CakeInferno
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Finalized Environment & Space Hero Updates
🕑 Added 2022-08-16 20:00:54 +0000 UTCHere's a look at the finalized forest environment for the Encounter Halloween special! The animation will play out at two different times of day, starting with a blue hour twilight-style lighting that you get just before nightfall. I do remember being in a forest with friends during this kind of time and it always had something slightly foreboding and unsettling to it for me, which is why I always wanted to replicate this kind of mood in an animation! Luckily with this was a lot easier with Redshift due it utilizing real path tracing. I admittedly tried to fake diffuse lighting scenarios in previous animations with the old renderer, but they admittedly never came out this good.
This lighting mood will remain for the first few opening scenes before skipping to night time, which will show Space Hero attempting to make a fire at what seems to be a bit of a dead end. From here he'll run into Bunsen, who will mostly be lit by the nearby campfire and moonlight. The lighting for the later part is admittedly not 100% final, but I'm slowly getting there! Note that I've already started animating the first scene, so it's likely I'll be posting a first animation test as well towards the end of the month!
There's still a few things I need to tweak, such as some trees looking a bit copypasted, but I'd say the environment coming along extremely well! This is partly also due to me now working natively in Maya 2022, which comes with features that significantly speed up the environment creation. One of them would be MASH, which allowed me to scatter and paint background foliage, as well as little details such as fallen leafs on the ground. All these things are instanced, so the scene size remains quite small. All trees and bushes in the foreground as still hand-placed since I need to keep some form of freedom over where these trees are located, then everything from the third row of trees uses procedural scattering to fill out the background. Despite the scene rocking tens of millions of polygons, the rendering is quite fast due to the instancing. It's actually a bit faster than the Encounter 2 environment even!
Space Hero Updates
While Space Hero had already received a few upgrades in the last Encounter episodes, I still wasn't quite happy with his face, which basically just used a base human default head with no rigging at all. I decided to finally tackle this issue and make improvements to his face, so it wouldn't have to be obscured by his visor anymore.
I've first of all given him the same eye models I had made for Zoe and made some slight adjustments to them. I then redid his facial proportions to be more in line with the Pixar aesthetics, which included remodeling his eyes, nose and mouth to be a bit more stylized. Of course his mouth won't be visible, but who knows! Maybe I'll do a full facial reveal of him in the final Encounter episode since he's actually handsome now! :D
His skin shader was also remade and now has some proper SSS applied to it! I then wrapped it by making some hair for him as well, which admittedly makes him look a tiny bit like Hiccup from HTTYD! At least if you only see the upper part of his face, haha! I've made a fully functioning facial rig for him as well now, so his face will finally be animated and not static like in the last Encounter episode, oh dear!
That's it for the mid-monthly update! Note that by now Acidic has already made some decent progress on the Zoe remodel, so it's not unlikely we'll have some updates to show on her by this weekend! Then by the end of the month I should already be able to show the first playblast of some WIP animation! (:
Comments
Animakitty
Lookin' good, Cake!
CakeInferno
Thank you! (:
Ultimate_Nemesis
Looks great!
Ponlets
ohh will she get genitals too :3
CakeInferno
Thank you so much, Ghosty! <3
CakeInferno
Among many other things, yes! (:
CakeInferno
Glad you think so! Really can't wait to get fully into this! :D
Ghostdragon
Absolutely stunning~
StarryAqua
Oh! A Zoe remodel? Like adding pads on her feetpaws? ^_^
Beeny
Really loving the atmosphere here, already looks spooky!
CakeInferno
Glad to hear! I might make some proper ones once I'm a little further into the animation! <:
CakeInferno
PS2 Girl will always have a special place in my heart! :D
CakeInferno
Thank you so much!
CakeInferno
Many thanks, glad you like! The Space Hero update was long overdue, haha! Hoping to show him off being fully animated soon, face included! <:
CakeInferno
Haha, forest tend to appear in dreams quite often! Must be one of our more primal fears, oop!
Dan Windrow
Wow. Looks like I have a new desktop background.
Wow, you've really come a long way since the "PS2 girl" days!
Demon Slayer
Stunning as always!
Michael Lee Vogel
The environment looks absolutely stunning and the new updates to space hero are awesome as well, keep up the phenomenal work as always cake.
Charles J Burgess
That Forrest reminds me of a dream I had some years back. I can't really remember if anything notable happened in it though.
