colortwist

Stuck in limbo.

I really hate these text only posts, but I'm not sure what else to do right now.

Long story short, my workstation of 8 years just passed away. My new workstation is still awaiting a few extra parts after some RMA insanity through Amazon (a few things didn't work out, so I had to ship a bunch of parts back), which means I am officially without a functioning desktop computer for the first time in well over two decades.

Unfortunately this means I can't really guarantee anything for t...

Return of the hair rigging

In today's miniature rant on "why the heck do I need to jump through 5 separate layers of abstraction to make this happen in C4D"...

I think, though I'm not quite sure yet- that I at least have some sort of a usable solution in place for dynamic ponytail rigging. If this doesn't look very impressive, it's probably because it's not. There is absolutely nothing particularly special about this setup, since it's literally just a barebones Spline IK rig driving some hidden proxy geometry wit...

colortwist.plan - 28/12/19

So I'm kinda back, though I suspect my presence will be a bit spotty until January 5th or so.

I figured I might as well toss up a general plan here so everyone knows what to expect for the next little while.

Long story short, I'm finally migrating away from Apple. It's been fun for the past 19 years, but now I'd like to get off Mr. Bones' Wild Ride. This has been a major source of contention in my life since I've been stuck on decade old hardware coupled with decade old software, ...

Merry Christmas!

So apparently it's Christmas.

I'm still kinda wondering where the year went, but I guess that's life for you. In any case, I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday so far.

PS: I may or may not be around for the next week or so, since we've actually got family in from out of town and my days are getting pretty busy with other stuff. I'm hoping to be back around the 27th so I can get back to work on some character stuff and hope...

Jessica Hair WIP (2/???)

Another shot from the back.

The lack of density maps is really obvious around the hairline, which is absolutely killing me inside because I know that's not realistic at all. Unfortunately C4D's density maps seem to either be on or off with absolutely nothing in-between, which makes it extremely difficult to create hair styles that exhibit nice flowing layers of varying density (and thus things like imperfect hairlines that thin out near the edge).

At the very least, the overhauled...

Jessica Hair WIP (1/???)

Found a few fleeting moments to work on Jessica's hair style.

I'm still not very happy with how clean and precise it looks, but I think it's at least a bit better than before. Truth be told, I'm not really sure how much further I can push this style inside C4D, since I need access to things like density maps and what not to really bring out the realism and it doesn't seem like those features work very well (if at all).

That being said, there's still a few things I want to fix (plu...

Jessica WIP renders (2/2)

Back side shot of Jessica's current character design.

Jessica WIP renders (1/2)

I really really really wanted to wait to release this until I had some sort of a 3-panel mini-OC sheet/comic done up that described some of Jessica's backstory (was going to do one for Vanessa as well, just to try and make things look a bit more legit), but I swear nothing ever goes according to plan in 3D these days (at least, not from my end).

Unfortunately I've run into some problems with the hair styling and rigging, to which I've yet to find any applicable solution. As such, these ...

Hairy hair sculpting

Viewport teaser for the hairstyle I'm working on for the new character.

Suffice to say, this has been a rather interesting experience. Ponytails aren't all that complicated, but convincing C4D to make one has been rather enlightening (and I don't mean that in a good way- it would have been nice if they'd bothered to update the hair tools once or twice since 2005).

Still need to clean up a bunch of stuff (namely the hair bed underneath the main hair layer) and try to tweak the actu...

Hair Scrunchie

Needed a hair scrunchie.

Too lazy to figure out how to sculpt one from scratch.

Instead spent twice as long figuring out how to simulate the desired fabric deformations with soft body dynamics.

I now haz a hair scrunchie.

Swimsuit shader refresh, part 3/3

Close-up of the Quantum Splice suit design and the old Sequin suit, plus the new edges/stitching. Most of this detail was never meant to be seen this close up- while it is there in the render, the general ideal is to replicate the specular response of a fabric from afar (not under a microscope), which is why things start to look a little bit weird at this distance (the majority of the cloth shaders were designed to replicate that characteristic anisotropic "S-curve" of a thread bundle, which ...

Swimsuit shader refresh, part 2/3

Rendered version of the updated Sequin suit.

Swimsuit shader refresh, part 1/3

After I recently stalled out on the strap rigging, I figured it might be fun (well, as fun as this stuff can be) to try and change gears and work on something else for a while. One of those things happens to be a new character, but in a typical yak shaving fashion, I landed up going back and cleaning up some of the swimsuit stuff and redoing a bunch of shaders first.

One of the things that's been annoying me recently was the lack of textured swimsuit edges. For some reason, I always wan...

Strap rigging updates and other assorted nonsense

Ugh.

To quote the professor from 1996's Chain Reaction- "We learned something very important today. We found another way that didn't work."

So as it turns out, the method I've been developing to handle my strap rigging... doesn't actually work. It kinda does, but it also totally doesn't. Part of this is my fault- I probably should have seen some of these issues coming from a mile away, but part of it also has to do with the software I'm stuck with. I use an absolutely ancient vers...

New body morphs - 2/2

Back side.

I am redoing the leg/butt morphs as well (not shown), though the primary focus at the moment is the breast morphs (specifically the sequence of progressive morphs that will be driving the full inflation process from start to finish).

New body morphs - 1/2

Working on some new body morphs, which also kinda fit in with the new strap rigging system. Not quite sure if things are going to work out or not, but assuming they do, this will likely land up being the maximum size for clothed (swimsuit) inflation.

As much as I wanted to push things a bit further, a lot of stuff starts to break down beyond these sizes, and you land up in a situation where there's either not enough geometry to work with at the largest size, or too much geometry to hand...

Vanessa - Poolside Selfie

Been busy trying to clean up some stuff recently and reorganize everything into some sort of a sane project hierarchy, mostly so that I can work on specific parts of this project without constantly screwing up existing characters/scenes/assets.

This was kinda a spontaneous test just to see if everything was still working. It was also an excuse to try out a simple "selfie" pose with a wide angle lens, which is something that's been on my mind for a while now. It might become a reoccurrin...

Vanessa - One finger hand stand

One of the things I really love exploring (and will probably be doing a lot more of in the future) is the concept of "not-quite-buoyant-acrobatics" (which differs from "just-barely-buoyant-acrobatics" in that the former implies there is still some tiny amount of contact with the ground).

I've always figured that if someone was being inflated, and slowly becoming buoyant while just generally enjoying the whole experience (especially if they're already familiar with what's going to happen...

Vanessa - Chair Lounging

More Vanessa.

This was actually a leftover pose that I couldn't quite fit into Sequin Floatoshoot, so it landed up collecting dust in the back of my mind until I decided to do something about it.

I don't think anyone's gonna complain about more gratuitous bubbly curves though, right?

Strap Solver Part II: Revenge of the Evil Math

Well that took a bit longer than I expected.

As it turns out, solving for the tangents between two arbitrary curves in 3D space is not exactly as straightforward as I thought it would be. There is no direct solution, since there is no guarantee that the tangents are actually pointing at each other. This basically means that you're looking for the "closest possible" solution instead, which poses a unique challenge unto itself and falls within the category of metaheuristics and finding th...

Strap solver beginnings

This is a little something I've been working on recently.

Long story short, I never actually intended on having my characters stuck in a permanent semi-inflated state. Would some of them prefer to remain at a larger size whenever possible? Sure, why not- I suppose that's just as valid of a lifestyle choice as any. However, I always assumed that most of them would want to return to a normal size on occasion, if only so that they could experience the journey of getting bigger all over aga...

Vanessa - umop apisdn

Another ceiling render, because apparently I'm having a lot of fun messing around with those lately.

Vanessa - Lend a gal a helping hand?

I guess it's only natural someone stuck on the ceiling might want to come down eventually- though how you do that without the assistance of someone else is utterly beyond me.

On a side note- in retrospect, I didn't quite realize how awkward/vertigo-y this pic was going to come out before I'd posed everything and sculpted the hair. Whether or not that was actually an intentional design decision... I'll leave up to you >,>

Sequin Floatoshoot is now available!

I'm pleased to announce the immediate availability of my first full length image pack, Sequin Floatoshoot.

I will be sending out messages shortly to all existing patrons with the download links and password to the ZIP archive. It's around 135mb in size, and contains 26 individual renders at 2560x1600 resolution. WIP images have been taken down (for obvious reasons), so apologies if you commented on one of those- I do appreciate your input nonetheless.

At the moment, if you are not...

Sequin Floatoshoot Preview - 4/4

Fourth preview panel of Sequin Floatoshoot.

All existing patrons will receive this pack for free. If you are not a patron as of the time this message was posted, you will have to purchase the pack here instead:

https://colortwist.e-junkie.com/product/1629151/Sequin-Floatoshoot

If you are unable to use e-junkie for any reason and still wish to purchase the pack, please l...

Sequin Floatoshoot Preview - 3/4

Third preview panel of Sequin Floatoshoot.

All existing patrons will receive this pack for free. If you are not a patron as of the time this message was posted, you will have to purchase the pack here instead:

https://colortwist.e-junkie.com/product/1629151/Sequin-Floatoshoot

If you are unable to use e-junkie for any reason and still wish to purchase the pack, please le...

Sequin Floatoshoot Preview - 2/4

Second preview panel of Sequin Floatoshoot.

All existing patrons will receive this pack for free. If you are not a patron as of the time this message was posted, you will have to purchase the pack here instead:

https://colortwist.e-junkie.com/product/1629151/Sequin-Floatoshoot

If you are unable to use e-junkie for any reason and still wish to purchase the pack, please l...

Sequin Floatoshoot Preview - 1/4

First preview panel of Sequin Floatoshoot.

All existing patrons will receive this pack for free. If you are not a patron as of the time this message was posted, you will have to purchase the pack here instead:

https://colortwist.e-junkie.com/product/1629151/Sequin-Floatoshoot

If you are unable to use e-junkie for any reason and still wish to purchase the pack, please le...

Eye see you

Excessive yak shaving can take you on a really weird journey sometimes.

So a little while ago I basically got annoyed at the way some of my skin was looking in a few scenes (hint: it wasn't the skin, it's probably the scene lighting). After chasing that down and promptly realizing that the way I had things before was probably best, I started going through a few of the other shaders and cleaning up some extraneous cruft that had accumulated over the months.

I've never been particul...

Character rig update - 15/08/19

I really need to stop starting every Patreon post with "So I'm still here"...

Long story short, I haven't gone anywhere. I've just been busy trying to solve some scene management stuff inside C4D, which of course involved writing Yet More Plugins (TM) to get everything working properly. A couple of weeks ago I'd actually tried to pull everything together (so I could start rendering out stuff again) and immediately ran into two rather annoying problems:

1) Incorporating everything ...