taurinfox

Videos Are Fixed!

After reaching out to our streaming video provider, they were very accommodating and provided us with the additional bandwidth we needed to keep the videos up! =)  Everything should be working again.

Video Player Issues

Videos currently aren't playing on my Patreon site.  Apparently we exceeded our monthly bandwidth allocation with our streaming video provider about 17 hours after Dragon Rider was released.  We're in the process of trying to work out a custom plan with them so that we can get the videos back online (we were already on their highest tier).

Depending on the outcome of that, we'll decide how to proceed and get the videos back up ASAP!

Dragon Rider

The video has released publicly, so here it is for all of my Patrons to enjoy!  To download the MP4 file, click the "share" button in the upper left, then click the rightmost icon (downward arrow).

Enjoy!  And thank you all SO much for your support <3

Cloth Simulation - rough draft

I spent today's stream modeling some swimming trunks for Taurin and calculating an initial cloth simulation for it of Kish pulling them down.  It could use some tweaking, but the results so far are encouraging ^.^  There will eventually be dialogue at the end of the scene here where the two characters seem to just be looking at each other.

Enjoy!

Another Hit the Showers test render!

Here's another test render from the current project "Hit the Showers."  I made some improvements to the lighting and materials since my last posted render.  This scene is from immediately after Kish pulls down Taurin's swim trunks, and I love their expressions in this shot x3  I still need to model and simulate the swim trunks, which might end up being the focus of today's animation stream.

Enjoy!

Dragon Rider Early Access

It's here! after 8 years following A Fox in the Stable, here's Dragon Rider, featuring Kish Fox.

Special thanks to both Kish and Asher Ninetails, who did all of the audio work on this, with Kish even voicing himself!

Thanks to my Patrons (that's you!), I've been able to get back into my animation work in a big way! This is only the beginning ;) This video will be released publicly on 3/1/19 on Taurinfox.com and other platforms.

Dragon Rider is scheduled for release!

I finished rendering out the last few frames for this a couple days ago, and Asher and Kish brought it to life today with their audio engineering skills!  I'm proud to announce that this video is 100% complete and is the first new production animation I've released in about 8 years.

$15+ tier patrons will get early access to it on midnight this Friday (2/22/19) and it will be publicly released on March 1st.

Thank you all SO much for making this possible!  But this is onl...

Hit the Showers Test Render (close up)

Here's another test render from the newly-revamped Hit the Showers scene!  With the materials and render settings (mostly) sorted out, I'm ready to get back to cleaning up the animation itself.

This will be the focus of today's animation stream, which will be kicking off at 6PM Eastern time on Picarto!

Hit the Showers shifted Red (test render)

So, with the Kish dildo animation in the final rendering phase, and no work left to do on my part aside from waiting, I shifted my focus back to the Hit the Showers.

Since I'm using a different rendering engine than I was when I last worked on this, all of the materials had to be converted, which was no small task and was the focus of today's animation stream.

After the stream, I replaced the characters with new versions that I had meticulously created the fur for and copied the a...

More Streams!

Well, we did it!  We met the goal of $1000 in pledges per month, so I'll be doing 2 animation streams per week from now on ^.^

I'll probably do this additional stream on Tuesdays at 6PM.  Thank you all for your support!  I've got a new animation on the verge of release and the next one is getting close as well.  This wouldn't be possible without you guys so thanks again!

<3

Money Shot!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  The new animation is in the final rendering phase, and I don't want to spoil it by releasing too many of the final sequences <=)  However, I just finished the last part that I needed to do for it, which was the fluid simulation!

So here's the money shot of Kish getting off x3  

And with that... aside from waiting for the rendering to complete and possibly some tweaks if I notice any problems, my work on this animation is done!...

Where I'm at after 1 year on Patreon

Well, we're approaching the 1 year anniversary of when I started actively working on my art and animation projects again, so I thought I'd write up a recap of what I accomplished this past year, and where I'm looking to go with things this year.

1) The weekly art streams have been a great success!  Both in terms of keeping me motivated to produce art, and also as an opportunity to engage my fans and remove any excuses I would otherwise have to procrastinate XD  The same has be...

Kish Mocap Opening Sequence

So, I decided that since I've got this awesome motion capture equipment (thanks again guys), I'd be missing out if I didn't use it for this project.  It doesn't help all that much for the humping sequences and stuff like that, but it's amazing for getting natural movement as the characters are walking through the scene, so I decided to do a sequence of Kish walking into the scene and plopping the dildo onto the wall to start off the video.

Yesterday, we devoted a portion of the str...

More looping fennec butt!

Here's the previously posted loop from 2 more camera angles.  I added some jiggle to his balls for a little extra realism ;)

Unfortunately, I noticed a little glitch in the fur on the second camera view.  I don't know if it's bad enough that I need to re-render or if I can just clean it up in post.  It only seems to occur during about 5 frames or so.  Otherwise, I'm really happy with how these sequences turned out ^.^

Enjoy!

And So It Begins (final rendering in progress)

Here we go! XD  I'm working on rendering out the final animation sequence.  I started by isolating a few loopable segments of the video that I'll render from different camera angles.

Eventually I want to use those loops to make the video interactive, but I'm not familiar enough with HTML5, which seems to be the standard for that right now.  So the initial release of this will be a standard video format, but I can use the loops to help assemble the final composition.

Wheeskerz!

So I added whiskers to Kish's character which was basically the only thing missing fur-wise x3  I also tweaked his fur a little more and I'm getting ready to produce what will hopefully be a final production render sequence.  I'm about to render out what should be a seamless 100 frame loop.  Let's see how it goes XD

Kish Fap Low Detail Production Preview

This took about 11 hours to render at 1 min per frame.  I used a lower resolution and high noise threshold to get a fast preview render.  This provides a pretty good idea of what the final render will look like, but you'll notice that the high noise threshold causes some problematic artifacts when animated.  I found that reducing this setting to 1/3 of what it is here produces an acceptably low amount of noise for the final production rendering.

Enjoy this preview!

Kish Butt Closeup - Light Flickering Fix

I left the previous rendered frames with light flickering in for reference.  About 1/3 of the way through, you'll notice a sudden shift in the fur (more on that in a moment) and the remainder of the sequence is much cleaner.  I could probably clean it up even more at the cost of rendering speed, but that's something I'll have to play around with to optimize =)

As for the suddenly shifting fur; that's an issue that I'm currently troubleshooting.  It occurs when I stop a re...

Taurin Fur Fly-through

Hello all!

Even though this is a video sequence, I'm releasing it at the Super Patron level since it's not actually a preview of a work in progress.  Don't worry Mega Patrons, you're going to get a LOT more exclusive content soon here ;)

This is a fly-through showing off the new fur on my Taurin character.  I included the water sphere and reflective surface to show how the rendering engine handles the fur as a 3D object.  This wouldn't have been possible using my pr...

Taurin Fur

So I spent a while typing out a long and well-composed description for this that Patreon decided to nuke because I pressed the wrong button, so here's the short version...

New fur!  Visible to global illumination, reflections and refraction.  Couldn't do that before.  3 million strands, renders in about 2 minutes.  Still need to tweak some stuff...

Currently rendering out an animated fly-through sequence.  Will post when done if good...

Check out att...

Kish Closeup Production Render Test

I'm still learning to optimize the Redshift rendering engine, and I'm working on balancing quality with render speed =)

An obstacle I've come across is that a frame that renders fast and looks good on its own isn't necessarily suitable for animation.  An acceptable amount of noise in a still frame can turn into a distracting artifact in an animation sequence.  Reducing that noise unfortunately means longer render times.

I managed to get the noise level low enough in this...

More Renders!

Now that I'm really digging into the Redshift renderer, I'm finding ways to make the scene look even more realistic and visually interesting.  Since my last post, I've made improvements to the materials and lighting.  I also started using the vignette and depth of field camera effects.  This increased the rendering time a bit, but I'm still well below the 10 mins/frame threshold I aim for.  But DAMN if those effects don't just bring these renders to life!

I also got ...

Kish Dildo Renders

So I made it official and bought the Redshift license X3  Here are some production renders from the new animation project.  

During today's animation stream, I worked with the materials, rigging and background props a bit.  This is getting dangerously close to being ready for a final rendering!  All I really need to do now is fine tune some of the keyframing and figure out how to make the animation interactive XD

Enjoy!

Kish Closeup Preview Production Render

Here's another test render sequence of the new project, this time from a closeup view!

I'm loving this render setup!  I started this sequence last night when I went to bed and stopped it when I got home from work today (500 frames rendered).  It seriously looks like my production rendering jobs will complete in a matter of days (weeks at most) instead of months like I had been dealing with previously <=)  And that's just with one computer on the job! (I used three for ...

Kish Dildo Production Test Render

Thanks to my Patrons, I was able to make some investments in my animation process that will really help to improve my speed and quality!

As mentioned in a previous post, I decided to switch to a GPU rendering engine.  I haven't entirely decided on which one I'll be using but, at the moment, I'm leaning towards Redshift based on its speed and features.  I'm planning on using it for the duration of this project, which seems to be on schedule for release by the end of the month. ...

Kish Fur Update

I spent today working on Kish's fur and hair, along with some other updates to the scene.  Unfortunately, it looks like the new GPU won't get here until Monday, but in the meantime I have a new rendering engine and hair/fur system to work with.  I'll be continuing with this project on tomorrow's animation stream!

Enjoy!

Kish Fur Test (GPU Render)

So, it looks like the era of GPU rendering has finally arrived!

TLDR: I made the transition from a CPU-based rendering engine to a GPU-based solution for my animations.

For over a decade, I've had people recommending GPU rendering engines to me, claiming that they're so fast they completely eliminate the need for a render farm.  In practice, however, this didn't seem to be the case.  The GPU rendering engines I've tried up to this point have been clunky to use, often mis...

Kish Dildo Closeup

A closeup rendering from the side project video ^.^  I'm off work for the upcoming week, so I'm hoping to make a lot of progress on this!

Kish Dildo Test Render

Here's a test render for the side project I'm working on with Kish and a dragon dildo x3  Since the main project I've been working on has far exceeded its original scope and will take a while yet to complete, I wanted to try to push out a smaller project in the meantime.

My intention is to make this a user-controllable looping video of Kish riding the dildo and pawwing off at the end.  No mocap in this one or anything complicated, but this will give me a chance to complete Kis...

Combined Lighting

This is the direct lighting pass combined with the modified GI from the previous post.  It's not perfect (my noise setting is too low) but the result is that I get a stable GI solution with an average rendering time per frame of about 5 minutes, compared to over an hour if I were to do this in a single pass.  This is how I managed to render Fox in the Stable on an old Core 2 Duo back in the day!