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Important notes from a discussion about whether or not dragons can loaf
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I busted out this whole course in like a week and then didn't upload any of it lol. Anyway, this is work from the second half of Woulter Tulp's Fundamentals of Expressive Character Design course on Schoolism. In the first half, the focus was on dynamic, fluid shapes. This half was about proper perspective and 3D rotations. Let me tell you, this just about broke my brain. There is also some expression work at the bottom which I have historically struggled with. After all these years of drawing, it's interesting how these fundamentals kick my butt.
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Selected assignments from weeks 1-4 of Woulter Tulp's Fundamentals of Expressive Character Design course on Schoolism. This course is more about rendering complex 3D shapes in a way that looks fluid and living vs actual character design, but it's definitely something missing from my current drawings. This course will probably be my last notable diversion before diving back into Jar Full of Cosmos. Lots more below the cut!
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I wrote another script! Mirroring UVs takes a 4-5 clicks depending on how to you do it, so I condensed those clicks down to one operator. This time, I did not use ChatGPT; now that I understand the basic format, the digital hallucinations take more time to correct than they're worth. Now I need to figure out how I can combine scripts into one convenient add-on.
HOT TIP: you can enable Python Tooltips in preferences and this will reveal the python path of any action in Blender. Turning on Developer Extras lets you copy those python paths, among other things. It makes this kind of scripting way easier!
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... I made a Blender addon.
I like using a mirrored skin modifier with a level 2 subdivision as the block out for my sculpting. If a character is simple enough, sometimes I can get by without retopologizing. Suffice to say, I find myself adding those three modifiers over and over and over. Below are two recent of examples of how I use them:
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My addon (which is really just a simple script) adds a object consisting of a single vertex with mirror, skin, and subD modifiers already applied and toggles Xray mode. There's just one catch: I made it with help from ChatGTP.
(musings on AI below the cut)
I have very mixed feelings on AI; as a creator, it's infuriating that decades of work was stolen and used to replace its creators. As someone who works in tech, I know it's an invaluable tool and here to stay. I know very little about Python scripting--my coding is about as sophisticated as playing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star on the piano--and ChatGPT 3.5 was able to get me an outline that was almost workable. What I asked was a very basic set of steps, and the model failed as soon as I tried to inject logic. Sometimes we don't notice when AIs do things like throw in some extra fingers or an errant limb, but code requires precision. ChatGPT only had a tenuous grasp on the intricacies of Blender's API, and I don't have the python experience to figure out where it was going wrong. If I wanted to complete my short laundry list of functionalities, I would need at least a beginner overview of Python (and a stack overflow account, lol). As it stands, ChatGPT made 60% of this.
So far I have only dabbled with whatever model of ChatGPT I could access for free. It was mostly useful to me as a digital rubber duck. This experience makes me both curious and trepidatious about the cutting edge models and whatever comes next. I also feel squicked out having used it for anything creative :/
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I'm playing around with different ways to showcase my models. Pretty much anything is better than screen-shotting out of blender, but I want to get better at presentation in general. Also, some process stuff below the cut!
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I made another one :B
After figuring out the basic steps for avatar upload with my monster/dragon, I wanted to get a better idea of of how long it takes to make an avatar. Meet Strawberry Bunbun. I spent most of my time texturing with Adobe Illustrator, and while vectors helped immensely the process was still clunky. I'm probably getting Substance soon. Also, I attempted 2D lipsync just for funsies. It recorded very jittery but looks smooth in-game. Weird.
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She's textured!
I love Blender, but dang their texturing workflow needs an update...
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And now for something completely different:
I was never a big VRChat player, but there are some events happening this year I'd like to attend. The tools for building avatars are so much better these days, so I'm putting something together. This is still very much a WIP; the unity components need polish and she needs an actual paint job and some more facial expressions. Nevertheless, I'm quite pleased with this!
Once I finish this model, I will be open for a limited number of avatar commissions.
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throwback to that time when I drew a bunch of furries
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... And by "that time" I mean a several year span where I was lurking on dA and fA mostly too burnt out from school to make very much art. I am migrating my old harddrives on to BEEFMASTER and came across these drawings. None of the characters are mine, and unfortunately I can't give credit because those art accounts are long gone ; ;
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I have a couple shots of Matt's monster that I intended to render, but it just took too long on the little laptop. I put this one on BEEFMASTER and it finished in about three minutes (vs. 4 hrs on the laptop). Assuming I can solve some stability issues with the CPU, this will make JoC soooooooooo much easier!
Also, fun fact: this shot specifically inspired Jar Full of Cosmos. I have been considering hosting a workshop on using tools like mocap and phsyics sims to make animations without needing specialty skills. I wanting something a little more generic than this monster, so I thought a cat would be cute. Later that evening I saw an illustration of a cat in a galaxy, and the rest was history.
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BEEFMASTER lives! 馃崊馃崊馃崊馃悇馃憫
Seriously I've never built a PC before so this feels neat :> Matt helped a lot and there was definitely some funky troubleshooting I had to do, but I think everything is working right? Now to put the dining-room back together....
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Character Update
Wipples the cat was named after an IRL cat. Unfortunately, irl Wipples came to an untimely end and the owner requested I change CGI Wpples's name to something else. Henceforth, Wipples the Cat is now Gazpacho the cat (Gus for short). I have decided that as a kitten, he climbed through an open kitchen window and fell face-first into a bowl of gazpacho that Pearl was going to have for lunch.
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I feel like the smart thing to do is go back and update all my posts to add Gazpacho to the tags, but that feels like a lot of work...
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More test renders! I fixed up Wipple's fur a little bit, plus I got the magical jar started.
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First peek at Pearl and Wipples
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I started this project about a month ago, and finally Pearl and Wipples are together. There are definitely some issues to fix with the character models; Pearl's clothing does not follow the rig through space, so I had to manually put her dress back on. Wipples' whiskers are clipping through his face and his fur is nearly pitch black in spite of setting the material color to grey. The kitchen environment is a work in progress with further adjustments needed for color, composition, and scale. The lighting is very temporary as well.
Regardless, it feels like a huge accomplishment to have made it this far. This is the most complex thing I have ever created in Blender and I have learned so much. Given the complexity of this single frame, I have a sinking feeling that animating the full short may be beyond my capabilities. I'll still go as far as I can, but wrangling those Rigify rigs just to get a static pose was quite challenging. At minimum, I intend to get a previz animation as well as a couple gorgeous renders.
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Pearl WIP
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I took a couple days off to assemble the new PC (henceforth known as BEEFMASTER). I needed to order some extra parts, so in the meantime I progressed with Pearl as much as I reasonably can on the laptop. As with Wipples, there was an incredible amount of new stuff in this. Her skin is a mixture of procedural and hand-painted textures, and I baked her normals from a multiresolution sculpt. Her clothes are multiple cloth simulations that all interact with one another (and hopefully the rig ; ;). She has a rigify rig, but her facial deformations aren't quite what I was hoping for. I'll have to noodle with that and see if I can get something workable, otherwise I will resort to shapekeys. The blocky hair will get replaced with particles once I get BEEFMASTER up and running. I definitely underestimated how long a character model like this would take, lol.
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I did try to get some mocap data on her, but that's a whole separate skill I need to learn. HOWEVER, I am strongly considering animating Pearl with mocap (either through VR capture or Rokoko) to save myself some time.
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A few minor setbacks with Jar Full of Cosmos
I'm almost done modeling Pearl. Much like Wipples, I'm hitting a real barrier with the hair particles. Blender is surprisingly stable, but unfortunately I just can't get work done when the display is running at 2 fps. Thankfully, my final PC component arrived yesterday so I'll be taking a short break from 3D modeling to assemble a new workstation. I've never done this before, so hopefully there aren't too many curve balls :')
Second, I'm running into some knowledge barriers. I haven't animated in a few years, and even then it was short/cyclical movements for game assets. I have access to some online training, and part of me feels like I will have a much better outcome if I put a pause on JoC and grind some animation coursework. Of course, the whole goal of this project is to see what I can do and always keep moving. I don't want to fall in the trap of overthinking, but 120 seconds of animation is a lot of animation for my nearly non-existent (and certainly rusty) experience level. Decisions decisions...
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