CGMan

Naomi 2 Prop Model

Pretty excting, eh?

Naomi 2 Progress Report

Tentative title: "Naomi Re-Armed."

Done with her new arms.  I finished the script and handed it off to my talented voice actor to record.  Hopefully she will get it to me in a couple of days so I can record the motion capture and get it all moving.

While I am waiting for her I have some props to model.

Naomi 2 Update

Just a quickie note..  Naomi's arms are looking much better.  That is to say they move better..  All of the muscle groups slide and stretch more organically than before.  They still need some more love.  Maybe 1-2 days to get it all working perfectly.  But I am very pleased and I think you will be too.

Animation Progress Report

Just a little note... The muscles in Naomi's arms were fully remodeled today.  She really packed on some extra size.

The next step is to get each individual muscle group to move with her bones.  And there are a lot more than before!!

Stay tooned for more!

First Preview of Naomi's 2nd Animation

Hey all,

Naomi is getting "re-armed" in her next animation.  I am re-modeling her arm muscles from scratch.  They will have many more independently moving muscle groups, and those muscles will be bigger.  This image is a comparison of similar arm muscle groups in Naomi's old and (in-progress) new arms.

New Update to ZBrush

And it's free for existing ZBrush owners (like me)!

By the way....  Naomi is getting some upgrades for her next animation.  And you're gonna love 'em! :D

Posted to YouTube

A censored preview of Meet Naomi.  It also goes into some of the technical stuff and I made some simple animations to show them in action.  Hope you don't mind I posted your glowing comments in the video. :D

This has nothing to do with anything...

But I recently got one of these.  I don't have this particular model, but mine is very similar.  I paid about $25.  It's changed my diet for the healthier and it's soooo yummy!  Make noodles out of zucchini or sweet potatoes.

Did you know the spiralizer has a wonderful plan for your life?  Soon, you too will be one with the spiralizer.  All hail the spiralizer.  Spiralizer.

P.S. If you didn't get the animation yet let me know.

Naomi's 1st Animation Sent Out (to most of you)

Hey all,

If you check your mail you likely have Naomi's 1st animation waiting for you.  If you don't have it yet, I will take care of you first thing tomorrow (later today) after I get some sleep.  It is waaaay past my bedtime.  Thanks for your patience!

Because I am bored while rendering...

Today I was chatting with another Lightwave user..  Lightwave 3D is the name of the 3D software I use, if you were unaware.  This guy is a master of nodes.  Nodes are bit of code you can wire up to create a flowchart-looking thing for custom surfaces, animation mechanisms and other such things.

This same guy helped me get the original shrink-wrapped skin solution working.  Anyway, I was asking him if I could make the shrink wrapping work backwards.  While I wa...

Early E.T.A.

It is a bit early to make an estimate, but it looks from this long distance that the rendering will be done in five days.  And for 2523 frames (~84 seconds)... That's pretty good! :)

Animation Progress Report!

Naomi's skin is COMPELTE!

I am changing up the lighting to take advantage of the benefits given to us with this new RSMB tool and the improvements in render quality is...

 -=DRAMATIC=-!

This is going to look amazing!  And it renders pretty fast too!

Animation Progress Report

If you were curious, I have half of the final body part complete.  The final body part are the left and right forearms.  The right forearm is done.  I could have got it all done today but I had some other B.S. I had to attend to that took over 4 hours.  I will have no trouble finishing up tomorrow and rendering will be underway tomorrow.

Forewarned is forearmed.

Purchased RSMB. Works great!

Here's a quickie little test I did with it under extreme motion.  It handles it pretty well I think!

It's working!

Making forward progress again!

041: Maria's Introduction Animation

Maria's debut animation!  Thanks for your support!

Frustrating.

I really thought I would be rendering by now.  There was an alignment problem with one of the muscles in her upper arm..  All of the skinning work I did for the last two days has to be scrapped and done over again.  Really sorry. :(

An Important Question For All of You

In my last post I mentioned that I will need to disable motion blur if I wanted to get the animation rendered in a reasonable amount of time.  This is because I render motion blur by rendering the image three times, and then those three images are blended together to make a single frame.  This also lets me cheat fake soft shadows by using hard shadows but "spinning" the lightsource in a tight circle.  This means the shadows will be offset a bit in each of the three images that the...

New peek at Naomi and News

Hello!

I just posted a preview render of Naomi to DA.  Her arms are not yet skinned so they are cropped out.

In my first test renders I see that Naomi will take over 16 days to render..  As good as it looks this is unacceptable if I ever want to get caught up.  I think what I will do is turn off motion blur, which will cut the rendering time down to 1/3rd of that.

Overall it is looking incredible, matching my very optimistic concepts for how the animation will look. ...

Animation Progress Report!

I'm sick.  I have a cough, sore throat, fatigue and generally feel like crap..

Nevertheless I did get some work done.  I went and did a 2nd pass on both of Naomi's pecs for the shrink-wrapping..  removing / reducing some unwanted artifacts.  And then I put all of her simmed body parts together for the first time...  And I am so excited.  She looks like an overly-muscular female Rayman because she has no arms.  But it is amazing..  Anyway.. I should try t...

Animation Progress Report!

Just finished the 5th body part..  Two remain.  And it's looking FANTASTIC.  Even though it caused a delay, I was absolutely right to re-do her chest when I realized the muscle morphs were not turned on.  It is a bold example of why this new skin-simming tech was a good decision.  She is going to be very popular. :D

Streaming for a bit...

If you want to watch me doing over again what I worked on all day. :/

http://www.picarto.tv/CGMan

Check out this neck!

Just finished shrink-wrapping skin over Naomi's neck.  I think this is an even better example that shows skin sliding over muscle.

Animation Progress: Torso complete!

Yay!  Here is Naomi looking down approvingly at her well-defined abs. :)

Animation Progress: Torso done (as soon as it's done)

So I did a sim earlier today and everything came out perfect except for one little spot that I missed..  Ruined the whole thing.  And I made some changes.. And I also doubled the polygon resolution in the abdominal area to get more definition in there.  The sim is running now and will probably be finished in a couple of hours.  Now the process is working and I've figured out the best ways to go about it..  I can hopefully get a new body part or two finalized a day.  ...

It's all working

Everything is great now.  I need to run the sim again because there are a few error areas I missed.. But that was my fault, not the sim's fault.

Good news this time!

Huzzah!  A friend of mine pointed me out to a third-party tool that basically does the same shrink-wrapping process that my native 3D software does.  And it works without the raindrop dent artifacts!

The only catch is it only works with a single collision model, so I have to combine her muscle and fat models...  And it is much.....slower......     But if it works it works.  So I am happy that all is not lost!  I'll let you know when I have the fat &...

Good News and Bad News

Hey,

I've got the spikey problem from yesterday sorted out.  But a new problem has surfaced..  Little random "raindrop" like denting.  You can see it in the attached file.

So close..  But to get hit with this new problem in the home stretch.  I really don't know how I can solve this one.. Or -if- I can solve this one.  Worst case scenario is, I re-sculpt her body in a more traditional method, like the models done before her.  I won't have to lose the an...

Animation Progress! First look at the new tech!

Hey all!  Well at this point I have made my third attempt at cleanly shrink-wrapping skin over her muscles (and a bit of fat).  Each time was a failure but each time I got closer to the mark..  With this third attempt I believe I have thought of a new plan of attack that will yield perfect sims.

But I thought you would like to take a peek at what all of this is leading up to.  Attached is a snippet from attempt #3.  It has problems.. The dents and spikes sticking out o...

Animation Update!

Muscles all done.  Time to put her skin on!  So excited!! :D