CakeInferno

Current Plans & Sidequests

Encounter 3 - Part 1 (1080p Versions)

Encounter 3 - Part 1 (4K Versions)

Final Stretch

Render Previews

Encounter 3 - Public Teaser

Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/YwKeHDA9OCo

While the rest of the scenes are still rendering for a month or so, I think we're close enough to release for a first public teaser, so here's a new upcoming animation that is a collaboration between me and Disregard67!

This episode of Encounter takes Space Hero into the desert where he has to bargain for the reversal of a curse. Due to the sheer size of the project, this animation will be released in two parts, with the first part releasing in Spring this year, and the second part roughly a year later. People on Patreon have already been able to watch work-in-progress previews in the meanwhile! The public version should be available about a month after the final preview on Patreon, which I'm estimating for late February.

All the Rendering!

It's time to turn the heating down and the PCs up in my place, as all animation and polish is completed and rendering of the last scene has begun! This rather intimate scene with Zoe consists of 14 shots and adds another minute and a half to the animation in total.

With all the animation and render-prep work done, I'm now starting work on post production for the remaining rooftop scenes. There's also some additional sound design and music work that I'll also try to tackle in the upcoming weeks. The scene with Zoe is being rendered on two PCs, with the dual 4090s workstation doing most of the heavy lifting. I've also reinstated my old workstation, which recently got a CPU replacement, as well as the 4090 that was successfully repaired for some much needed parallelization. So far the machine is running well and without any issues, so fingers crossed it will remain that way, especially considering the price of computer hardware right now.

It's still difficult to say how long the new Zoe scene will render, but I'd like everything to be wrapped up by the end of next month, so we have a complete Patreon release by the end of February. At least that's what I'm hoping right now, as I also really want to wrap up the first part, so we can continue animating the rather elaborate rooftop battle, which is what I'm admittedly looking forward to the most animation wise!

All the scenes with Chloe are also fully rendered, so I'll have to see if I do another Patreon preview at the end of this month, as it would be quite close to the final release anyway. It's likely I might just show another rendered scene with Zoe, as preparing these big previews usually takes a full day of preparation, which I'll direly need to tie up all the remaining loose ends. Currently the music is my biggest concern there, as there's very little of that finalized. Worst case would be that some of that might still be missing from the major Patreon release. Fingers crossed!

At this rate we'll never leave - Playblast (Rough)

Zoe decided to send Space Hero back into timeout after he got a little lippy with her, guess he'll be stuck with her for a little longer, oh well! There's still a lot of squish deformation missing, as well as animation on Zoe's throat, apologies for the roughness. ;-;

Happy New Year to everyone! Here's hoping you're all off to a great start! December had been a little turbulent for me, starting with my long overdue second date with Covid, and ending as busy as it gets. On top of everything, I had an RTX 4090 die on me, which prompted me to get a refurbished one for a quick replacement at a """"reduced"""" price. Since the card died only 2 years and 2 weeks after purchase, it was just out of warranty, but with how much these cards cost I decided to send it to a repair shop and low and behold - they fixed it! They wouldn't give me the exact procedure, but made it sound like they put it into an oven and then it worked again. Fine by me! They mentioned it might break again in the foreseeable future, but it's better than nothing for the time being.

Unfortunately I'm not quite finished animating all the shots of the additional Zoe scene, but progress wise we're looking at 10/14 animated shots with the most complex ones being out of the way. I'm probably going to need another week to animate the rest and then do a polish pass on all scenes, before getting started with rendering these. So far all other Encounter 3 scenes are now fully rendered. I'll probably do another big preview at the end of this month, which at this point should get fairly close to the final version of the film. Gotta see how much of the Zoe scene I can squeeze into that, as by then some of it will be rendered. Fingers crossed!

Voting on Zoe's new VA gave a pretty clear result, so we're sticking to actress 1 (Voice Vixen) for this one. I'm making sure to keep in touch with the second actress (Lady Amaris) to see if we can recast her for a future character if the opportunity arises, as I really like the tone of her voice.

Poll - New Zoe Voice Actress

Since Zoe's old VA isn't available anymore, a new actress must be cast! Since finding a new one is quite the responsibility, I thought it would be a better idea to offset that burden onto you, mweheheheh! C:<

To keep voting as unbiased as possible, both VAs that were cast will remain anonymous for the time being. Pick whichever you think suits Zoe best!

Waking up - Extended Playblast

An extended look at the last playblast, featuring Zoe! The last two weeks were a little slow since I've caught Covid, which banished me to bed for a few days, but the animation progress was overall still decent with a roughly 50% of the scene being animated now.

Extended Playblast (MEGA): Link

To those curious, this scene takes place after Space Hero breaks down in the sandstorm. It serves as a memory that also explains why he's seeking out Chloe a little better. There's still going to be a bit more mawplay included in the later section, which I'll be animating in the next two weeks. Fingers crossed I'll be able to wrap the scene up around early January, as I can't tell how busy the holidays will be.

There's also a reason why the playblast is still muted, as I've been working with two voice actresses to voice Zoe and haven't been fully certain which works better. As previously mentioned, her old VA is sadly not available anymore, which is why we need to find a replacement. For that I'll put up a voting here in a moment to see which VA resonates most with you!

??? - Playblast (Rough)

Oh snap, what could this be?

I forgot to hide Space Hero's rig controls in the second shot, but I'll probably give an extended look at the scene later next month once I've gotten a little further animating it! No sound yet as I'm still going back and forth with the voice actors on this scene.

I'm also about to update the preview I've posted last week since the renderer got a tiny bit further. This way the end won't be such a huge tease anymore. Apologies for still not having a Youtube link, uhh... I somehow managed to lock myself out of my account again and I'm still trying to figure out how I recovered it last time. Since this isn't my primary Youtube account it's been somewhat fickle to use, but I'll update the link once I get it solved.

Btw, I'll bounce the animation to our sound designer tomorrow, so we should finally have sound for the later scenes soon!

Encounter 3 - November Preview (1080p)

Encounter 3 - November Preview (4K)

Zoe 2.0 - Materials and Polish

A post on the 10th? Sacre bleu! Doing a bit of an update on the last post since I've still touched up Zoe in recent weeks. First bigger change from the last post is her updated hair, which is a compromise between the side hair and her old haircut. I moved the hair separation line more towards the middle as well so it's not so prominent anymore. Here's hoping this looks a bit more adequate!

Her mouth also needed a good bit of work as it was previously untextured. I also took the opportunity to sculpt some extra folds into the back of her mouth, as well as a slight convex ridge for the roof. Some additional details for her tongue as well, like a more pronounced line that runs through the center. Just like Chloé, it's also using displacement for tongue surface, though I kept the effect a lot more subtle here to keep it more smooth looking. Flesh color is also the same as the old model, so it's a good deal darker than Chloé's.

Disregard retextured her bra, which I then complimented with additional fabric fuzz. She also got new pants by him, though while I like the model itself, the textured pockets and prominent stitching are probably going to be revised since I'm a bit uncertain on those.

The new Encounter 3 preview will probably be up on the 20th! It's hard to estimate how far the render will get, but I'm assuming we should get to the suction sequence! Not quite until the end, but fairly close to it. Then next month we'll go back to the usual posting schedule!

Zoe 2.0 - Facial Tweaks, Hair & Fur (Updated)

Guess who’s almost ready for animation again? With the two nom scenes of Encounter 3 P1 rendering, we had a bit of downtime to focus back on Zoe, and while Alex is still ironing out her rig, I had some time to extensively focus on doing her fur and hair.

With the shift in software, Zoe’s entire fur had to be remade from scratch. Even her old length maps had to be abandoned due to her new topology and UV layout, so there wasn’t anything that could be reused apart from some old renders that I used for reference. Nevertheless, I managed to get her fuzzy in just under two weeks, which is a lot faster than it took to fluffify Chloé. The biggest challenge was her hair, as I previously hadn’t used Yeti to do any longer hair before. I was never really happy with how her old hair looked, as I always imagined it to be a bit more punky-looking, so I used this opportunity to give her a completely new hairstyle that is much closer to her original idea.

The new hair was primarily inspired by female V’s hair from Cyberpunk. Originally the right side of her hairline was supposed to be fully shaven off, but Alex thought it looked meh, so it’s now covered by shorter hair. There were a couple of difficulties with her ears, as making the hair flow around them caused a bunch of issues with hair clipping through them. In the end I decided that it works best to have no hair under her ears, as this also shows her fluffy cheek clumps a little better. I tried my best to recreate the clumping positions of the old model. However, I thought they always looked a bit too sharp due on the old model, which was mainly due to the fur software’s limitations. With Yeti it was possible to make them flow into her non-clumpy hair a lot better, giving her a softer, more poofy look overall.

Note that I’m not fully done yet, as her tank top will still get fabric strands as well. For the next days I’ll focus on some additional texture work to bring her up to speed with Chloe, while Alex still touches up her rig. He’s already been working on a first animation test, which we’ve been using for internal testing until we’ll show it publicly.

Zoe in Encounter 3?

With Zoe getting finalized so soon, I’ve been planning to have her make an appearance in the current animation and start working on an additional sequence with her in the upcoming month. There was a scene I had tossed out of the script early on, which was supposed to happen right after Space Hero breaks down in the sandstorm. But with Zoe almost being ready for animation I’m now hoping to include it in the final/public release of Encounter 3 P1. This would also help a bit to get a nommy scene pretty early into the animation, as it would feature a decent bit of mawplay in its revised form. For patrons, there wouldn’t really be any changes in the release schedule, as next month there will be another animation update that will include both of the nommy scenes. I’m hoping to animate that additional scene with Zoe, while these scenes are still rendering to hopefully squeeze it into the final release of the first part.

Right now the first nommy scene is fully rendered! The second one probably still needs until the end of November to be fully rendered, so the next big animation update might be another month away. Either way, I’ll be posting the usual mid month update in two weeks to update you on the progress!

Edit - Hair update

Here's an update on her hair! I still want to stick with the side hair, but moved the line a bit closer to the center and made it a good bit longer and clumpier. This should hopefully be a better compromise between the new and old hair style.

Down, down, down - Playblast

Here's a new playblast that was recently animated by Disregard that makes use of Chloe's internals... but from the outside!

MEGA link with sound: Link

Rendering has been progressing in the meantime and reached the first nommy scene, with the render prep work being almost done for the final shots. The shot here still needs a bit of fluid sim, but once that's tackled it should be good to go for rendering as well!

I'm currently considering some additional stuff for Encounter 3 (Part 1), but at first there are a few prerequisites we need to figure out, so stay tuned! Next big animation update should be coming up in a month, which will have a good deal of the first nom scenes in it.

Encounter 3 - September Preview (1080p)

TGS 2025 is officially over and I'm back home, finally concluding this year's travel obligations for me for some proper settling.

This month was quite a bit wild as I mainly worked from my laptop and remoted into the newly finished render PC, which (thankfully, at long last) worked like a charm! I still need to check with Alex if he managed to complete the last shot yet, but I think it's almost safe to say that all animation for the first part is nearly completed. This new preview extends the current Encounter 3 Preview by another minute, making it 9 minutes of rendered material, with almost two minutes left to be rendered.

MEGA 1080p: Link
Youtube 1080p: Link

The goal for October is to essentially focus on finalizing the remaining scenes and get part 1 completed. Once I received the project files with the added last shots from Alex, I'll go in and polish the start of the battle sequences and set it up for rendering. Then once these sequences are rendering, I'll see if I can get back to post-production work, as there's still a good bit of work to be done cleaning and polishing everything past the second part of the meeting. There's also a pretty big blooper in the last two shots of this preview, which were accidentally rendered out without skylight, as the skylight was somehow put onto a deactivated layer before I started rendering, which was difficult to notice due to the remote connection. Either way, the scene is already re-rendering as I'm typing this. It's likely the next preview will just be a bunch more render previews, so stay tuned! Here's hoping part 1 will be fully rendered by the end of the month!

Encounter 3 - September Preview (4k)

TGS 2025 is officially over and I'm back home, finally concluding this year's travel obligations for me for some proper settling.

This month was quite a bit wild as I mainly worked from my laptop and remoted into the newly finished render PC, which (thankfully, at long last) worked like a charm! I still need to check with Alex if he managed to complete the last shot yet, but I think it's almost safe to say that all animation for the first part is nearly completed. This new preview extends the current Encounter 3 Preview by another minute, making it 9 minutes of rendered material, with almost two minutes left to be rendered.

MEGA 4K: Link
Youtube 4K: Link

MEGA 1080p: Link
Youtube 1080p: Link

The goal for October is to essentially focus on finalizing the remaining scenes and get part 1 completed. Once I received the project files with the added last shots from Alex, I'll go in and polish the start of the battle sequences and set it up for rendering. Then once these sequences are rendering, I'll see if I can get back to post-production work, as there's still a good bit of work to be done cleaning and polishing everything past the second part of the meeting. There's also a pretty big blooper in the last two shots of this preview, which were accidentally rendered out without skylight, as the skylight was somehow put onto a deactivated layer before I started rendering, which was difficult to notice due to the remote connection. Either way, the scene is already re-rendering as I'm typing this. It's likely the next preview will just be a bunch more render previews, so stay tuned! Here's hoping part 1 will be fully rendered by the end of the month!

Alright, my turn - Playblast

The suc… is bac.

Looks like Chloe took some inspiration from one Space Hero’s previous encounters that brought him up close and personal. This moment happens right towards the end of the second round and there’s still quite a bit of stuff happening afterwards. I’ve however handed the last few shots off to Disregard, which allowed me to already make some progress rendering the first rooftop shots. I’m doing an additional polishing pass on them, so there’s a bit more to them than just the render setup, but I feel like we’re making good progress!

For the end of the month I’ve planned another major Patreon preview, which will either be the final, or second-last preview before the completion of the animation’s first part. I’m hoping to have it all wrapped up next month rendering wise to show you the full thing, though it will likely still miss some post production and sound design, which should follow shortly after.

The new render rig is also finally up and running after over half a year of complications, and it’s running like a well oiled machine! It uses the new Threadripper 9000 platform and is equipped with 3 GPUs (Dual headless 4090s + A1000 for video output), so complex simulations should no longer stall the progress so much. No more crashes every few hours because of the Intel voltage bug or the second GPU disconnecting. What a massive relief this is, phew!

Zoe 2.0 - Rigging Updates

While I’m still animating rooftop shenanigans on Encounter 3, Disregard has been hammering away at the updated Zoe model and provided her with a new rig that closely resembles Chloe’s.

With the recent progress he made, Zoe should be back in action fairly soon. We’ll still need to polish her a bit and take care of her new fur and hair. For the here and now, Alex gave her a temporary haircut that will later be replaced by a fancier strand-based system. In the meantime he’s done a couple of poses with her to show off her rig and new clothing. For her new clothing style we’re leaning more into the punky style that she was supposed to rock way back.

Render by Disregard67

Note that the model, as well as its expressions are still somewhat work-in-progress, as I’ll still touch her up a bit with some non-destructive blend shapes, primarily in her face and mouth, as certain lip poses are a little hard to achieve with bare bones. It’s still going to be a while until we’ll see her in her full, next generation fur coat, as her fur will have to be remade from scratch, but I’ll see if I can make some time for that once the first rooftop noms of Encounter 3 are rendering.

Speaking of which, I’m about halfway done with the second nom scene, which is quite a bit longer than the first one, so bear with me! I’ll have another playblast in two weeks and by then I hope to be done with animating, so the rooftop part can move forward rendering. Things have also been moving forward with music, which will be done by the super talented Fox Amoore for the majority of the animation. There’s probably going to be another Patreon WIP version before the full release, but we’re slowly moving towards it. I’m estimating the release for somewhere within Autumn with the next Patreon full preview probably dropping somewhere half of the way.

Look at you go - Playblast (Rough)

Space Hero gives Chloe a taste of his blaster, quickly learning that it's not very effective against her, oh well!

Here's an early look at the second rooftop round in which Space Hero actually gets to do something. Unfortunately this shot isn't quite finished, which is why the blaster shots are still missing and the latter part of the animation still looks a bit rough. I'd have probably needed another day to animate her ears, fingers, and tweak everything a bit, but since it's already the 15th, I'll just present the playblast as rough as it is. There's going to be quite a bit more to this particular round, but I only got so far animating stuff for this month. I'm trying my best to get this sequence done until the end of the month, but will likely be a week or so late, as there are a lot of events coming up in late August/September to which I need to travel to.

Note that I'm finally going to post the first public teaser to this as well soon, as I'm hoping to have the animation wrapped up within the next weeks and then get back to rendering the last scenes on the new render rig, which is finally functional as of today, woo!

I wasn't even ready yet - Playblast

Poor Space Hero wasn’t even given a moment to react before Chloe snatched him right off the stage. Oh well,  but then no one said she was going to play fair. <:

This nommy playblast was animated in the last two weeks, as I finally managed to find some time to sit down and animate again. This is also part of the extension of the first part, with it not even being part of the script for the second half. Once this nom is animated, I’ll animate another one, hopefully having these additional animations wrapped up until the end of next month. Hopefully by then the renders will also continue on the new workstation so we can wrap up the first part of this animation!

Encounter 3 - July Preview Posted

I just posted the July preview of Encounter 3 for higher tier ($10/$15) patrons. This extends the preview animation to a little over 8 minutes with roughly 7-ish minutes of completed sound design. For the final first half we’re aiming at the 10-minute mark, this version will also include a couple more noms which I’m currently animating, so if you’re mainly just here for that, I’d suggest waiting for another update or two!

I had also intended posting a teaser, as well as a public one minute minute clip of the meeting, but I have yet to hear back from our main composer in terms of how far he is with the music, as I prefer posting something that is fully polished for a preview. Guess I’ll have to poke him some time this week!

Encounter 3 - July Preview 1080p

MEGA 1080p: Link
Youtube 1080p: Link

Doing a bit of a switcharoo this month, as I haven’t gotten much animation done on the two nom shots I wanted to have included on the first half of Encounter 3. I’ve already animated a small bit, but I’m still waiting on some voice lines, which means there’s not enough material that justifies a proper playblast yet. Instead I’m moving the playblast preview to the end of the month, while doing another full animation preview mid-month.

Right now I’m finalizing rendering of a transitional outside shot, before rendering will likely pause for two weeks. For the rest of the month I want to focus on animating the additional shots, while also setting up the new render workstation, which is just missing one component at this point. On the current workstation the second GPU (or the thunderbolt connection it connects with) stopped working entirely and I’ve just been rendering on two PCs to compensate for the loss in speed, luckily by the end of the month I should finally have the new workstation set up, which will be ready for assembly soon.

While I’ll be animating, Disregard mentioned that he wants to focus on the Zoe 2.0 model in the meantime, means there should be some progress update on that as well somewhere in the next weeks! Expect a proper playblast by the end of the month!

Encounter 3 - July Preview 4K

MEGA 4K: Link
Youtube 4K: Link

Doing a bit of a switcharoo this month, as I haven’t gotten much animation done on the two nom shots I wanted to have included on the first half of Encounter 3. I’ve already animated a small bit, but I’m still waiting on some voice lines, which means there’s not enough material that justifies a proper playblast yet. Instead I’m moving the playblast preview to the end of the month, while doing another full animation preview mid-month.

Right now I’m finalizing rendering of a transitionary outside shot, before rendering will likely pause for two weeks. For the rest of the month I want to focus on animating the additional shots, while also setting up the new render workstation, which is just missing one component at this point. On the current workstation the second GPU (or the thunderbolt connection it connects with) stopped working entirely and I’ve just been rendering on two PCs to compensate for the loss in speed, luckily by the end of the month I should finally have the new workstation set up, which will be ready for assembly soon.

While I’ll be animating, Disregard mentioned that he wants to focus on the Zoe 2.0 model in the meantime, means there should be some progress update on that as well somewhere in the next weeks! Expect a proper playblast by the end of the month!

Encounter 3 - June Preview (1080p)

Aaaaand here's the fashionably late June preview, finally including the full first nom scene, at last! This is also the first version with full sound design, though it cuts off somewhere around the 6 minute mark along with the post production as these are bot heavily work in progress.

MEGA 1080p: Link
Youtube 1080p: Link

Throughout the last days I've fallen quite sick and had to spent yesterday in bed, but had to kick myself up today since work has been pilling up quite a bit. Still feeling a bit under the weather, but I'm hoping to get back to animating the first rooftop nom either tomorrow or the day after, so I can provide the first playblast for that in two weeks! Apologies for still being terribly slow with messages in the meantime, I'm hoping to catch up on that towards the end of the month. <3

Encounter 3 - June Preview (4k)

Aaaaand here's the fashionably late June preview, finally including the full first nom scene, at last! This is also the first version with full sound design, though it cuts off somewhere around the 6 minute mark along with the post production as these are bot heavily work in progress.

MEGA 4K: Link
Youtube 4K: Link

Throughout the last days I've fallen quite sick and had to spent yesterday in bed, but had to kick myself up today since work has been pilling up quite a bit. Still feeling a bit under the weather, but I'm hoping to get back to animating the first rooftop nom either tomorrow or the day after, so I can provide the first playblast for that in two weeks! Apologies for still being terribly slow with messages in the meantime, I'm hoping to catch up on that towards the end of the month. <3

Lost all your Confidence - Playblast

Disregard makes a return animating the rooftop intro with this new playlist that shows macro Chloe in her full glory! With the rooftop not being particularly high, Chloe will likely be sitting there leisurely for the first phase of the fight, but that suits her demeanor just right.

I haven’t quite gotten to animating the following scene yet, but I’ll get there in the next couple of days. For the end of the month I should also have another preview for the full animation, which will have the first nom fully rendered and then some! With the first nommy scene out of the way, rendering speed is also slowly increasing! Well, until we get to the next one that is, which is fairly soon.

Small update on the disaster render PC while we’re at it! They've given me a new ETA for SEPTEMBER, as the 24-core Threadripper is now out of stock everywhere due to going EOL. They offered me to upgrade to the 32-core variant for an additional 1.000€, which I was unwilling to spend at this point, so I issued a full refund now. I think after all this back and forth for many months it's best if I just build the PC myself, as I practically have a full blueprint for it already after researching this setup for so long. With the current CPU being out of stock, I think it's best if I wait for July, as AMD recently has already announced the new Threadripper 9000 series to come out then, so fingers crossed they'll sell them at reasonable prices.

Fortunately, my current render rig has been running ”””relatively smooth””” for the recent weeks, so rendering progress wasn’t actually hindered. I’ve tried to streamline the process by also getting a second render license and rendering on my main desktop whenever possible, though it’s getting more and more difficult due to the high summer temperatures. But I guess that also makes working on desert-themed animation a bit more immersive! :D

Encounter 3 - May Preview Posted

I've just updated the Encounter 3 work in progress version on Patreon, which now includes the first nom scene. Well at least half of it!

The current preview is roughly 7 minutes long, with the full version of the first part likely clocking in somewhere around 10 minutes, so there's still a bit to until the full release. I'm planning to make a public announcement for the animation somewhere in a week or two, as we're slowly approaching the full release, which will hopefully be somewhere in late summer, but don't quote me on that since we're still planning to animate around few more scenes to be included! (:

Encounter 3 - May Preview (1080p)

Here’s the next animation update! Unfortunately it’s only been one month since last animation’s update, so render progress wasn’t as plenty, but it’s chugging along!

MEGA 1080p: Link

At least with this update, we got a good bit of the nom scene in, even if it’s only half of it. It should also give you a decent look at the new saliva simulation I’ve experimented with. I’m hoping to include it for more of the internal mouth shots, though it’s quite a bit heavy to pre-calculate and render, so it will probably only be used in selected scenes. I had expected that the new workstation’s Threadripper would help with that, but sadly that new PC will probably be in limbo for another time. I’ve filled an RMA on the system, as apparently putting in replacement parts would’ve voided some of its warranty. So now the huge crate is going back to the PC shop and they redo the system from scratch. Oh well, guess by the time it’s arriving, the rest of the first half of the animation will be rendered anyway. :’)

Speaking of which, I’m planning to get back to animating next week, as I want to animate at least one or two scenes of the rooftop battle before releasing it, so fingers crossed that I have a new playlist either mid-June or the end of it. I think by now the rendering has also caught up enough to slowly tackle the rooftop fight, of which Disregard has already animated the intro, three cheers for him!

Note that I’ve also planned to finally announce the project publicly in likely a week or so! Might be a good idea to poke my sound designer and composer to see how far they are. Apologies for the sound of these previews still being mostly missing. Usually it's something we tackle last, so it will probably remain as rough as it is until the final stages. D:

Big sorry again for the render trucking along so slowly in the meantime, but I’m anticipating that with the next update in June, the first nom should be fully rendered!