BlueLightSFM
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Update
🕑 Added 2021-05-12 17:26:12 +0000 UTCI want to give another update how things are going and what I'm trying to do for this month.
Right now, I'm still working on the Jill animation. I know this is kind of par for the course, but it has taken longer than I was planning on. It's not so much bad management this time though as it is learning. There have been lots of quirks to the NLA editor that I've had to figure out. Every time I thought I had it figured out, something else seemed to mess up. I think I've learned a lot and have more or less sorted out the major issues. This is also a kind of pose that don't do often. In addition, the animation is 25 seconds long so that adds to things too. I can explain some of those points further.
The interesting thing about the NLA editor is that I think I can use it to visually deconstruct progress for you guys in a way I couldn't do before. It would have been text only or a mess of keyframes. With the NLA editor, I can give you the building blocks to the animation.
Starting from the bottom, you can see the base level handjob animation. This contains the base pose plus the handjob loop. There's emphasis on the base pose. This is important when dealing with layers of animation. There's a difference between the base pose I want (Jill laying on a bed), and the default pose of the character (T-Pose). If I had multiple layers of Jill laying on the bed, it would effectively "double" her pose. The idea here is that any additional layer actually has to be from the T-Pose so starting point is zero. Everything combines together as you'd expect from that point. That point took me a while to really figure out as blender doesn't really "reset" the pose when you push an animation into the NLA stack.
The second layer is already the point where you get to see the NLA editor really shine. This isn't something I'd normally do, and certainly not in this way. I created a second handjob loop. This one has Jill with a tighter grip and more rotational movement. It's a harsh change between the normal handjob loop, but with the NLA editor we have an elegant way to smooth things out. You can see where the hanjobs overlap I actually have one fade out while the other fades in. It works for a surprisingly seamless transition.
The next layer is sort of unconventional for me too. Throughout the animation, Jill leans in to kiss the dick pretty often. It's a loop animation of sorts, but she takes some pauses for dialogue. What I did here was build out one iteration of the loop, then break it down for the separate parts of the animation. That way, I can still make changes based on pacing of the audio for each individual part.
The next layer is a general variation layer. It's mostly some swaying motion to keep her moving throughout the whole animation. This is the kind of thing that could be tricky to add with lots of other motion going on at the same time, but is really quick and simple with layers.
The top layer is meant for dialogue motion. The variation swaying in addition to the kiss animation is enough for her to look good, but she needs motion when she pauses to speak too. This animation is meant to fill the gaps, but you can see, there's actually quite a bit more overlap as the animation needs to blend in as smoothly as possible. Realistically, these top two layers probably could have been one.
This list also only accounts for Jill's armature. Her shape keys are separate. So far, I've done her lip sync for the dialogue. The male model also has motion that I have to sync up with Jill. I just have to make sure his clips match Jill's.
For progress, the animation is coming together. The handjob motion is complete. The kissing motion and general movement is almost done but needs some refinement. Lip sync is almost done but I have to do the rest of the facial expressions. From there, it's mostly down to Jill's lower body, mostly her legs, and some other motion for the male. I'm not entirely sure how much effort I want to put into animating Jill's hair. Her hair is short enough, and motion is slow enough, that any hair animation should be quite subtle. That can, in a way, be trickier to do than lots of motion.
I want to say this might be another week or so to finish, but I don't want to make a hard promise.
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This sort of throws most of my plans for April/May immediately up in the air, as I didn't expect I'd immediately diverge to learning the NLA editor with a longer animation, but here we are.
As it is, I'm probably going to swap the order of Miranda and Morrigan, so I can get to work on something Mass Effect related after the release of the Legendary Edition. That can give me some time to try and finish Morrigan this month and work on an animation for her next month. More likely I don't get to the model until next month though.
Also, now that they have all been paid for and drafted, I will also say that I have 16 poster commissions on the way. For those keeping score at home, I've released about 10 posters so far all year. It just so happens that my two biggest commission projects have overlapped. I did say things were going to get ambitious, didn't I? Those commissions include eight more posters from the Samara/Morinth set and eight new posters featuring Ada Wong and a futa gangbang.
I think that wall of text covers just about everything.
