. The hair is perfectly working and i'm celebrating this finished work flow area! Oh! The best part. There's zero bone jitter. You know how some mmd models will kinda jiggle when nothing is going on? This avoids that and is SUPER SMOOTH. (Scene set to solid view for performance because there's so much going on)
In yet other better news, I've gotten closer to getting simulated destruction down in Blender rather than the faked kind I do in UE4. It's like taking a cube, cracking it, then applying physics to all the new cracks by using copy from active, then parenting it to an empty axis so that it can be exported to UE4 as a "skeleton" with rigid body animation. It does require the simulation to be completely keyframed. Which is what the bake to keyframes button is for. (Only available for rigid body physics in which every single crack has)
The real thing to consider at this point is just texturing. Because technically, I could use very simple shapes to replace walls or streets and just need to texture them to mimic them. I just don't want to individually texture a thousand pieces. I already know this mesh in UE4 will unhide right on top of the perfect one that will hide at the moment of impact. I did this with the sign the guy gets struck into and it was perfect! I'll be using this technique for Neko vid. These two things are exactly what I need to learn to progress!
----- 3/7/19: Recovery I've suckenly gotten sick the last few days and am starting to recover. That's nice! What I've done so far has been the destruction in the extra traffic shot, adding more lightning in the end, and LOTS MORE DESTRUCTION DISCOVERY. So here, because I placed each street part myself, I'm able to sink it down while Samus rests her head on it. I placed a bunch of rubble rocks parented to one or another where the parents moved in different ways to make this actually look pretty good in motion. But this is still moving meshes for destruction, I found some new shit that ROCKS. I got some crack damage decals that are place-able however I want. I can set them to be hidden until the exact moment they need to crack. If I continue with these, I can somehow learn to make the crack come from the center and do other stuff like make the cracks look even deeper. (All texture stuff I have no idea about) The other thing I found was a nice rock spitting emitter! I'm gonna use the shit out of it! It's front and center here and it just rocks... oh damn, I just ran into that pun twice. Some problems I've been having in UE4 recently has been the sequencer deleting my depth of field progress. It's slight blurring in the background that makes so much of the scenes look better with focus. (The pic above would've had the far left part of it slightly blurred so the focus is stronger on her foot rather than everything being in detail) But that progress is gone the moment I save. I hate bugs like that. Will contact Epic about that. ----- 3/4/19: The Grind Needed 2 parts because of how many pictures I took of the ending. Part 1 is already complete! I just needed to add vehicles to the background moving. It's part 2 that's gonna be insane work. Thumbnail looking a bit more finalized. I'm thinking of adding a few cars to the background to fill that in. This shot was screencapped while the whole thing was running. Guess I got some motion blur to adjust still. I'm gonna have to animate all that. Well, don't get anywhere complaining. JUST. DO. IT. Flying cars are completely animated though! This shot got a small change to it. It's now attached to the car on the left and shows when Samus's growth lightning strikes that it starts to fall. Pretty cool! Look at that triple strike! Happened by complete accident! But damn does it feel good. Each car had to be hand animated with it's own electric flash and the lights/thrusters shut off. This took some serious time. There was so much going on that I hid quite a few cars underneath the level so that they wouldn't get in the way of the shot. Now this is gonna be something to behold. This is yet another 2nd shot that happens at the same time as above. Throughout will be some serious destruction with flying cars falling and ground cars flying all over... that will have to be hand-animated. Worth. Last thing I worked on was turning the tree lights green and then the whole alley progressively fading out their lights. No, I will not do the building on the left. That sounds like torture. I think that's everything. This vid has been some hard work and I'll have to edit Samus's eyes/walking still, but a godlike vid is godlike forever.
----- 3/4/19: Ending I apparently need another one of these since the 2nd one is jam-packed! Let's start with the ending: I can't wait to add a mega environment to this shot. I've been looking it up and it seems Brushify will make it massively easier by making literal mountains as a preset paint brush. I should extend this part a bit since it cuts off at exactly this point. Came out surprisingly well. So this will be insanely tricky. She'll be wiping out this strip with her foot and that's a LOT OF DAMAGE to try and figure out how to destroy. Ah, yup. Classic ending shot. And finally the last shot of goddess Samus. Planet hasn't been destroyed yet, so she has currently failed her mission.
So here I was ready to upload this hours ago when suddenly Patreon has maintenance. What timing, I tell ya!
This is where the animation is now finished and I head back for cleanup to make everything super pretty! (Like adding traffic, objects being affected, and destruction)
Edit: Annnnd I forgot the lightning for when she takes out power from those buildings.
Ya know, it feels like there's not as much here animated this time, but that's because these scenes were so much more intricate than the last week's. Not only that, Samus being far bigger than I expected.
But what has come out looks great! The ONLY problem I've had is that models don't re-import with updated shape keys from Blender. So I gotta use a new Samus model version for the editing of the butt part. (removed sharp zones) Sucky part about that is all the lightning parenting I did will have to be copied over. Ugh.
But it should be worth it since I don't want to look back at a vid and think that I should've done this or that.
Speaking of, remind myself to add screen shake once this is all over.
After spotting Green dude run out, Samus teases that he backtracked for his friend. Whi she then flicks at him to try and stop him from moving. At this point, she just wants him as the main prize.
Him, being the quick guy he is, dodges the attack. Angering Samus greatly. So she decides to go for complete intimidation.
Those trees lining up for the shot came out accidentally amazingly well!
She tell him to run here in a completely flat and fed up manner. This shot TOOK HOURS because it needed to FEEL right in every single ounce of her body. Meanwhile, the dude took a minute to animate in the exact same scene.
And run he does, but oh he's not going anywhere now is he? I had a hard time editing the ground to stop having its texture move when the whole building moved. on top of that, the windows are actually an incredibly small scale texture with emissive latched on. This is because I don't really want to go through the web of blueprints holding those material instances together. I plan on changing all the buildings to look like this since it just looks so much cleaner.
I've gotta try adding physics to the objects on the building as it's tipping over. Yup, Samus has lifted the entire building!
This is another 2nd pov shot of the same scene. This video will be full of those in the right places. Thus padding out the time to potentially 4 minutes! WHAT!? But also look at that terrible building window texture. Eugh! I like the new one I will soon apply.
Samus is taunting him the entire slide down. There will be falling objects, of course! This scene was so damn hard to time since the building is moving and the camera in Blender isn't. Had to use UE4 to check every few seconds of animation on green guy. Not only that, changing the roots of everyone to be paired with the building AND dealing with everything being slightly off position from what I exported from Blender took a few hours to fix.
BUT IT CAME OUT AWESOME! And that's all that matters.
Well look who came back to save green! No way am I killing these guys off. Too much potential for the future.
Ohh, but then losing his weapons might be bad.
And you can tell here why I wanted to be careful with how close the camera got to Samus. Model doesn't hold up completely. BUT, this scene still looks alright for being the gang's worst nightmare. Those will be outputting electricity as they fall too.
And now begins the city power outage scene that I've yet to animate!
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2/22/19: Off-Script
I'm actually surprised with where I am today based on when I updated last. I guess I did more work than I thought this week.
Before, this scene was completely empty and just had Samus kinda fall over. Now it's fully animated with the guys escaping to the side.
Samus's facial expression here really helps make you look where she does. Which sells the WILD transition to here.
Not easy to have someone's eyes be ready for a scene like this.
But let's take a step back for a moment. The overpass crush scene could use some more angles of the same shot. So i'm going to add more cameras to edit to of what's going on in the streets behind her. This will be fully done in the polished wrap-around.
Now back to one of the harder scenes to animate. (In which I found a mistake while taking screenshots where the guy's arms clip through himself for a moment)
This guy had to run like hell for what felt like a city block. instead of animating each step, I opted to animate him videogame style. I had him run in place for a full cycle of running, then copy-pasted that cycle. Then I moved the root bone to hopefully match his running speed. It works well here because you barely get a chance to see if his feet match up, but it's close enough that nobody will notice.
Oh hey, this is just before his hands clip into himself. Anyways, he stumbles as Samus drops her hand to the floor. Right at the stumbling moment is when I switch off of using root motion to move the character and use my regular groove offset animation.
Door is supposed to be closed but this shot is older than the above one. This scene was surprisingly complex. I kept thinking I had to adjust Samus's speed again and again to be just a bit slower. Then I was worried about having to adjust the trees to get smushed at the right time. It turned out that Samus was going at a perfect pace and the green guy just had to run faster. Also, the camerawork needed to be just right to display everything. Otherwise, the scene would look EXTREMELY fast. I did try slowing it down, but the intensity was lost.
And here we have the sole reason for everything going so off-script. This man was supposed to run with the green dude. But him having a limp when Samus spots them going around the corner completely changed everything. Not only does he not get away, but he gets picked up. Because that's just what Samus would naturally do.
Same guy scraped across the ground twice in one night. Not a good night for him.
The gas mask and weapon he had disappeared and would be far from his body in UE4. I just said, "fuck it" and had him take those off in the car.
It's at this part where I cut off Part 2 and now we're officially in part 3! Whoo!
I had to have the camera at this angle due to her knee constantly moving around when positioning and the clipping glitches that ensued when she sat down. MMD model meshes don't flatten or move around like normal human skin does. Just clips on through. At this point, I had to end for the night and figure out just where the hell this was going.
Here's the plan: Samus rubs the guy between her thumb and finger until the green dude runs out to the roof of the Bowsette building. We see this from a side-of-her-face perspective and zoom in on the green guy as her hand moves out of the way. Samus then maneuvers to flick purple guy into green guy from that distance. (I was seriously thinking of a MKX transition where you see the bones cracking, but nah) Purple dude is flung and green guy dodges him just in time. Samus, absolutely frustrated, finally stands up. Here we get to see just how massive she is in comparison to the building. Green guy begins to run back inside when suddenly the entire roof tilts towards Samus. She's picked up the building and everything is bouncing off her as she tries to capture this one guy who's barely hanging on. Just as green guy slips off the roof, purple guy catches him and green guy's weapons slip off to fall into Samus's mouth. At that point, she puts the building back down and begins to become EXTREMELY electric. Massive growth and sucking power from every building nearby. She begins floating up for the game over scene and the screen flashes. Not a time jump, but the lighting has changed since there's no lighting anywhere in the city anymore. The sun has a nice morning effect. We see the Bowsette building when Samus's heels land just in front of it. Crushing buildings, yadda, yadda. Screw the street. The heels are around the same height of the building and the camera ZOOMS out to show her full form. At this point, let's just go with the classic gts stomp ending. Although from different angles. I WAS gonna do the police thing, but that ain't happenin' at that size. Not satisfying enough.
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2/20/19: Back to Blender Physics Today, I didn't stream the absolute boredom and frustration that is physics testing. Not worth seeing me suffer to try and figure things out anyways. As much as I want UE4 to do the physics, there's a ton to watch out for. "Density/Mass" options are flat-out bullshit. I've had better luck applying dampening to Samus's hair. Now the results DID come out pretty damn good when they worked, but anything moving and/or scaling too fast could easily lead to the physics glitching.
I CAN'T record the physics for certain areas and that might be the #1 reason I'll drop doing character physics in UE4. I'd have to keep swapping out models at different times in the animation, like Bowsette, because of the constant scale changes and that's not straightforward.
I hate workflows that aren't straightforward.
This is a MASSIVE decision since it means the ENTIRE scaling in the Blender scene will have to be small again to fit its physics constraints. This also totally changes the import/export process and is why I've held off from making tutorials. BUT this does fix any problems I could potentially have physics wise in animations since I'll be able to record portions and they'll always be that same recording in UE4. The absolute sucky part will be setting it all up in Blender and recording. Good news is that I don't need to make a whole outer cloth mesh like I did with Bowsette. Bad news is that every bone in a skirt or super long ponytail might have to be individually parented to an empty axis that's following a unique separate bone-cloth. What this solves is what broke the Bowsette video that I spent weeks trying to learn. As you'll see in the video below, the bones in the hair are moving along with the body rather than just the mesh. (Which you can't export mesh physics to UE4 or any game engine. I harshly learned that after spending 2 weeks learning and trying to record mesh physics of Bowsette's skirt) So being able to record the bones that are modifier-following a simple bone-mesh cloth that's parented back to the main character with a simple invisible collision mesh version might be the way to go. This should lead to the best artistic control over body physics. Especially since any glitched keyframes can be deleted and manually animated over. (Which is what I did in MMM)
All this and I did try to get the regular mmd-import physics to work. I tried for 3 months on that front. The ONLY character with working physics was UwA's Micha in my Ferrous birthday present video. I still have barely somewhat of a fuckin' clue how those physics worked and I studied them under a microscope!
I believe the way her ponytails were linked to a unique IK ball that scaled with the head as a parent AND that each bone along the hair was set to follow all transforms rather than just rotation led to it working perfectly. Except that didn't work with a Haku model I recreated it on. Anyways, the mmd-import technique has LESS control compared to this "new" one I found. They're around the same amount of hell to set up, so let's hope this one absolutely NAILS it! It certainly feels like it.
----- 2/14/19: Extra Power (Removed chair post to get back to what this patreon is about) Today was about tackling the polish of the electric railway growth scene. To my surprise, the thing that took up the most thought process was the camerawork! I wanted it to move with her butt so we could feel the weight of its movements. Took quite a few tries to get right! Here, I added the crashed car early so that she'd have reason to look around the corner since that shot was cut. It was also at this point that I found out Samus doesn't quite line up correctly with the environment I made in Blender. That could be dangerous in screwing up a lot. But the good news is that I can move her in UE4 within the cuts so you don't notice. Here, she used to be inside the building on the right despite Blender showing me it was as you see. I moved her in UE4 right after the cut from the previous shot so that she lines up well enough. Hell, I might have to do this PER SHOT if it gets bad enough. To be added to this shot are the escaping dudes running to the alleyway.
----- 2/13/19: A Bit Too Much Everything was going just fine until the electric nation attacked. Samus was crawling under the overpass, crush some street lights, swat away a car. The usual.
She didn't watch just how high her butt reached and it collided with the Railway above. Now it took a LOT of trickiness to animate it without the legs moving all over but also including her butt not being stiff, but it worked. (Better than the hair physics at this time, which swing around like a yo-yo) That flat part on the left side will be either fixed or hidden by train rail. But I guess I was so enamored with trying to get this part right, I wasn't watching the rest of her size throughout the street. So now... Now I gotta plan the rest of the animation differently. She obviously can't squeeze into an alleyway anymore, but I think her hand can. Not only that, I think I can get a cool street shot of her falling to the ground and spotting one of the dudes escaping. IN FACT! I think that shot of her looking at the camera could be looking at their crashed car!
----- 2/12/19: Under the Overpass Although I can totally write that the street lights are also just point lights parented to them. Turns out the lights have their own lighting textures. Ah well, there's multiple ways to get things done! Anyways, they required some serious toning down since the brightness of the bloom is super potent with the way I have it. They're around 0.5 emissive. On top of that, the car is animated in UE4 with a reference in Blender. I don't want to export yet another mesh from Blender since I'd have to parent all the point lights to the car again. It's basic animation, so why not leave the process that way?
----- 2/10/19: I have an Inspiration! First of all, I'm going to name the NSFW version the 100% Mission Complete version. Which is in line with Metroid games taking more armor off the better your score. But here's the big inspiration. I can't do a model swap too easily by having the nude Samus model grow out of her own WiiU self and shred it up close. That would look EXTREMELY weird. But then I remembered that she's using electricity-based growth. So having her go back for the malfunctioning stun gun and crushing it should create a blackout in the whole area as she sucks up everything. Something I now know I can do thanks to the parameters setting I found in UE4 to change the building textures. Combine shredding clothes through mega growth, electric outage, and Metroid references. The ending result of how it will go should look like this! But above a city can look super beautiful. Now, due to this power outage, I'm gonna change to a new level that's copied off of the city strip I already have, set the time to a nice sunrise, make it look all apocalyptic for the end of the strip she was at, (not the whole city) and then start with Samus waking up lying down on her back. She's going to be WAY bigger than the original vid will be and I'll get to fully test out my simple destruction idea to see how effective it could be. (Raising rocks and rubble in place of the ground. Generally moving/bending stuff around til I figure out the simulation part) I can have this start off where there's a bunch of city parts lying on top of her that she can wipe off or blow away. On top of that, I can get her turning to her side to examine everything. Then rolling to her front to get up when she spots the building those guys were hiding in. All these are perfect moments for destruction and views from multiple body parts. Including breathing out to create a gust of wind down a street. For butt/breasts, I JUST found a tutorial on spring joints that might make them actually work for proper jiggle. For indentations, I found that I can use shape keys to manually place those. (The nude model is a far higher quality model after all and I want to use as much as I can. It can't change scale well at all) Lastly ends with her stepping on the target building after standing up. I can do a zoomed out shot, like from Samus's perspective, to see how that goes. Now back to the vid's progress. First thing to notice is that somehow the background STILL feels dead despite the neon and gorgeousness. So I took a note from Japan and made the trees glow. This was achieved by putting a little point light inside there. I tried making the leaves actually neon, but the effect never came out in a detailed matter. It made the trees look like plastic because there was no shadow anymore. Not only that, adding emissive material to the leaves made the the trees overpower shots. Here's another comparison that's completely changed the look of some shots. Now I do LOVE the ominousness of this shot, but also feeling a bit dead in the back like it's not a cyberpunk city. That's gonna be an interesting call to the insurance company. Interesting thing about this interaction. I did the motion of Samus in Blender, but the car in it was only used as a reference of where she would get hit. I animated the car (VERY basic moving objects stuff) in UE4. Which has an AGGRESSIVE interpolation smoothing system. Had to workaround that thing when it came to the sudden jerking to the side by the car. Also, she's stealing the electricity from that car. I was only able to capture the tail end of the effect, but it's easily viewable a frame before. (If I want to capture effects, I gotta press screenshot as it plays out) I wanted her to look more pissed off, but I think I like the more-closed mouth version. Will adjust. BUT THIS LOOKS JUST RIGHT! I'm gonna have traffic building up on her as she walks here. Pretty much brute forcing her way through it. This is a massive shortcut and change from the ballerina style dance through traffic. I thought about it and it felt like Samus thinks she's armored up here. Ready to take any shot coming. You wanna know what would be really SCARY COOL!? If each car she crossed has that green electricity jump out and go to her, then the car would fall down due to the battery being used up! I'M SO DOING THAT! Speaking of shots, the purple light coming from behind her is actually a spotlight that's parented to her groove bone. (That way she can do all the crouching motions with her back and the spotlight just follows without moving with her back) I've planted quite a few spotlights around. Not because they'd make sense, but only because it makes the shot look amazing! The electricity will still be happening through this whole part, even the train scene. It's just that it takes a moment to process the screenshot and I'd have to restart from her crushing the car. Which is when the effects were first turned on. Looks SO MUCH better with the face light and back lighting! I also put some lights on the train in the back. I boosted the hell out of the purple back light. Although I found that I'll need to lower it a bit since it somehow goes through the right eye? It's not in this shot, but it was weird alright. I actually quickly lowered the intensity of the light here since it could blind your eyes reflecting off of Samus's face. You can see the limits of using low poly models here. I need to learn how to fix up my own models to be super smooth if I ever want to continue and be pleased with what character I have. I need to use a better effect that lasts a bit longer so that it conveys the car getting hit by the train. I don't care how it looks, sparks are not gonna cut it.
Where the hell did I leave off? Right, broken sign.
RedOwl's animation has been adjusted for the sign.
For the scenes with the flying car, I made the camera feel as floaty as the car so it felt like you were really Spiderman.
That's the thumbnail right 'dere. Sliding into action! I MIGHT actually make it my wallpaper.
At first, I thought this ready stance would be ridiculous and old fashioned. Turns out that it feels exactly like what Samus would do in motion.
I did a lot of study on ZSS's run in SSB Ultimate. It's definitely interesting. I added stomp camera motion effects to give each step impact.
Whoops! We all know what those electric sparks mean!
I learned how to use the action editor in Blender! So the dope sheet is an overall view of everyone's INDIVIDUAL keyframes in the scene. So instead of making a new Blender project like I did with Neko Vid, (Yet another mistake on top of the many to fix in that one) I go into that person's action, name it, then create a copy. Delete the keyframes there except the last one and you have a frame perfect and fresh #2 for that character inthe dope sheet. What's weird is that you can select a bunch of others' animation to be used on that character in the scene. I tried putting one of the guys' animations on Samus and it actually performed pretty good! BUT, because there's always one of those damn things, when switching back to Samus's original animation, her arms were completely screwed throughout. Very weird.
Yeah, this Scroll is LONG. The animation has currently reached 1 minute and 10 seconds!
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2/4/19: Getting Caught Up
Ok, I'm gonna jam pack this all the way up to where I am in the animation. Let's get right to the fighting! I also have some texture editing trickery in the end along with slight destruction.
Catching a sword with her heel. I forget how I thought of it but i'm glad I did!
I did add electricity to this part as she growth-kicks here, but effects don't show up in screenshots.
Now that I've added a bit of neon to Samus's eyes, it's even more important that she looks in the correct area. I was worried about 2 shape keys of her looking down AND to the right might cause problems, (eyes going behind socket, previously) but I think it will work great after some testing.
So I have a face light on Samus. It doesn't cause shadow, but it looks great for the situation here. Although maybe looks a bit off. I wonder if I should do a huge spotlight looking upwards instead. That way her face doesn't seem isolated.
That guy in the back is only now peeling off the wall! (He's fine)
After Bowsette, I suddenly feel like I've used crush-growth quite a lot. Probably because it rocks.
This shot looks tons better with proper face expressions! I also added a purple light on the side and it really splashes it with color.
Mmph. Disrespect right there to use a guy to hit another guy.
Here's a screenshot version of this picture. It's got facial expressions now that Samus is actually looking at... damn it, above the dude. Marked for fixing.
I found a lightning effect and I just went ham with it! This is pulled from the rendered video so you can see the motion blur and effects. This is also my first time trying quick attacks that cancel startup lag. Surprisingly effective with motion blur!
Samus will be full electric here, but at least she's looking where she should.
Samus doing one of her unique stretches here. Was this planned? Absolutely not. It's something I felt only Samus could and would do at this time. Godlike scene.
I had to time the screenshot button multiple times to capture this effect of her boots firing off. Effects seem to work as the animation plays, but not paused.
Now the joke here is that he gets hit so hard that he needs a drink. This scene plays out exactly as you think it does!
Now this is what I worry about the most. I can't subdivide the model since I already have so many shape keys attached to her and that you can't apply modifiers with shape keys. I NEED to figure out higher polygon edits for the models or the up close shots I love are gonna suck.
Here we see Samus without a face light scaled to her. I'll fix it, but not you see why it's so necessary. This scene, she rubs on the dude while interrogating him. For some bloody reason, I felt like doing it. It was supposed to be a First person POV interrogation, but let's just make it as intense as possible for you.
This is right after the guy says no or something that's totally unhelpful. Samus is obviously peeved.
Just enough to slam the guy into this light.
Figuring out how to do that OW on the sign was very puzzling. I though, "oh, I'll just edit the green out a bit" Nah. It's not set up like that. It;s setup like this weird color chart. I somehow solved this puzzle at 1am, but it looks completely nuts! My guess was that the sing had to be reading parts of the texture somehow in order to get it's color. Not only was my gues correct, my solution of simply putting black squares on it was perfect! Now I can even control how bright the red or the green are separately!
So here we have what I edited to get the light to work. Obviously, I replaced the original texture. So the light already has part of it blocked. But now to turn them off and on. I found out that the top area is the emitter of the light. So it multiplied on itself to... do that. Anyways, I added another multiply node because 0 x anything = 0. So if I have 0 be black, which pretty much turns off the emitter, then multiply it by the texture light source, then it's zero. But here's the unique thing about that black material at the top. It's a parameter. I recently learned that parameters are able to be used in the sequencer! Which means I can control the color of that black to whatever I want!
So here, you see that I'm able to boost the red OR the green to any high level and drop them separately down to zero. I don't know how that separately works when it's just one color it's extracting from... wait... it's because the texture is only extracting certain colors too. Clever. So now that I have full control over how I want the sign to flicker, I needed to figure out how to have the sign swap from perfect to destroyed. Since this one's texture was already cut off by the black squares and I sure as hell didn't want to think of the blueprints again, I came up with a simple solution. There are 2 signs. The original one and the one I exported from Blender. The original is up all the time until the frame before it gets hit. Then I swap the signs that are visible into the one I edited. Btw, knife tool edit the sign first before adding a bent up shape key. Yikes glitchyness if you edit while there are shape keys. I wonder if this is the technique I should use for further destruction effects without the edited separation lines appearing beforehand? (like multiple tears in clothing or cracks in the street) I believe It's the same thing I did for Pyra and her clothes ripping.
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1/30/19: Ready to Fight
After fixing Samus's eyes and applying Smash Bros Ultimate textures onto her WiiU model, it's like we have the best of all worlds! Muscles and an un-nerfed bod! After finishing up animating Samus getting up from the ground, I actually went back on in the night to add little electric effects for each spurt that will happen. I've also applied some ridiculous lights to each of the bad guys' weapons for some fun sci-fi there. Lots of lighting changes in terms of brightness and making sure Samus's face looks well-lit.
There's a few spotlights surrounding Samus for scene color variety AND a face light that casts no shadows so that nothing is too dark.
I parented electric effects, toggle-able in the sequencer, to Samus's body parts.
I also found out how to change the color of anything I want by using a parameter node rather than a regular constant. Parameter nodes show up in the sequencer for full control! I was able to make her eyes flash green with it!
Things that didn't go as well as thought involve the hair physics. It's CLOSE to looking right, but I need to look up just a few more tutorials so that everything doesn't look like it's waving all over the place.
Another thing is that I thought Samus's suit was too dark and blue. I made changes to that as well to make it look right for the dark environment.
Now her body is much clearer to read!
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1/29/19: On a Roll
With the help of a MMD Size Discord fellow named EggTimer, I was able to get the textures from Super Smash Bros Ultimate. Now we all know that Samus was nerfed in the T&A regions, but buffed in the muscle regions. What I did was apply the Ultimate ZSS textures on top of the WiiU model. BEST OF BOTH WORLDS!
Hair physics will come in a bit later, but shouldn't clip through the wall at all once I'm done with it.
The gun acts up and will have special effects for it turning into a size ray. Yup, this vid is starting right off the bat!
Another thing to notice is that I solved the face cut problem! I delete the multiple face materials and left only 1. Instantly smoothed it all out.
Samus is already quite a bit bigger here. To tell you the truth, I made her Other M sized just to make this spurt more impactful. I also found out that setting Blender's render settings to the slowest framerate made the speed come out similar to what I see in Blender!
Now the catch with this model, because every damn model has to have a catch to them, is that her eyes are absolutely bonkers. Rotate the bone so that she looks left? Oh, right. Now her right eye is inside her head and her left eye is off the side of it.
Is there no quality control anymore? I've been using a bunch of shape keys to force the eyes to not screw up when looking around. STILL don't quite have it right, but it's getting there.
I'm much further than this, but I got importing to do for it in UE4. I am now up to Samus finishing standing up. Right after that, I can get a snippet out.
.Missing effects due to hiding them in other parts. (Done)
.Extra destruction in extra scenes. (Done)
Have a train piece slip off slowly rather than be stuck. (Turns out I was hiding a really badly shaped butt in that area. So I animated it slightly better)
.Sky distance threshold in depth of field to make stars always visible. (Fixed)
.Check into weird background warping when scene warms up in renders. (Seems to be fixed by warming up the shot more)
.Create extra ending.
.Place Patreon Names.
I think that's it!
So after today... It seems that I have all week now to create that extra ending and do post-editing. Not bad at all.
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After one year of trying to figure out the best method for hair physics, I've never been so damn happy!
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I think restarting the engine fixed the non-saving of the DoF problem.
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I'm gonna re-input the depth of field stuff and go through everything I have so far and render it for you guys.
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I gotta tell you. Being stuck on my bed unable to move yet unable to sleep due to uncomfortable pains was torture. Zero energy for even moving an arm! Propped myself to the side to watch youtube or Smash Summit .5 the whole day.
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sick today, but I can at least work on the mindless stuff to animate.
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Hey! The animation is done so it's time to go through and see what I can do to spruce it up for release.
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So there's a bit more. But it could be potentially easier to animate compared to anything before. ----- If I can just urge myself to continue animating, then then rest of this will be all about polishing up the video. ----- Maybe have Samus climb the building next to her so that she can reach through the alleyway correctly. That could look great. ----- Bit too big, but maybe can still follow half of the plan. This is the largest divergence in size planning I've ever had. ----- Hair physics went OK. It's acting kinda normal and looks good sometimes, but I need to get it to weigh far heavier somehow. ----- Hair physics, but this time only focusing on rigid body constraints ----- I want to make sure the snippet is as long as it could be, so I'm gonna try finishing the fight scene to have something awesome to end on. ----- I'm hoping the constant stream announcements here aren't too annoying? Should I stick to just updates here and not stream announcements? I'm worried it might get annoying again. ------ My pc is all set up again. I was able to complete the city while I was gone as well as get to the first part of the animation just before Samus gets up. I gotta admit that I don't think I can work for more than 2 hours on a wooden chair in the middle of my cousin's empty living room with Oculus Rift controllers and everyone capable of staring at me or flipping the 1 TV they have to my input and revealing everything. So yeah, I took most of the time to develop Samus's path and the city some more.
Couldn't work since I'm at my cousin's, so I wrote the events I hope to reach throughout the vid here. If you have any suggestions then write a comment!
----- The video starts off with Samus getting knocked right into a wall on the ground. Her stun gun lands next to her and electrically discharges in a green light.
This naturally turns the gun into a size changing gun for some unknown reason. Samus is charged with it and she stands up ready to fight. (leaving the gun on the ground since Idk how to do light effects yet)
The gang gets ready to fight as Samus towers over them. Fight growth stuff happens where I'll just have to feel my way through it. A moment happens where a guy is kicked into the nearby open bar and a bystander hands him a beer as he lands on a stool. Another moment happens where Samus pins a guy to the wall with her boot and growth-slides him up the wall.
The next part happens where she interrogates a guy by putting him on a fire escape staircase. When she grows out of view, she keeps placing him on a different level of the fire escape. The interrogation is general "who sent you" stuff. While she's distracted, the gang below's car arrives and they jump in.
Samus catches onto this and chases after the flying car through the crowded streets and flying car airspace. She's a bit clumsy at first, trying to dodge all the cars, but she taps into a more ballerina-like balance and dances through the traffic up to the train rails. She reaches out and just about catches the getaway car, but pulls her hand back just before they get struck by the trains passing by.
Since she's not tall enough to climb over yet, Samus crawls underneath the overpass. (A futuristic version of the Bowsette vid city. Same layout)
As she crawls under, her butt gets stuck under the overpass as she starts to fill the streets even further. She screws being careful and powers through the rest of the street.
She catches up to the car, but it ducks into an alleyway. She reaches inside, but clearly won't fit in the alleyway. She notices the gang run into their building of operations. Samus backs up and walks back to her stun gun in a cat-walk manner.
She crushes the stun gun and activates it on herself again. Making her become Mega Samus!
In very few steps, she walks back to the building the gang hid in and picks up the entire thing in her fingertips. With a nice staredown, we cut to her dropping off the building at a police station. A full zoom out reveals that she's lying down on her side throughout the city.
END.
Edit: Let's potentially add in some handplay for the interrogation part. Like pinning him down using her fingers, spinning him, dropping him through her fingers. Depends on how ok the hands look during this part because they aren't exactly the best to work with. She then knocks the guy out while trying to gently put him on the fire escape.
In the completely extra nsfw version, if I ever get the nude version working, Samus does some model-like poses while lying down across the city. Slow motions and playfulness like a cat. All this to hopefully take advantage of the nude version if it imports well. (Lift a building with her toes, sliding her feet up the street while feeling herself, blowing away a street of cars, BE to spring away miscellaneous objects on her chest, swiping away a street with her hand, and eventually laying down to sleep with a comparison of the size of her face to everything)
Sorry about being late to post this here, but I've had a hectic weekend. For one, someone hit&ran my car:
So a lot of my time has been suddenly dedicated to fixing this. I wasn't in the car at least and the frame seems to be built tough.
I'm also staying a week at my cousin's place. It's gonna be tricky to set up work since his apartment has almost nothing in it, but I'm gonna try to get working here in any way that I can. I Am at the animation stage at least. (I've just got Samus smacking into a wall with somewhat of an idea on how to continue the vid. If I can't work, then I'll write out all my ideas for you guys to read)
In yet other news that's actually great, I finally completely fixed my pc's booting problem! Had to remove all traces of Nvidia using DDU then reinstall just the new driver.
Looking back at this, I bet I can start experimenting with my style of video more now. I feel like it's been this mix of realistic lighting with models meant for something more. I'm going to start making an effort to look super stylish. Down to the added texts.
1/14/19: When Everything Goes Exactly As It's Supposed To
What a damn relaxing day! I wanted to get some cool masks, there was a user who made a few cool looking ones. Wanted to import and export all the bois with their masks on, went perfect when I remembered to apply all transforms. Wanted to emissive the fuck outta the masks to make them cyberpunk, well damn did UE4 do a glorious job! Wanted to make Samus's eyes glow a bit and have her suit more reflective, perfected.
This day was amazing!
The lighting hides the facial cutting problems pretty well. Still gonna have to find a fix, but yeah.
Screw it. Armature stuff is such a massive problem for me right now since every single time I added bones or something, it would deform her body into something like plato. I'm done with it. It's not worth it. I'm using a different Samus and will be attempting to make everything more stylish rather than realistic-ish. Expect lots of shader experimentation!
THIS one actually functions pretty well and is editable like the previous models I used. No 4 bones in 1 arm BS or wrongly tilted hip bones.
Even has a few facial expressions for me to use. The only catch this time is fixing texture seam problems. That seems a lot easier than blindly weight painting and having to mess with bones for each micro part of the face!
Not only that, I already have added physics to her bangs in UE4 on this one because of how much easier to work with it is.
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So I've been looking through lots of boring tutorials to figure out how to apply Samus's mesh without screwing up the textures. Then also applying to the bone structure for animating.
It took a bit, but I got it! I was able to attach an arm to the hand and close the weird hole that would show up! Subdivide line over triangle vertex point, highlight, then remove doubles.
Another problem I worried lots about was polygonal hair physics. It looks like Nvidia is NOT the way to go!
I figured out, with reddit help, that it requires bones in the hair with ragdoll physics. This doesn't change size with the character though, which worried me greatly. BUT Bowsette showed me that if I separate the physics object and parent it back onto the model in UE4, it works! So it turns out that this might be my official trick to use in UE4 for hair physics! (I've been hunting for a solution for months)
Now I know why my physics spazzed out too. (Set transforms is required) So now I just need to get all this working Monday.
On top of this, I'm getting help from Haile Prime on destruction. She uses Houdini and we're excited to work together on destroying Marin's house! But learning the tricks to crossing between programs might take a bit. She wants to do all simulation stuff with destruction. Hoping all goes well because this will allow me to stay on track with the core of the videos.
This shot finally looks great!
