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I figured it out!!!

...Although not quite as expected. As a sort of last-ditch attempt, I went and gave Blender's EEVEE rendering engine a shot. Unlike the rendering engine I usually use -- Cycles -- EEVEE is closer to a videogame engine like Unreal or Unity than to something Pixar or Dreamworks would use for their movies. It's less physically accurate, and just in general more finnicky. BUT it's raster-based, so there's basically no noise. For the longest time, it could not handle fur very well. Last time I tried, a year or so ago, it kept crashing on me.

But this latest version... it works! I uploaded a side-by-side comparison (1st image is EEVEE, 2nd is Cycles). Now, these 2 images will never look identical. That's a fool's errand to try and achieve -- and I still need to tweak a couple minor things like the shower stall glass in the right of the frame. But the EEVEE version does look pretty stinkin' good! If anything, there's more fur detail because noise tends to obscure that. And it renders in under 2.5 mins per frame, which is faster than even the noisiest attempts I made with Cycles.

So we're back on track! I'm gonna go to bed now (because it's like 2am and I have to be up early tomorrow). But tomorrow after work, I'm gonna make a couple more tweaks and put the render back in the oven!

Thank you all again so much for your patience! I try to post every week, but then sometimes this happens. 3D art can get a bit unpredictable like that. And I don't wanna just post a noisy meh thing, and go, "Yup, here you go!" Y'all deserve better!

Noise, noise, noise!

Hey folks! I'm so sorry about the radio silence on my end. But as per usual, radio silence means I'm over here ripping my hair out, trying to figure out a solution to a stupid problem.

In this case, the problem is noise:

Basically, 3D rendering works a lot like a camera. The less light hits an object, the more grainy noise you get. Except in 3D, the issue is compounded. It's not always about the amount of light, but also where the light is coming from. So if the sun is shining into a room, the render will still be noisy because unlike real life, where you have probably trillions of photons, ray-traced renderer will send out far fewer.

To solve this issue, there exist tools called "denoisers". They take that random, ugly noise and smooth it out, leaving just the details (like sharp lines) intact. Trouble is, even to the AI-based denoisers, fur and hair both just look like noise. Because when fur moves, the light glints just a bit differently off it in each frame. So the denoiser thinks, "This object changes so drastically between frames, it has to be noise!"

Sooo that's where I'm at. Indoor scene, lit by sunlight = super noisy. Denoiser smoothed out all the fur and made everything worse. I wouldn't even mind the smoothness, but it smooths things out a bit differently each frame, so you still get noise, but it's just large and splotchy instead of grainy.

So I'm trying to figure out a solution.

The "easy" solution is to add more "samples" or basically rays of light. The more samples you add, the less noise. But more samples also means WAY longer render times. What's normally a 2-3 min/frame render becomes a 30 min/frame render. So 1,000 frames goes from taking 2 days to taking almost a month!

Anyway, here's a quick WIP snippet with the noise, while I figure out the best way to denoise this (yes I also redid most of the scene last week because I was unhappy with it. New bathrobe, altered lighting, new bathroom wall texture). 

There are a few new tricks I'm gonna try tonight. Hopefully one of them lands a result that both looks good and doesn't make a 40 sec long animation take a whole month to render out. I've been trying to create more story-driven content (this being the first piece in that series!) so I really need to be able to render longer animations in a decent enough timeframe.

Good news is once I have a method, this problem shouldn't come up in the future.

Thank you all for your patience and support!

New Animation Coming Soooon!

Just hit render on this boyo! Once he's all rendered out, I'll post a few more teaser clips while I mix the audio and color-grade. And then he'll be ready! Should be done this weekend. I wanted to do something with a bit more of a narrative this time. 

Gold Teeth

Just wanted to do a quick closeup for some people on Twitter who were asking about the gold teeth. Since this is going on Twitter right away, everyone gets to see it in HD!

Chill AF - After Dark Edition (HD Tier)

HD after dark vibes for my loveliest of HD Friendos and Perfect Producers!

Chill AF - After Dark Edition

Some alternate, extra moody lighting to change things up a bit.

Chill AF (HD Tier)

[EDIT: Had to fix up some fur that clipped through the robe. Fur collisions SUUUUUCK to deal with!]

HD tiger boy for my HD Friendos and Producers!

Chill AF

[EDIT: Had to fix up some fur that clipped through the robe. Fur collisions SUUUUUCK to deal with!]

Svante sure knows how to relax after a hard day of work. But he may need some help...

Experimenting (With Werewolves)

Experimenting. What am I up to? Idk yet. But I have the whole week off from work, so we’ll see where this goes…

Riding Cuties at the Beach (HD Tier)

HD riding for my cutie HD Friendos and Producers!

Riding Cuties at the Beach

Of course Benny wasn't gonna let such a big "opportunity" pass him by...

By Producer request, here is the continuation of the previous photo shoot :3

An HD Year In Review (Nov 2021 - Nov 2022)

And here is the HD versions of everything!

And a special, huge thanks to all of my HD Friendos and Producers! I really couldn't do this without all of you -- rendering gear is noooooot cheap >.>

Zig 2022 - A Year In Review.Zip 

A Year In Review (Nov 2021 - Nov 2022)

Back by popular demand, it's A Year In Review! All my art from Nov 2021 to today, in one convenient archive:

Zig 2022 - A Year In Review.Zip 

If I left anything out, or if anything looks off just ping me, and I'll see if I can find it. I have gotten realllly bad at organizing my drive this past year >.> Had to do a bunch of cleanup and reorganizing. Definitely worth it tho!

Spying Cuties at the Beach! (HD Tier)

Hd slippage for my HD Friendos ;3

Spying Cuties at the Beach!

Roger spies a cute bunny, and lets his bathing suit slip off >.> 

Hopefully that bunny takes the hint. The beach IS clothing-optional...

Werewolves - A Closer Look (HD Tier)

HD closeup for my lovely HD Friendos and Producers!

Werewolves - A Closer Look

This brave cameraman is going in close, to capture all the knotty action ;3

Lighting Practice (HD Tier)

HD Lighting for my brightest of Sponsors and shiniest of HD Friendos!

Lighting Practice

Just doing some lighting practice and thought I would show off.

Wolves, Balls, etc.

Freedom! (HD Tier)

HD sheefers for the HD Friendos and Producers!

Freedom!

Yeah, that didn't take long. This boy won't be caged!

H0rny Jail

I wanted to design a chastity cage for werewolves. Because that’s what my brain wanted to do last night. So here we are! Happy LockTober or NoNutNovember - whichever you’re currently celebrating!

H0rny Jail (HD Tier)

HD cages for my HD Friendos and Producers!

Gamers! (HD Tier)

HD gaming buds for my HD Friendos and PRoducers!!

Gamers!

"Sooo bro... you gonna eat me out or what?"

"Yeah, yeah, for sure man! I just gotta get to this next checkpoint, so I can save my game. Like one or two more minutes."

Roger has his priorities.

One more piece to end JockTober!

P.S.

Two of the background posters are my own renders. The other 2 are AI-generated!

Roger’s JockTober (HD Tier)

HD badger boy for my wonderful, wonderous HD Friendos and my generous Producers!

Roger’s JockTober

Roger is trying his best, but finding a jock that fits isn’t easy. But he’s got the JockTober spirit! Benny certainly doesn’t seem to mind >.>

JockTober Rolls On…

JockTober continues! This time, it’s Benny reading on the bed in his dorm room. Shhh, he’s studying!

I’ll just go through a bunch of my boys and put them in jocks…

JockTober Rolls On… (HD Tier)

HD Jock Boooooooty for my most awesome of HD Friendos and Producers!

JockTober Classics

While working on a proper JockTober piece, which should be done in the next couple of days, I decided to post a little compilation of older jock themed work for y’all to enjoy :3