CakeInferno

Encounter 3 - May Preview (4k)

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 4K: Link
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!

Chloe's Macro Fur, Trip Cancellation, etc.

Rendering has further been ongoing and we finally reached the first nommy scene, huzzah!

Progress on this is quite a bit slow as Chloe's fur needs a much higher density to still look good, as I wanted to avoid that chunky polygony fur look that was always seen on Zoe closeups in the past, though unfortunately it will be somewhat difficult to avoid once more than macro Chloe's head is on screen, as her entire body is covered in fur, oop!

Unfortunately for Chloe's macro version, her entire fur had to be remade due to her coat not scaling properly. The biggest problem here were the guides itself. They were sticking to her geometry without any issues, however... they didn't scale along with Chloe and bent into weird directions at times, which means a full redo of her fur was unfortunately inevitable. Luckily by the writing of this post, I'm already done with it and her macro coat looks almost 1:1 to that of her original size. I'd say it even looks a bit better around her belly area, as I've retweaked the curl of her fur a bit for much nicer looking gloss, but you'll probably see that for yourself soon as we should reach the rooftop battle in the next weeks!

The Workstation PC Fiasco

Sadly this is where it ends with the good news, as my new workstation arrived and everything that could go wrong did go wrong and the thing got damaged during shipping. On top of that they shipped it with alongside with some wrong components as well, which makes for quite the disaster. In the interest of time, I'm not sending the thing back as it came inside a massive crate that would be quite difficult for me to move to the post office in the first place. Instead the shop agreed to send me a bunch of replacement parts that I'll replace myself next week. Since I had a trip coming up around the end of this month, I decided to cancel and move it to September, as there's no guarantee I'll have this render server set up with remote access until then. Once the parts are here, I'll likely have to stress test it a bit to make sure there isn't any damage to the motherboard. Oh well, will also probably have to check on an extended warranty while I'm at it.

In the meantime, my current render setup will continue squeezing out frames. There should be a new preview around the end of this month that will finally include the first nommy scene as well. Though it might not be fully rendered by then, but I'll see how far we get!

Note that with this preview, I'll probably make the first public announcement as well on the project, as it's probably long overdue by now. c':

Encounter 3 - April Preview

The April Preview of Encounter 3 has just been posted for the higher tiers! The bad news first, unfortunately the first nom scene isn’t in there yet as the renderer has only made it to the point right before it happens. I’m trying my best to squeeze in an updated version later this month, so perhaps sit the current preview out and wait for that one to drop instead.

The good news is that at least that everything prior has been finalized, so there’s no more backtracking on any of the previous 60+ shots that have already been animated and rendered! The current version of the animation is close to 7 minutes in runtime with there still being quite a few shots to be rendered, but we’re making progress!

Still planning to do a proper public announcement soon, but I first want to ensure the preview version has at least one proper nom in it. Stay tuned! <3

Encounter 3 - April Preview (1080p)

Youtube: Link
MEGA: Link

Here’s the April preview for Encounter 3! In May, oh well…! I was admittedly hoping to be a bit further ahead with the render progress, but the sensual part with Chloe getting up close to Spacey absolutely tanked the render time, bringing it up to a hefty 45 minutes per frame (from the average 20 mins).

This new version is just a few seconds away from the first nom, heartbreakingly so. I’m considering to post another animation update later this month to hopefully include it, fingers crossed. Admittedly, I'm slightly pressured to wrap up the majority of this scene either way, as I’ll be abroad in late May. During my trip I’ve planned to get started on animating the first nommy scenes on the rooftop. Hopefully by then Alex’s schedule will also have freed up as he’s currently grinding commissions among a few other things.

This new preview extends the animation to almost 7 minutes. Timing-wise we’re really well on plan, as the arrival and meeting were supposed to go for 8 minutes, followed by another 7 - 8 minutes of rooftop noms and an additional 4 minutes that take place at the Tikki bar at night. I apologize that we still haven’t reached the first nom part yet render-wise, sound design and music also aren’t there yet as I’ve still edited the timing to be a bit tighter before handing things off. On the flip side, all the previous shots are fixed, processed, color graded and finalized. The three shots that were previously missing are also animated, rendered and processed, which means there won’t be any more backtracking from here, which is a huge relief on its own.

During the next weeks, I’ll forward the current version to out sound designer and composer so they can already get started with their work. Fingers crossed that rendering will speed up again once we’re past this current shot, so the first nom should be included in the next update. I’m trying my best to prepare another preview this month that has a few more shots in it. In the meantime, thank you guys so much for your patience!

Encounter 3 - April Preview (4K)

Youtube: Link
MEGA: Link

Here’s the April preview for Encounter 3! In May, oh well…! I was admittedly hoping to be a bit further ahead with the render progress, but the sensual part with Chloe getting up close to Spacey absolutely tanked the render time, bringing it up to a hefty 45 minutes per frame (from the average 20 mins).

This new version is just a few seconds away from the first nom, heartbreakingly so. I’m considering to post another animation update later this month to hopefully include it, fingers crossed. Admittedly, I'm slightly pressured to wrap up the majority of this scene either way, as I’ll be abroad in late May. During my trip I’ve planned to get started on animating the first nommy scenes on the rooftop. Hopefully by then Alex’s schedule will also have freed up as he’s currently grinding commissions among a few other things.

This new preview extends the animation to almost 7 minutes. Timing-wise we’re really well on plan, as the arrival and meeting were supposed to go for 8 minutes, followed by another 7 - 8 minutes of rooftop noms and an additional 4 minutes that take place at the Tikki bar at night. I apologize that we still haven’t reached the first nom part yet render-wise, sound design and music also aren’t there yet as I’ve still edited the timing to be a bit tighter before handing things off. On the flip side, all the previous shots are fixed, processed, color graded and finalized. The three shots that were previously missing are also animated, rendered and processed, which means there won’t be any more backtracking from here, which is a huge relief on its own.

During the next weeks, I’ll forward the current version to out sound designer and composer so they can already get started with their work. Fingers crossed that rendering will speed up again once we’re past this current shot, so the first nom should be included in the next update. I’m trying my best to prepare another preview this month that has a few more shots in it. In the meantime, thank you guys so much for your patience!

Zoe 2.0 2.0 and Hardware Woes

While rendering is ongoing, Disregard took a shot at modernizing my old Zoe model himself and I think the results are fairly good!

After Cid’s initial Zoe redesign was turned into Chloe, there was still the problem with Zoe’s model hanging in the air, so seeing Alex making some progress on that is pretty nice, even if she won’t be returning until Encounter 4. Alex took the Patreon feedback into consideration for a much more subtle rework of her model, mainly fixing the terrible topology as well as some of my personal peeves, such as that big alien head of the previous model version. The new head took a few design cues from Chloe’s head structure as well, making it a lot more sleek than how it used to be. Keep in mind that I’ll be adding fur at a later point, which will make her head appear a lot broader again due to the longer cheek tufts, in case anyone thinks she looks a little too sleek at this point.

Unfortunately, my render PC seems to be on its last breaths as I’m typing this. For those that remember, it’s a system with an i9-13900K CPU that has been affected by the Intel Voltage issue and has degraded to the point of complete system instability. As of right now, the system is freezing or BSOD’ing once every hour, all despite having all the BIOS updates and a heavily under clocked CPU, as most applications won’t even start on standard clocks anymore. The Thunderbolt port on the motherboard also has a weirdly loose connection, which causes the second external GPU to disconnect every now and then, further adding to the factors of issues with this system. Welp, I might have saved a few thousand dollars initially with this configuration, but it’s all coming back to bite me in the butt now.

Luckily I was able to save up enough for a Threadripper-based workstation by now, which should be arriving in a week or two! I’ll get into detail on the specs once it arrives, but in theory it should be able to fit both the RTX 4090 cards internally and power them as well. Hopefully. Probably. Most likely. Lastly, one of my screens decided to follow the trend and randomly gave up a few days ago, about 6 months past its warranty of course. Nothing crucial luckily, but still something that adds on top to the hill of broken stuff. I can luckily have it repaired for a price that is only a fraction of buying a new one, but still… this is the second screen in a year. Luckily the first one was still in its warranty period, oh well! I should still be fine as long as nothing else breaks in the upcoming weeks!

Note that the April preview at the end of this month might be slightly delayed due to all of these issues. I’m still having to wait 1 - 2 weeks on the render workstation replacement, so I’m hoping I can still kick the current system to spit out a few more frames until the replacement arrives. I’ll have another post up in 2 weeks either way!

Render Progress, Chloe Updates, etc.

Rendering is ongoing! For this month, I managed to render the next batch of animation that Disregard animated, which comes down to 16 shots! Next month I'll be rendering the next collection of shots I animated in the recent weeks, which should include the first noms!

Not too much to report on this time around since we've mostly been preparing things! Disregard has been implementing Chloe's internals, among a few other things, while I've been chewing myself through rendering and post production on two separate computers. Once Alex is done with his updates on Chloe, he'll bounce the model back to me since I need to make a couple of preparations on her as well. The most time intensive update on my part will be remaking the fur for her macro version, which unfortunately requires a complete do-over of her hair system as the fur I've previously made can't unfortunately be scaled to such an extreme degree like a factor of eleven. Unfortunately I'll also have to pause rendering while I work on her fur since it needs to be done from the same computer due to some licensing stuff with the fur plugin I use.

For the entirety of April, I'll likely be stuck doing post production and rendering the most recent scenes, which is very much necessary at this point, as we already have about 8 minutes of animation, as well as over 2TB of render data that should probably be wrapped up before we fully delve into the rooftop battle. I'm hoping to have another in-progress preview around the end of the month, which should hopefully include the first nommy scene as well!

In the meantime, Disregard made a little test animation with Chloe's internals to test them. Note that this actually won't be in the Encounter 3 animation, but we have a metric ton of noms coming for the rooftop animation anyway, so I'm certain this shouldn't be a problem. Perhaps we polish it into its own mini animation later on. <:

Meet me on the Rooftop - Playblast

I admittedly didn't want to reveal more playblasts at this point, but the wrap up of the first part of Encounter 3 is still going to take a bit, especially as we're going to add a few more scenes to it that were originally intended for part two. Here's another scene I recently animated at the tail end of the meeting. After being swallowed by Chloé, Space Hero somehow finds himself landing on her tummy, rather than in it, huh!

That foot shove was actually improvised animation-wise! Chloe was actually supposed to sit up here, but I encountered a problem with her rig where her torso twists itself weirdly when she sits up while her root controller is twisted. A bit of an edge scenario, but by the time I noticed the issue, most of this scene was already animated so she had to stay on the ground. Funny enough, the dismissive foot shove actually seems more in-character for her, while probably also appeasing our paw enthusiasts as a bonus! <:

As far as progress goes, I'm now done animating the final sequence of the meeting, which was a pretty big chunk of animation. I have one another small shot to animate before I'll pass the ball back to Disregard, who will animate the intro of the rooftop battle, while I'll delve into post production since we already have an insane amount of scenes to compile. Expect more render previews in the coming weeks, as well as another playblast somewhere of the rooftop intro!

Encounter 3 Preview Info

The February Preview for Encounter 3 has just been posted for the higher Patreon tiers. Note that this preview contains no noms yet. The first version with noms will probably drop around late April, when we're a little closer to the first public release of Encounter 3 (part 1). The late April preview will likely go hand in hand with a public teaser as well, as I'm expecting that by then we have enough material rendered for a small public preview.

Encounter 3 will be a huge animation that is a collaborative effort between me and Disregard67. The animation will likely be split into two public releases, each with an estimated runtime of 10 minutes. As of right now, the majority of the first part is fully animated and mainly needs to be overproduced and rendered. I should have a more in-depth preview for late April, when the project will get its official announcement, so stay tuned!

Encounter 3 - February Preview (1080p Version)

Here's the next preview for Encounter 3! This one extends the initial first preview by 2 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C0qY5dE5fA (1080p Version)

There are currently a lot of bloopers that need fixing, which I'll tackle after finalizing the last scene of the meeting that I'm currently still animating. I also noticed I somehow missed animating one scene with Space Hero, which I'll catch up on as well. For the next weeks the game plan will mainly be rendering of the remaining scenes, as well as fixing all the render bloopers currently in the animation. I think it's a good idea to get that out of the way first, as we already have well over 40 shots that I'm slowly losing oversight of.

The next full preview is planned for late April. This one should be a lot closer to the first public release of the animation and have a preview on the sound design as well! (:

Encounter 3 - February Preview (4K Version)

Here's the next preview for Encounter 3! This one extends the initial first preview by 2 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOGJqD9bPxw (4k Version)

There are currently a lot of bloopers that need fixing, which I'll tackle after finalizing the last scene of the meeting that I'm currently still animating. I also noticed I somehow missed animating one scene with Space Hero, which I'll catch up on as well. For the next weeks the game plan will mainly be rendering of the remaining scenes, as well as fixing all the render bloopers currently in the animation. I think it's a good idea to get that out of the way first, as we already have well over 40 shots that I'm slowly losing oversight of.

The next full preview is planned for late April. This one should be a lot closer to the first public release of the animation and have a preview on the sound design as well! (:

Big Head Nom - Playblast

Chloe demonstrates to Space Hero how well she's able to nom him by turning into a huge floating head, oh dear!

Note there are a couple of effects here that aren't visible in this playblast, such as the sand dissolve effect, as well as another effect that removes her body past her neck when she turns large. Future Cake will have to take care of that in the final render! This is by the way the shot right before the first in-maw scene I showed a couple months ago. I actually animated this one first to have it out of the way going forward.

I roughly have about 2 - 3 smaller shots to animate before handing the next scene off to Disregard. For the end of this month I have another WIP full animation planned, but I do want to get these shots animated beforehand, so it could be delayed until the first days of March due to February being so short.

This preview will include the first scenes with Chloe of the meeting. Currently it's rendering its way through the small montage where she zaps through the room and I'm hoping to at least get to the part where she reads from the book rendering-wise.

I admittedly wish the render would be a bit further ahead, but I had to render the scene where she stepped down the stairs twice, as I had accidentally prepped an older version of the shot. The scene with the coins unfortunately dragged on quite a bit as well, which was due to a combined factors of physics simulation, her fully body being in the shot (fur), as well as that curtain taking up so much of the screen. Transparencies are super expensive with path tracing.

I'm fairly confident that the render will progress fairly fast from here, as all the super complicated scenes are now behind us! Once I'm done with the scene I'm currently animating, I'll also focus 100% on rendering, so there should be no more stalling with me having to split my attention between animating and render prep. I've also considered getting a second render license to render a couple of smaller shots on a second machine, which should speed the entire process up as well.

Here's hoping you enjoy this new playblast! The rooftop battle is getting close! :D

Your Deepest Desires - Playblast

Here's Chloe exposing Space Hero in this new playblast that takes place right before the first nom!

A few more shots to animate before we get to the rooftop battle, but I'm hoping to wrap up my sequence in the next two weeks or so before handing the transitional scene off to Alex. What's currently keeping me from working on this is the simulation aspect of the rendering, as I'm also readying the scene where she zaps through the room, which requires a ton of rigid body physics, next to the particle and cloth sim. For that, it will probably become one of the fanciest scenes in the entire animation. You'll likely see it in a month!

I think this scene is probably the first contender for an alternative angle shot as well, for certain reasons! <:

Gotta see what I'll be posting next since I'm grinding between new animation and rendering, but it might be the scene where Chloe becomes huge and noms him off the ground. For the end of February we should have another in-progress preview, which this time should have a bit more meat on it! :D

Buying the Ankh - Playblast

Space Hero suggests buying the Ankh and finds out about Chloe's arch nemesis - taxes!

Here's a new playblast from the meeting that was animated by Disregard earlier on! Rendering has also continued throughout the recent two weeks, although I had to re-render an entire sequence after finding some errors in a shot. I'm currently animating one of the last scenes of the meeting, then leave the final shots to Disregard before we tackle the rooftop battle.

We've also decided to take a few scenes of the rooftop battle into the first part of Encounter 3 as well to include a couple more noms. The battle itself will have a huge number of eating scenes and span over two phases, so it probably won't be a problem to take a small part of that into the first part of the animation. We've already planned out a ton of interesting scenes, including things such as the moves from the first Encounter animation, as well as a ton of new stuff, including drinking scenes, which is the reason why I've been experimenting with fluid dynamics so much! Disregard has also fitted a cool internal model for Chloe from one of his own models!

I'm also hoping to have an updated version of the full preview for late February, which by then should include a good part of the meeting and hopefully some work-in-progress audio as well! Note that I've also added the entire video library, with all the posts for the recent animation releases to the collections page for easier access if you're in one of the higher tiers, so I no longer need to bump up the video library posts anymore.

Next playblast will be posted around the end of the month! There's a bit more sensual stuff in there, so fingers crossed I'm able to finish my sequence by then!

Chloe Manifestation - Render Previews

Happy New Year folks! Here are some fresh render previews to blast off 2025, showing the first scenes that involve Chloe. Disregard did the character animation in these, while I took care of the layout, VFX, and other aspects. Still some clipping and a few minor things I haven't caught in the stair walk. Will have to take care of that in post, oop!

For this year, we're mainly hoping to finish Encounter 3, for which I should have another in-progress preview that will be posted somewhere in the next months. We're pretty close to completion in regards to the first part of the animation, so you should also see the first shots of the rooftop battle within that time frame.

Right now the entire rendering process is still lagging behind a little, which is why for this year I also want to get a better render rig that isn't held together by glue and duct tape. Since we're now working on such a high level, I've started looking into actual industry-grade solutions such as the H3 Platform for external GPUs. Unfortunately these things are extremely expensive, but seeing how a solution like that would significantly boost rendering capabilities, it might actually be worth investing into them it in the long run. At the same time, I'm also looking into the Threadripper Pro platform, but the main issue here would be the case itself. If there are some PC builders among you that have any recommendations for super-sized PC cases that can hold two, or perhaps even three 4090/5090-level cards through PCIe extenders, I'm all ears!

Genie Laws - Playblast

Looks like Space Hero can't just make wishes that affect other people, which means Zoe will have to stay at her size, oh well!

Another playblast of a sequence I've animated a while ago where Chloe outlines some of the genie laws to Space Hero. Right now I'm just about to start rendering the first scenes with Chloe, so hopefully we'll have some early previews for that around the end of the month. We're also pretty far with the animation, as Disregard and me are currently animating some of the last sequences in the meeting that leads to the rooftop battle. I've admittedly considered having some of the first shots of the rooftop fight in the first public release as well to get a few more noms in. Schedule-wise we're pretty well on track, so that shouldn't cause a huge delay. I'll just have to see how well the render process goes from here since Chloe and her elaborate fur will be on screen from here, oh well!

Expect another preview before the end of the year! Hope you're all having a lovely Christmas until then! <3

Encounter 3 - Intro Montage

I just posted the first preview for Encounter 3, which mainly shows the first bit of the intro. Not a whole lot to see here since Chloe doesn't make an appearance in this yet, which is also why I won't make a public post about it until the second preview. For now it's a short 3 minute preview that mainly shows how far we are with the rendering right now.

I'm planning on updating this in a 2 month rhythm, usually depending on how much material I managed to render, so expect this to be a recurring thing from here! Next playblast will also be posted in roughly 10 days as well! (:

Encounter 3 - Intro Preview (1080p)

Here's the very first preview with the first few minutes of Encounter 3's intro! As previously mentioned, there isn't too much to see here yet as this mostly follows Space Hero making his way to Chloe's domain.

1080p Preview (Youtube): Link

I'm planning to update this preview every 2 months or so with more material being rendered. Except for the last shots, the parts you're seeing here were mostly animated by Disregard while I was still working on Chloe's Tease. By now we're a lot further into the animation than this preview would suggest, but rendering a film at such a high quality still takes a bit of time. Note that there isn't any sound yet. It probably won't be added before the second preview.

To give a brief summary of the animation again: Encounter 3 is not going to be your average vore animation, but rather an animated film with a planned runtime of up to 20 minutes. It's structured three parts, where in the first one Space Hero makes his way to Chloe's domain and gets introduced to her.

The second part is the main part of the animation, where Space Hero will fight against a giant Chloe on the rooftop, similar to the cliff fight in Encounter 1, but significantly expanded upon. The fight will serve as a big nomming montage and have two phases. The main focus here will be macro/micro with one smaller samesizeish scene somewhere in the middle. Internal shots are pretty much a given, and with the abundance of scenes, there's likely going to be some burping too. <:

The third part will be the shortest one and take place at the Tiki bar at night. This one will have a bit of additional lore on Chloe with a bit more teasing here and there. It's also supposed to set up future animations at her domain.

Encounter 3 - Intro Preview (4k)

Here's the very first preview with the first few minutes of Encounter 3's intro! As previously mentioned, there isn't too much to see here yet as this mostly follows Space Hero making his way to Chloe's domain.

4K Preview (Youtube): Link

I'm planning to update this preview every 2 months or so with more material being rendered. Except for the last shots, the parts you're seeing here were mostly animated by Disregard while I was still working on Chloe's Tease. By now we're a lot further into the animation than this preview would suggest, but rendering a film at such a high quality still takes a bit of time. Note that there isn't any sound yet. It probably won't be added before the second preview.

To give a brief summary of the animation again: Encounter 3 is not going to be your average vore animation, but rather an animated film with a planned runtime of up to 20 minutes. It's structured three parts, where in the first one Space Hero makes his way to Chloe's domain and gets introduced to her.

The second part is the main part of the animation, where Space Hero will fight against a giant Chloe on the rooftop, similar to the cliff fight in Encounter 1, but significantly expanded upon. The fight will serve as a big nomming montage and have two phases. The main focus here will be macro/micro with one smaller samesizeish scene somewhere in the middle. Internal shots are pretty much a given, and with the abundance of scenes, there's likely going to be some burping too. <:

The third part will be the shortest one and take place at the Tiki bar at night. This one will have a bit of additional lore on Chloe with a bit more teasing here and there. It's also supposed to set up future animations at her domain.

Chloe Nomtease - Playblast

Chloe gives a small demonstration of what happens when Space Hero loses, but luckily for him, Chloe is only goofing around~

A preview of the very first nom scene of Encounter 3 that I animated a few weeks ago. More context to it will be given later on, but this scene will still be included in the first half of the animation as somewhat of a tease for what's to come.

Note that the very first big preview is still on its way and will be posted around the end of this month. I'm trying to include two more shots since they make for a more rounded preview, though note that this will be a very early version that probably won't even have any sound, nor post-production.

I've seen that a lot of folks are asking if this is same size, which is unfortunately not the case, as Chloe will be pretty huge during the rooftop fight, similar to Zoe. However, there's a scene at the mid-point of the animation where Chloe gobbles up Space Hero and morphs back to her regular size to have a little chat with him while he's in her belly, so here's hoping that's a bit of consolation. <3

Oh, Chloe! - Playblast

Here's a new sequence that I've animated myself a couple of weeks ago! In this small montage Chloe goes on a small rant about her life as a djinn briefly after meeting Space Hero. What's not quite visible in this preview is that she's zapping through the room using her teleport, which will be something I'll add in a later production step. I'm still planning to add another shot to it later down the line to slightly pad out the montage a bit as well.

The plot thickens here, as we learn why Space Hero made his way through the desert to see her. Looks like he's trying to reverse a wish Zoe made, which increased her size tenfold and made her the giant vixen we've gotten used to. Only problem seems to be that she's stuck at that size and might not be able to leave the planet with Space Hero. Oh well!

I'm hoping to show the very first preview of Encounter 3 next month, though note that it's a very early preview that ends before Space Hero even runs into Chloe, as rendering hasn't gotten that far yet unfortunately. I'll however be able to show off the first nommy scene next month as well since I've almost finished animating it. We still have a good bit of the meeting scene to finish, but we're slightly beyond the halfway point now. (:

Future Subscription Billing Changes

Most people have probably heard it already, but Patreon is discontinuing some of their older billing cycles, including their non-charge upfront method that I've been using up until this day. Once November rolls around, my account will automatically be switched to monthly subscription billing.

If you're already subscribed, then nothing is going to change for you, as billing will still happen at the beginning of every month. However, if you're a new subscriber then you'll be charged from the moment you subscribe and then every 30 days or so. There's an option for me to further delay the switch, but from what I gathered, it seemingly locks out everyone using Patreon through the iOS App Store, which brings me to the next point...

Starting next month, there will be an additional 30% Apple tax for everyone using the iOS Patreon app. I'm somewhat uncertain how many people are actually using Patreon through iOS, but should you do so, then I highly recommend switching to the more common web browser subscription method. I believe there's an option for every creator to tank the 30% from iOS subscriptions themselves and I'll be considering it, but for now I want to strongly incentivize anyone currently using it to switch to desktop.

Losing the non-charge upfront payment cycle is a bit of a bummer. I'm aware it could easily be abused, but it was a system that just worked for me, which is why I've never touched it. On the bright side, one of the Patreon emails also mentioned something of an upcoming 14-day trial period that creators can implement, so I'll be looking into that option once it becomes available. It probably won't be as liberal as the previous system, but it should make it possible for people to see what they're signing up for at least.

October Render Previews

Here are some of the latest render previews of the sequences that have been rendered over the last few months! These are all mainly from the intro Alex had animated, which mainly consists of Space Hero arriving at Chloe's domain.

As our hero decides to take a moment to rest as the sun settles, he's overwhelmed by an approaching sandstorm. Unable to withstand it, he loses his consciousness in it. Little does he know that the storm will bring him right at Chloe's door step! :D

 With the intro being almost fully rendered, we're slowly approaching the more interesting scenes of Space Hero meeting Chloe, of which Alex and me have already finished a good deal of animation on. We're currently on the second half of it, which leads right into the first nommy scene that still happens before the actual rooftop battle takes place.

I'm hoping to have the very first compilation of rendered scenes ready next month. This unfortunately won't include Chloe yet, but we're pretty close to getting there! At the end of this month I'm hoping to show another playblast of the meeting, while in November I have the first preview, as well as a playblast for the first nommy scene scheduled, which I'll be animating soon.

Unfortunately it takes just as much time to set these scenes up for rendering as it takes to animate these, which is why keeping up with everything has been a bit chaotic. I think if I didn't have Disregard helping then we'd still be stuck somewhere in the intro, so kudos to him! <3

Some Hero You Are - Playblast

Chloé finally reveals herself to our hero! But why did he come to her in the first place?

Here's a follow up playblast to the scene shown earlier this month, animated by Disregard! Next month I should have some fresh render previews, as well as another blast that I've animated myself. There's going to be quite a bit of banter between these two before we get to the noms, so stay tuned! :D

Space Hero enters the Temple - Playblast

My current schedule planned to show the scene where Chloé reveals herself today and show more render progress at the end of the month, but we've had a couple of render issues with a scene in the intro, which is why the render progress isn't as far as I'd like it to be yet. To give the render another two week buffer, I've decided to show off another scene from the intro where Space Hero enters Chloé's temple and gets greeted by her ethereal voice as she's hiding.

The reveal of her will be shown at the end of the month instead, so I actually have a bit more to show for with the next month's render preview. The next weeks are going to be quite a bit busy since I need to prepare another scene for rendering, then prepare the next sequence for Alex, while also making progress on the sequence I'm currently animating myself. Animation progress has been pretty good, though I wish we'd be a little further with the actual render, oh well!

Here's another scene that Alex has animated in the meantime, which concludes the intro. Make sure to download the attached video file for a slightly longer version that also has sound! Also don't mind the white eyes, it's mainly a viewport problem we've been struggling with.

The next playblast with Chloe revealing herself will be shown in two weeks! (:

The Mysterious Splashing Noise - Playblast

First off, apologies for the low framerate in the gif! Photoshop's gif exporter is limited to 500 frames total, so I had to cut this playblast down to 15FPS. For the proper 30FPS version, check the attachment.

Space Hero finally arrived in Chloé's Domain and immediately clenches his thirst on a large water box. This also happens to be the splashing noise that Chloé hears at the end of Chloé's Tease, creating somewhat of an overlap between these two animations!

This is also the first sequence I've animated on my own, mainly due to the heavy use of Bifrost fluid sim going on here. The upcoming meeting sequence is split between me and Alex, as it's quite long and marks the focal point of this animation. Throughout August, I've already managed to complete a small number of shots with Chloé, and thanks to having Alex on my side, we can pour a good amount of time into polishing the character's movements and make them more expressive than ever.

Expect updates to come in the usual 2-week rhythm. We'll have to see how much of the meeting sequence we'll be able to do throughout September, but I've been planning to show the first shots of it in the upcoming weeks!

Through the Sandstorm - Playblast

Here's another scene Disregard has animated for the intro sequence of Encounter 3!

Since late July I've also been hard at work animating again and have started working on the lengthy Chloé meeting sequence. The scenes have been split up between me and Alex to optimize progression. I'll have to see when we're ready to show the first previews of the scenes with Chloe, but I'm assuming that next month we should be far enough into it present the first scenes where she interacts with Space Hero. (:

Rendering-wise, about three shots from the intro are currently finalized! The intro is quite a bit longer than in the previous animations, but it does serve a certain pace, as the episode is supposed to slowly build up throughout the meeting and the actual rooftop battle.

I went the extra mile and gave his sleeves the fancy looking cotton/fuzzy shader as well, which makes them look quite fancy from closer angles. It's pretty hard to see from these small videos, but there are a couple more shots with him coming up where the effect is a bit more prominent.

Next playblast should be at the end of the month, then in September we should see the first playblasts involving Chloé as well! (:

More Space Hero Upgrades & Laying down Playblast

With the alt angles and new mini animation out of the way, Alex and me are now fully committed to Encounter 3! I've animated a few additional scenes for the intro in the recent two weeks and now I'm joining in on animating the scene where Space Hero meets Chloé, which is the main focus of the first Encounter 3 half and a more proper introduction to Chloé!

We've also put a bit more work into upgrading Space Hero a little further though. Alex gave his model some proper pockets and a belt, while I improved his looks with fur-based fabric for his vest, which can also accumulate sand in it for the desert scene. I'm sure this should put him more in line with the rendering quality of Chloé.

Here's another playblast that has been animated by Alex for the time being. For August and the next months onwards, we're fully focused on the meeting scene, which is quite BIG and should help flesh out Chloé's character quite a bit!

In the meantime rendering of the first scenes has already started as well, so expect that some of these shots will find their way into future updates. Note that once we have 2 - 3 minutes of material rendered, I'll compile these into the first full preview, which should be ready somewhere in early autumn.

Chloé Bellydance - Mini Animation (1080p/60)

Phew! Took a bit more time than the usual mini animations due to there being quite a bit more to render, but the animation has been completed! Kudos to Disregard for animating her so smoothly! Since we were already going overboard with this I took the time to make some music and sound for it as well. (:

Normal Tummy

1080p/60FPS: Link
1080p/30FPS: Link

Big Tummy

1080p/60FPS: Link
1080p/30FPS: Link

Chloé Bellydance - Mini Animation (4k/60)

Phew! Took a bit more time than the usual mini animations due to there being quite a bit more to render, but the animation has been completed! Kudos to Disregard for animating her so smoothly! Since we were already going overboard with this I took the time to make some music and sound for it as well. (:

Normal Tummy

4k/60FPS: Link
4k/30FPS: Link

1080p/60FPS: Link
1080p/30FPS: Link

Big Tummy

4k/60FPS: Link
4k/30FPS: Link

1080p/60FPS: Link
1080p/30FPS: Link